Means
of spreading
democracy
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
November 25, 2004
LONDON - Mark Palmer, the U.S.
State Department's former top "Kremlinologist", has
proposed the world's democracies set themselves the goal
of ridding the world of its 43 remaining dictators over
the next twenty years.
Surely this is something liberals
and neo-conservatives can agree on. One would wish it so
but unfortunately the means separates them.
President George W. Bush said the
other day that, "The reason I'm so strong on democracy is
democracies don't go to war with each other. I've got
great faith in democracies to promote peace." This is a
great philosophical leap forward for conservatives. Not
so long ago they poked fun at the human rights
obsessiveness of former president Jimmy Carter and did
everything they could to stymie his efforts in Latin
America in particular to quicken the pace of democratic
evolution. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter he gave
short shrift to human rights goals and in Central America
he backed the caudillos against the ballot box, Armalite
against the vote.
If Bush indeed has been converted
to this rather modern day attitude to democracy - which
was only "proved" in a long series of academic papers
probing the historical record of the last few centuries
that appeared in Harvard University's quarterly,
"International Security", six years ago- then we should
rejoice.
But this theory of the democratic
peace, which in many ways is convincing, says nothing
about the best means of achieving this ambition or about
how democracies in the pursuit of their worthy goal can
avoid going to war with non-democracies. If the Bush view
is merely the latest right wing fig leaf for a policy of
aggression driven by fear of anti-American regimes
protecting themselves from attack by developing nuclear
weapons then, as with the war in Iraq, the need to resist
the Bush worldview remains an imperative. American
aggression makes it more difficult not less to continue
the spread of democracy.
Intervention is always going to be
a two edged sword. But what gives it a real cutting edge
is if it's credible. And that can only happen if it is
clear to most onlookers that the decision to intervene is
motivated by the quest for justice. That in turn begs a
second question - have the would-be interveners been
complicit in allowing the situation to deteriorate to
unspeakable injustice?
In the Iraq situation we know that
the U.S. and other Western governments were full square
behind Iraq as it fought a World War 1-type conflict of
attrition with Iran which the U.S. could not forgive
either for its fundamentalist stridency nor for its
taking hostage the diplomats of the U.S. embassy a few
years earlier. And today, as the U.S. is perhaps girding
itself to do battle with Iran over its alleged pursuit of
nuclear weapons, is there a an honest and self-critical
weighing of the many opportunities that were refused
during recent previous administrations to take hold of
the olive branch a then increasingly democratic Iran was
offering?
Prevention in the pursuit of
democracy is a sounder tool than intervention. Prevention
may be less newsworthy and more difficult to justify to
the public than intervention in times of crisis. It
requires the sustained investment of significant
resources without the emotive media images of
confrontation or hardship and suffering. Prevention means
getting in whilst a situation is still fluid and can be
resolved or at least ameliorated without
violence.
The NATO governments which bombed
Belgrade were the same governments that decided to turn a
blind eye to Slobodan Milosevic's government during the
break up of the original Yugoslavia and were unwilling to
address repeated warnings from the likes of Amnesty
International about the fast deteriorating human rights
situation. Why wasn't the carrot of membership of the
European Union in return for good behavior dangled then
when Yugoslavia was still a functioning, reasonably
prosperous state, rather than waiting until years of war
had broken the economic back of nearly every constituent
part of the old Yugoslavia?
In short, why should those in the
West who want to extend the reach of democracy be pressed
by Washington and London to choose between intervention
and inaction? Why should we be forced to choose between
two types of failure when the successful course of action
is known?
One side of the Bush administration
apparently recognizes the power of the argument on the
side of prevention. The U.S. Senate is poised this month
to approve permanent trade relations with old enemy,
communist, dictatorial Laos. Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, and Robert Zoellick the U.S. trade representative
earlier told Congress in a joint statement, that this
"would create a more cooperative atmosphere and
opportunities that will help open the society and
leverage our efforts to improve human rights, religious
freedom and the rule of law in Laos".
Amen.
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
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"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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