Dubious victory
Recent history has shown liberal democracy to be at a crossroads, Hassan Nafaa* argues
Liberalism, inspired by the 17th and 18th century revolutions in the West, has formed one, if not the most important tributary of the river that is contemporary political thought. This tributary has produced superior models of government that have not only withstood the test of time, but, at various stages of human development, have defeated rival systems of rule inspired by other ideologies, such as Marxism and fascism. It would be no exaggeration to say that there has been no form of government that truly merits the description of "democratic" unless it could be said to have been inspired by liberal thought and to have directly applied its strictures and constituent principles. Conversely, forms of government inspired by other ideologies have proven unviable, either having collapsed after demonstrating their failure to adequately perform the functions they were intended to serve or still being in a tentative experimental phase and showing little promise of developing into a more durable and efficient system.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that Western liberal democracy has won the ultimate victory. There are two reasons for this; the first of these pertains to weight in numbers and geographic distribution.
There are, in effect, only a handful of liberal democratic governments in the world today and they are concentrated for the most part in Western Europe and North America. This type of political system, even in those nations where it is well established, only matured quite recently, specifically under the bipolar global order. Prior to World War II, Europe was at a crossroads, as political forces in many countries were strongly drawn to various totalitarian systems of both Marxist and fascist shades. Indeed, even for many years after WWII, the polities of some European countries with a liberal heritage were so fragile that it seemed that they could have been blown over by the first powerful gale. In France, for example, the Algerian crisis almost overturned its democratic order, which was only rescued by the return of General de Gaulle to power in 1958 through what was tantamount to a military coup. In addition, many Western European countries, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, only crossed the threshold into the realm of liberal democracy in the 1980s, at which point they could be admitted into the EU. Even the United States only evolved into a fully-fledged liberal democracy with the successes of the civil rights movement spearheaded by Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
The second reason pertains to the external environment. Were it not for the fact that the US entered WWII on the side of the Allies, there is little doubt that Nazism would have prevailed throughout Europe. Had the US not hastened to extend material and moral support to a frail and debilitated post-war Western Europe, through such projects as the Marshall Plan and NATO, there is little doubt that all Europe would have fallen prey to communist regimes tied to the Soviet order. In fact, the intense rivalry precipitated by the bipolar order furnished a powerful incentive for Western democracies to rejuvenate themselves and refine their systems of government into models that could compete and prevail in the global political marketplace.
However, as this incentive faded following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western democracies succumbed to a smug complacency that may well inhibit the necessary dynamism needed to confront the major problems that top the agenda of the new global order. Religious fundamentalism, terrorism, organised crime, poverty, corruption, AIDS, environmental pollution -- these old-new crises have converged to create challenges far more formidable than those that had existed in the time of the bipolar order. Because it is impossible for a single nation or group of nations to remedy these problems on its own, it has become imperative to radically reform the institutions of a global order whose foundations had been laid during the Cold War. Only then will the international community be able to accommodate to the new developments and rise to the task of confronting the new challenges.
Unfortunately, in their hubris, the ruling elite of the US has come to imagine that it is the American political-economic-social system, alone, which emerged from the Cold War victorious and that the world will never be able to solve its problems unless all other countries emulate this system, voluntarily or under coercion. Consequently, instead of putting its weight behind a more dynamic and effective international organisation, Washington has done everything in its power to impose its model and outlook on the rest of the world, and towards that end it has used the proverbial stick more often than the carrot. Along the way, it is making absolutely sure that no other power will emerge in the international arena to rival its hegemony. Little wonder, then, that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has been the most belligerent nation in the world.
Clearly, the US does not believe in working with international institutions -- above all the United Nations. It has charged that this organisation, by virtue of the forms of government of its member nations, is undemocratic and argued that it is impossible to promote the spread of democracy through an undemocratic institution. The US, therefore, has decided to go it alone, portraying itself, regardless of how it acts, as the guardian of democracy for no other reason than the fact that it is the largest and oldest democracy in the world. Meanwhile, it brands all who oppose its actions as anti-democratic.
The logic governing US international behaviour today is clearly flawed. Its first fallacy lies in the link it draws between the American system and US foreign policy. There is no inherent correlation between the two, and certainly not one borne out by any empirical study. Quite to the contrary, history offers ample testimony to the fact that democratic countries are not always the most respectful of international law. As long as this is the case, countries should be accountable on the basis of their actions -- not on the basis of their form of government.
Israel may not be alone in having a democratic system of government while flouting all international conventions and mores. It is, however, the most flagrant and potentially dangerous example. It is interesting to note that during the Cold War Israel would only breach international law with extreme caution, fearful of condemnation especially from vigilant consciences in the West itself. Today, when "democratic" Israel's abuse of international law has reached a level unprecedented in international relations, no one dares raise their voice against it for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism. What is particularly ominous is that Israel's international comportment is being emulated by two of the oldest democracies in the new world order. When the Security Council turned down the request by the US and the UK for a mandate to use military force against Iraq, the pair showed their contempt for established international procedure and the principles on which it is based by waging war without the umbrella of international legitimacy. To make matters worse, some observers had no problem with justifying such criminal behaviour on the grounds that it is difficult to remain law- abiding when dealing with outlaws of the likes of Saddam Hussein.
The effect of this logic is to divide the world into two camps. On the one side are the world's democracies (with Israel at their centre, of course). As "democracies don't make war on one another" it is easy to conduct their mutual relations under the rule of law. On the other side of the divide are ranged all so-called non- democratic nations, which, by their very nature, are "renegade" regimes that need to be disciplined -- a task that is impossible to perform under the rule of law.
The second fallacy in the logic prevailing in Washington today resides in the implicit assumption that only governments that did not come to power through democratic elections pose a danger to international peace and security, because these regimes are unchecked by any form of popular supervision. Naturally, the assumption is groundless. History shows that under certain circumstances free elections can produce a government capable not only of overturning the democracy through which it came to power, but of rocking the stability of the entire world. The 1933 elections in Germany that brought the Nazi Party to power furnish the prime example, but not the only one. US presidential elections in 2000 brought to power the most conservative faction of the Republican Party. That clique has succeeded in exploiting the post-11 September climate to advance policies, both domestically and internationally, that are far from being democratic. Under the Bush administration, the US has experienced a rollback in civil liberties unprecedented in US history, and the international community has been plunged into a state of constant war, chaos and lawlessness.
It is perhaps no surprise that an extremist US administration, whose electoral legitimacy is suspect, has pursued domestic and foreign policies with such a supercilious regard for the law. Nor, perhaps, was it surprising that the administration would go to such lengths as to mislead public opinion with false information in order to justify going to war against Iraq. How, though, do we explain the behaviour of a British government led by a Labour prime minister, elected with a vast majority in the polls and who had until recently been a source of pride for British government? It seems that the only explanation is that even the venerable British democracy can harbour such strong undercurrents of disdain for the people and contempt for democratic institutions as to render it a farce.
One might argue that this is not the first time in which the leaders of Western democracies lied to their people to justify their foreign policy. This of course is true. However, when lies take the shape of a conspiracy woven in the oldest democracies in the world, and when this conspiracy revolves around a crisis unfolding in the UN in the name of combating tyranny, we are faced with something far greater. What has taken place is not an anomaly or transient phenomenon, but rather a turning point at which Western liberal democracy has begun to lose its credibility and may, eventually, run the risk of extinction.
* The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
