Last week I linked to an essay by Christiane Hoffmann:
Freedom vs. Stability: Are Dictators Worse than Anarchy?
and asked you if you agree with her commentary.
I got some responses, some pretty critical like this one.
I also note with considerable disgust Hoffmann's propensity for equating "anarchy" with "chaotic evil", a none-too-subtle dig against anarchism and anarcho-socialism. I would not be surprised if Hoffmann's ancestors in the late 1920's and 1930's voted Hitler -- every time. It's just the sort of "stability uber alles" kind of idea the Nazis were known for.
And that was proven worse than no state at all.
This week there is another commentary in "Der Spiegel" expressing a voice that represents a rebuttal to the first one.
Now I am asking you again, would you agree with the "response" commentary by Mathieu von Rohr:
Anarchy vs. Stability: Dictatorships and Chaos Go Hand in Hand?
Here are some excerpts:
The fall of dictators is not always a cause for joy, my colleague Christiane Hoffmann wrote in an essay published yesterday on SPIEGEL International. If the citizens of a country were to have the option of choosing between a "functional dictatorship and the chaos of a failing or failed state," she argued, the dictatorship would often be the "lesser evil" because it promises continued stability.
Some citizens or members of the international community may understandably want to reminisce about the intermittently prevailing sense of order that existed under a toppled dictator ... But it is also an optical illusion. The mistake lies in even describing a dictatorship as stable: If the dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Moammar Gadhafi in Libya or Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia had been stable, they wouldn't have collapsed.
The states where chaos emerged and state structures dissolved didn't have a "functional dictatorship,"... Dictatorship often merely creates the conditions for later chaos. How absurd is it to wish for the return of a system that was responsible for the instability in the first place? ...There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
In authoritarian systems, the regime, military and economy usually combine to form a power-clique that, in turn, fosters cronyism and corruption. If nothing else, these Mafia-like conditions among the leadership are what lead many citizens to revolt.
... but the crucial question is how that stability can be created. It can't be created by the West bombing dictatorships out of existence, as we've learned since the disastrous 2003 Iraq War -- an attempt to impose democracy from the outside. Nor can, as the Arab Spring showed, stability be fostered by supporting dictatorial regimes. The Arab Spring also demonstrated that the decisions about the fate of a country aren't made by the West, but within the countries themselves.
In this discussion, it's important to make the distinction between "regime change" from the inside and from the outside.
... in the Arab uprisings ... the regimes were destabilized from the inside and toppled by their own people. The West weren't the ones that deposed Ben Ali and Mubarak. Nor was it responsible for the revolts in Libya and Syria.
In Tunisia and Egypt the United States and France even tried to prop up the dictators at first. The West only intervened in Libya when Gadhafi threatened to commit mass murder in Benghazi.
And while the West has pushed for Assad to step down in Syria, it hasn't yet tried to overthrow him.
The idea that dictatorships foster stability is a fairy tale; chaos is often the product of the autocratic systems it follows. People themselves make the decision whether to rise up against dictatorships.
The only question for the West is when it should intervene in such a rebellion -- and that cannot be answered in the abstract with pleas in favor of, or in opposition to, dictatorships. It can only be decided on a case-by-case basis. ...
One nation in particular should know that it takes time to create a functioning democracy ...but that even people who have a history of authoritarianism can create democratic stability: The Germans.
A country that created history's most appalling dictatorship is now an exemplary democracy. It is hard to find a better rebuttal to the theory that there are cultures ill-suited for democracy.
This commentary convinced me quite a bit. But I am a little confused with the last paragraph I quoted from the author:
I would say the Germans did NOT revolt against their dictator Hitler in the Third Reich.
That would kind of rebut the author's rebuttal. And the democracy which was created with the new German "Basic Law" was the result of a group of Germans using their senses after facing the disastrous results the Weimar Republic and consequently the Third Reich had created. Thank God for their new constitutional "Basic Law" they wrote. But this democracy didn't rose out of the German's own inner revolt against their dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
Joe Shikspack said in his comment in the last diary:
i don't think that the choice is between... (5+ / 0-)
order and chaos; i think the choice is between autonomy and not autonomy.
it seems to me that it is up to the people to choose whether they are satisfied with their form of governance. i think that it is not our choice, nor our business and that they would be better off if the united states in particular got out of the business of making or limiting the choices of other peoples. ... we need to get the hell out of the way, stop arming the rest of the world to the teeth and let them sort out their own problems. when they have come to arrangements that suit them, then we should become involved in providing non-military (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) aid and engage in trade as it benefits both sides equally.
Now, as I am unable (as in not well enough read and under educated) to figure out,
are we having an outside intervention from the US and its allies in Syria or not?
Did the US and other Western allies really NOT intervene in decisive manners in Libya? And given the author's thesis that we didn't and said "chaos is often the product of the autocratic systems it follows", isn't the current chaos giving birth to new dictatorships as well?