The foreign policy of the United States is preemption,
as directed by President Bush in the Fall of 2002 , leading to the justification for invading Iraq. The strategy to execute that policy, as indicated by the President in the 2005 State of the Union Address and
in a recent speech at the National Defense University , is to promote democracy, by military force if necessary, in nations and regions that are of concern to us.
Victor Hanson is one of the President's unofficial apologists. He is an historian of classical Greece and military affairs, and leads a charming life in California as grape farmer. He writes well and often , which is why a lot of his ideas end up as right-wing talking points on the radio and in blogs. So let's take him on once in a while.
In this piece , Mr. Hansen again promotes the radical ideology that imposing democratic governance on other nations is something worth dying and killing for, as we are doing in Iraq today.
Background: For something to be worth going to war, it is generally accepted on the Right as well as the Left that at least two criteria need to be met (and it was argued that they were by those who wanted to attack Iraq): 1) The same result cannot be achieved by less costly means, and 2) The result sought is worth the high cost and risks.
In the case of democracy by force, the criteria boil down to 1) Can democracy in the target country be achieved by other than military means? and 2) Is democratizing the target country going to make us a lot more secure in the United States?
In the case of Iraq, it was argued that Sadaam's possession of weapons of mass destruction meant that we could not take the time necessary to cultivate an internal movement to overthrow the regime and replace it with a democratic government. Also, it was argued that democracy in Iraq, and specifically the removal of the Hussein regime, would remove a grave and urgent threat to American security, so war was worth the cost.
Many of us argued that the facts did not support the pro-war thesis - that neither criteria were met. Sadly, we were proven correct. Iraq, for all its obvious faults, had neither the means nor the intention of attacking us. It is also questionable whether the insurgency-plagued democracy that is forming in Iraq has been worth American or innocent blood in terms of making us any safer.
But no matter, the Right still marches on, and Victor David Hanson beats the drums for them with his latest pitch:
"And while promoting democracy is idealistic, it does not necessarily follow that it is naive. What, after all, prevents wars? Hardly the U.N.; and not just aircraft carriers either. The last half-century of peace in Europe and Japan, and the end of our old enmity of Russia, attest that the widest spread of democratic rule is the best guarantee against international aggression. Ballots substitute for bullets in venting internal frustrations.
"And in today's Middle East, our new insistence on democracy is not our first but rather our last resort. We have already tried averting our eyes, subsidies, passive-aggressive lectures, outright hostility, everything but principled and consistent promotion of constitutional government. Despite varying degrees of American appeasement, monarchy, Baathism, Nasserism, pan-Arabism, and Islamic fundamentalism have all turned out to have intolerable spillover effects on the U.S. In contrast, the Muslims of democratic Indonesia, India, and Turkey do not threaten us.
"Far from being impractical, naive, or dangerous, explaining to the world that America will from now on always encourage democratic rule is sober and in our own vital interest. With patience and persistence, it will turn out to be both the right and the smart thing to do."
Let's take that apart: First, is it true that democracy brings peace? Victor David Hanson refers to the experience of democracy in industrialized nations, and there it does seem true. Democracy has been positively correlated with peace in Europe and democratic Asia since WWII. The democracies there don't fight each other. But how about democracy in the Third World, where President Bush is now taking us? Is the record still as good? Not by a long shot.
Somalia, for example, was once the star democracy of Africa. After being a military protectorate under Italy and Great Britain in the postwar period, democracy was established under UN guidance. It flourished for a brief period in the 1960's receiving great fanfare as a UN success story before a military coup overthrew the constitutionally elected government and established a socialist regime that itself failed in the 1970's. Years of civil war ensued, eventually culminating in a serious American military defeat, made again recently famous by the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
How about other democracies in Africa? Ruanda, Uganda, Congo, Zimbabwe? Do they sound like success stories? If American lives were spent establishing those failed democracies a few decades ago, would we say it was worth it? Was our nation made safer by any of those democratic experiments?
How about in our own hemisphere? One of the longest lasting democracies in the Americas is Columbia. It is home to the FARC, which, according the State Department , is the largest, and best funded terrorist organization in the world. To Columbia's south is relatively peaceful Ecuador, a democratic country who was in a brief and deadly war just ten years ago with equally democratic Peru. And Peru, as a democratic country in the 1980's and early 1990's was home to what still holds the record as the world's deadliest terrorist organization, the Sendero Luminso, whose undoing was covered in the John Malkovich film, "The Dancer Upstairs."
Next, is it true that we have exhausted non-violent means to promote democracy in the Middle East? Again, I don't think so.
Faced with a much more serious enemy -- the nuclear armed and totalitarian Soviet Union, our policy was called containment, and at root was a committment to non-violence. Unpleasant, tough, and ruthless it was, but going to war with Russia was out of the question. And the policy worked. Russia is now, more or less democratizing, and even China is a capitalist power.
According to President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brezinski, the danger posed by Al Queda pales in comparison with the dangers we faced by our enemies in the cold war.
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
(quoted from www.counterpunch.org)
So why do we now need to resort to the risky and costly strategy of democratizing the Middle East by force now?
The record of democracy's success in securing our nation and stabilizing the world is not at all straightforward. While democracy in the Third World is indeed a worthwhile foreign policy objective for human rights reasons, it does not appear to be critical to our nation's security. Without the presence of genocide, the urgency for military means to establish democracy does not appear to be there either.