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February 16, 2005
Homespun Symposium XIII
This week's question comes from Solomonia.
Do you believe there is a downside to encouraging nations to move toward being free societies? Can all nations benefit from the move from dicatorship to freedom, or are some cultures simply incapable of it and why? Might they end up worse off? Also, do you believe these shifts are always in America and the West's interests, or will we simply create democratic enemies that are worse for us than the dictators they replace?
An excellent series of questions.
I do not believe that there is a downside to encouraging nations to move towards being free societies. I also believe that all peoples are capable of it. Further, while we must expect that some democracies will not be in agreement with us on all or even many policy issues, there is good reason to believe that there not be any wars with them. They will not be worse than the dictatorships they replace, but better.
However, there are significant risks, and if not done right nations might end up worse. This is what occurred with Iran and Nicaragua in the late '70s. Due to the inept policies of Jimmy Carter, they went from the frying pan into the fire. Fortunately, one has since been rescued. So, there is no direct "downside", but there is a risk in adopting such a policy.
During the Cold War many believed that it was foolish to encourage the people of the Soviet Bloc to seek their freedom for several reasons; when they did they were brutally crushed (Hungary 1955 and Czechoslovakia 1968), the conditions in their countries weren't right (no middle class) and without any history of freedom they "couldn't handle it."
We have seen this to be incorrect. While Russia is moving back towards authoritarianism, most of the rest of Eastern Europe is solidly democratic.
The same is true with regards to Central and South America. Their progress towards democracy in the past thirty years has been nothing short of astounding. Some countries, no doubt, have a long ways to go (Venezuela and Cuba in particular), and others are in the middle of a protracted civil war (Columbia), the situation there is far better than it was in the late '70s.
So we see that in situations were we do not think democracy is possible, it can in fact take root.
Natan Sharansky has famously written about this in his influential book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. I've written much about his book and my belief that democracy can be adopted by all people around there globe (see here and here), so readers who want a more complete explanation can read through those posts.
In the book Sharansky presents his formula for success as one that links relations to countries with those countries treatment of their own citizens. He uses the Soviet Union as an example:
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.During the Cold War, this link was established though the adoption of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and Helsinki Accords. In order to succeed today in the Middle East, for example, we must adopt similar measures.
But is The Desire Universal?
It is easy to be skeptical. One reads story after story in the MSM that gives one reason for despair. But it must be remembered that this is nothing new. We have been through this many times before. It was once taken for granted that the Japanese, Germans, and Italians would never accept democracy. Yet those are three of the most solidly democratic countries on the planet today.
Sharansky explained why he believed that democracy can be adopted by all people in his book:
The source of my confidence is that freedom truly is for everyone is not only that democracy has spread around the world, allowing so many different cultures and peoples to enjoy its bounty, my confidence also comes frojm living in a world of fear, stydying it, and fighting it. By dissecting this world, exploring the mechanics of tyranny that operate within it and analyzing how individuals there cope with it, one can undeerstand why modern history has witnessed a remarkable expansion of freedom. There is a universal desire among all peoples not to live in fear. Indeed, given a choice, the vast majority of people will always prefer a free society to a fear society.The Risk
However, as I said earlier, there are significant risks in adopting a policy of encouraging democracy. President Jimmy Carter adopted human rights as the guiding light behind his foreign policy. Although this may have been laudable, the way in which he acted had the opposite effect from the one he intended.
In Iran, the Shah was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and other radical clerics. In Nicaragua, we saw the Somoza dictatorship replace with the Sandinista communists. With Iran the country was definately worse off under the mullahs, with Nicaragua arguably so (it was certainly not better off).
We face a similar risk today, most notably with Saudi Arabia. The country is home to a large number of radical Wahabbist mullahs. It is hardly inconceiveable that if the regime were to collapse the radicals could seize power, with diasasterous results.
Can Democracies Fight Each Other?
The current thinking among Sharansky and those who agree with him is that democracies will not fight each other. This does not preclude the possibility that there will be serious disagreements among them, but they will refrain from outside warfare.
Sharansky's theory (which which I agree) is that in order to survive, dictatorships must have an enemy. In order to control their people they must give them some enemy, domestic or (preferably) foreign. In revolutions, the enemy is initially within, but sooner or later they find an external one. They use this enemy as an excuse to repress the people
Democracies, according to Sharansky, have no such need. Their leaders are forced to moderate their actions by a free press and active opposition.
I am going to qualify this a bit and say that mature democracies will not fight each other. New ones might well do so as their traditions are not well established, and ones that have not completely given freedom to their people (or to all of them, say women and minorities) might well be suseptable to warfare.
In conclusion: All people are capable of some form of democracy, democratic governments do not go to war with each other, but if if we are not careful, we may push a country into a worse form of tyranny.
Posted by Tom at February 16, 2005 9:23 AM
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