by Janadas Devan; The Straits Times, Singapore, March 5, 2004
http://www.straitstimes.asia1.com/columnist/0,1886,145-238457,00.html?
LAST year, as United States forces were conquering Iraq, Middle East expert Bernard Lewis attacked those who thought US plans to install democracy in Iraq were bound to fail.
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| Janadas Devan |
They think Arabs aren’t ready for democracy, he said accusingly. He, on the other hand, believed Arabs were heirs to a great civilisation, and were fully capable of achieving democracy – ‘with some guidance’.
US President George W. Bush made a similar point in his recent State of the Union address. ‘It is mistaken, and condescending, to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government,’ he declared. ‘I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom.’
But who are these critics who doubt the wisdom of imposing democracy on Arabs? Realists who think national interest, not human rights, should be the basis of US foreign policy? Advocates of realpolitik? Dr Henry Kissinger?
The answer is: None of the above. The people who doubt if the US should be going around making the world safe for democracy are – surprise, surprise – liberals.
Consider the following statement: ‘Markets concentrate wealth, often spectacular wealth, in the hands of the market-dominant minority, while democracy increases the political power of the impoverished majority. In these circumstances, the pursuit of free-market democracy becomes an engine of potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism.’
That appeared in a recent book by Yale University’s Professor Amy Chua, World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred And Global Instability. Elections and markets, far from bringing peace and prosperity, are more likely to cause mayhem and strife, she argued.
An Asian-American originally from the Philippines, she told The New York Times recently that she had witnessed first-hand the destructive effects of democracy. Chinese Filipinos, she pointed out, constitute barely 1 per cent of the Philippines’ population, and yet they ‘control as much as 60 per cent of the private economy’.
Democratic populism in such circumstances will inevitably morph into ethnonationalism, she asserted. Democracy in Iraq, she suggested, will go the same route, as the deprived Shi’ite majority seizes upon the forms of democracy to wrest power and wealth from the long-privileged Sunni minority.
She is not the only liberal intellectual who has expressed such doubts about democracy. Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz and Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria are among the other prominent names.
The latter noted in his book, The Future Of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy At Home And Abroad, that it was liberty – the rule of law, independent judiciaries, private property, free enterprise, civil liberties and, above all, a government capable of enforcing these rights – which led to democracy in the Western world, ‘not the other way around’.
Since this ‘itinerary is irreversible’, countries which introduced democracy before establishing liberty will inevitably turn into ‘illiberal democracies’, he argued.
On the other hand, countries which started off as ‘liberalising autocracies’ have often evolved into democracies. In language that might have choked liberals just a decade ago, he noted that ‘the best-consolidated democracies in Latin America and East Asia today – Chile, South Korea and Taiwan – were for a long time ruled by military juntas. In East Asia, as in Western Europe, liberalising autocracies laid the groundwork for stable liberal democracies’.
How about the Middle East? Would democracy there undercut the appeal of jihadists?
The neo-conservative Prof Lewis was convinced it would. The neo-liberal Mr Zakaria, however, was doubtful. ‘Elections in many Arab countries,’ he warned, ‘would produce politicians who espouse views that are closer to Osama bin Laden’s than those of Jordan’s liberal monarch, King Abdullah.’
What is going on here? Liberals have turned realists, acutely conscious of complexity, while conservatives have turned idealists, filled with revolutionary ardour?
Perhaps it is a case of the best lacking ‘all convictions, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity,’ as the poet W.B. Yeats wrote in another era when the political landscape was similarly riven with stark divisions?
But it would be wrong to doubt the sincerity of neo-conservatives. They might well have bitten off more than they can chew in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are genuinely convinced that only a radical transformation in the political culture of the region will suffice to roll back the tide of radical Islam.
In this respect, they have more in common with the liberal John F. Kennedy – who declared in 1961 that America ‘shall pay any price, bear any burden… to assure the survival and the success of liberty’ – than even Kennedy’s heirs in today’s Democratic Party do. But how much of a price is America willing to pay now? How heavy a burden is it willing to bear?
These are questions which need to be desperately debated this election season. Which vision of the US role in the world does the electorate support: Neo-conservatism – which is really the old liberalism – or neo-liberalism – which is really the old conservatism?
Originally published March 7, 2004