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January 26, 2005
The Case for Democracy
Last night I finished Natan Sharansky's new book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. He makes a powerful case.
I posted part one of my take on his theories on my other blog site here. What follows is part II and my own thoughts on the matter.
President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both read the book, and the President, at least, is powerfully influenced. His recent inaugural address reflected many of Sharansky's ideas about the power of freedom and democracy to change the world. The President's speech was so good and right that I found myself cheering every part of it. One editorialist I read today said it was the type of speech that makes you want to underline every sentence. Fellow blogger Mark tried to excerpt it, then gave up and posted the whole thing.
If the first part of the book is about the successfulness of Helsinki and Jackson-Vanik in bringing about an end to the Soviet Union, the second is about the failure brought about by Oslo due to the lack of moral clarity among both Israelis and Americans.
The key to Sharansky's formula for success is simple:
When freedom's skeptics argue today that freedom cannot be "imposed" from the outside, or that the freed world has no role to play in spreading democracy around the world, I cannot but be amazed. Less than one generation has passed since the West found the Achilles heel of the Soviet Union by pursuing an activist policy that linked the rights of the Soviet people to the USSR's international standing. The same formula will work again today.
What we need to do, he says, is link our foreign policy toward those regimes to how they treat their own people.
Regarding the Soviet Union, the formula had three components, he says:
- People inside who yearned to be free
- Leaders outside who believed they could be, and
- Policies that linked the free world's relations with the USSR to the Soviet regimes treatment of it's own people.
The problem with Oslo, Sharansky says was that
Whereas the Helsinki agreements forged a direct link between human rights and East-West relations, the Oslo accords failed to establish any connection between human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Worse, as would later become clear in word and deed, Oslo's architects actually believed that such a link would be detrimental to the interests of both parties.
The continued refusal of Israeli and American administrations to require much in the way of reform by the Palestinians doomed the process, Sharansky says.
As part of an ongoing moral confusion, many speak of a "cycle of violence" among the Israelis and Palestinians. But this is inaccurate. As Sharansky points out, the suicide bombers continued their bloody work regardless of whether the Israeli military responded or not.
One of the problems in trying to make peace with dictators is that they really do not think like us. This was illustrated beautifully in an anecdote that Sharansky related in the book. During negotiations at the Wye Plantation in 1998, the issue of car theft came up. Israelis were having their cars stolen in overwhelming numbers by Palestinians, who quickly took them to "chop shops" in Palestinian controlled areas.
During the meeting at Wye, we asked the Palestinians why they were not using their massive police force to stop the thefts. Predictably, they said that to address the issue they needed to be stronger, which would require more concessions from Israel.This is the sort of doublethink when you deal with dictators. There was an incident some years ago in which Arafat got into a heated dispute with his security chief. Arafat pulled a pistol on him and threatened him with it in a meeting with his top aides. This is not the sort of person with whom you can make peace.Arafat sat silently, his eyes darting back and forth and his lower lip trembling. He was not involved in the conversation at all. "Is this the man that is running the Palestinian Authority?" I thought to myself. He seemed hardly capable of running anything.
Suddenly, Arafat jerked to attention and blurted out, "It's the settlers. It's the settlers who are stealing the cars, not our people." Arafat's remark was so absurd and childish that it was difficult for me not to burst out laughing. but the Palestinians were not amused. Suddenly, Arafat's ridiculous outburst changed the dynamic of the discussion. the Palestinian delegation immediately went from being on the defensive to hurling charges at Israel.
Unfortunately, we're not going to get any help in spreading democracy from the major human rights groups. Amnesty International's own website proclaims that
AI is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights.Can they really mean this? I understand that they do not wish to get distracted by political battles, but surely this is going too far. As Sharansky says when confronted by Amnesty officials over this, "how can a human rights organization be impartial about political systems that are inherently hostile to human rights?" Such is the moral confusion of our day.
The United States and the Middle East
President Bush gave a great inaugural speech. It remains to be seen whether we will carry through on its promise. Sharansky's dealings with our State Department are not encouraging. Most, but not all, officials at State are skeptical about democratic reform, and prefer the illusion of "stability." It is my hope that Condoleezza Rice will be able to reform their attitudes to where they are in line with the President's.
We've propped up dictatorships in the Middle East for too long. During the Cold War we believed, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, that "strongmen" were better than the communist alternative. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, they were forced to reform and become democracies; think South Korea and Taiwan. The time has come for us to stop supporting the Saudi regime, for example, and put them on notice.
It has been pointed out by many that it is not by accident that we are hated in those parts of the world where we do prop up these dictatorships, yet are well-liked by the people in places like Iran, where we oppose the government. Perhaps we underestimated the task of bringing democracy to Iraq, and the experiment may yet fail. But it remains the best hope for them, and for us, and so we must give it our all.
Posted by Tom at January 26, 2005 11:01 PM
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