What Should We Do In The World?
President Bush’s call for democracy in his inaugural speech was stirring. Subsequent elections in Iraq and Palestine, the rising of Lebanese against Syrian occupation make us feel that we are right in our call for democracy. However, in our zeal to advance democracy, we must keep in mind that the rest of the world is not like the United States. For example, Robert Kaplan in “Was Democracy Just for a Moment” (Atlantic Monthly, December 1997) informed us:
As an unemployed Tunisian student once told me, "In Tunisia we have a twenty-five percent unemployment rate. If you hold elections in such circumstances, the result will be a fundamentalist government and violence like in Algeria. First create an economy, then worry about elections.
Are we prepared to deal with a sudden “democratic” movement in Egypt under its present economic conditions? North Korea? We must be mindful that during the Cold War, every administration demanded the end of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. When it suddenly began in 1989, the Bush I administration in its attempts to bolster Gorbachev, was suddenly having to keep the new “democracies” at arms length, as was the case with the Baltic Republics. It made the United States look stupid and duplicitous, and it did nothing to help Gorbachev. It also ultimately cost Bush I his reelection.
As Kaplan observed, our foreign policy leaders must keep in mind democracy and economic well-being are not synonymous:
Because both a middle class and civil institutions are required for successful democracy, democratic Russia, which inherited neither from the Soviet regime, remains violent, unstable, and miserably poor despite its 99 percent literacy rate. Under its authoritarian system China has dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of its people. My point, hard as it may be for Americans to accept, is that Russia may be failing in part because it is a democracy and China may be succeeding in part because it is not.
The Palestinians and Egyptians need jobs, not elections for one non-entity or another.
Let us proceed wisely in this area and in this regard we should remind ourselves: IT'S THE ECONOMIES, STUPID.
As an unemployed Tunisian student once told me, "In Tunisia we have a twenty-five percent unemployment rate. If you hold elections in such circumstances, the result will be a fundamentalist government and violence like in Algeria. First create an economy, then worry about elections.
Are we prepared to deal with a sudden “democratic” movement in Egypt under its present economic conditions? North Korea? We must be mindful that during the Cold War, every administration demanded the end of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. When it suddenly began in 1989, the Bush I administration in its attempts to bolster Gorbachev, was suddenly having to keep the new “democracies” at arms length, as was the case with the Baltic Republics. It made the United States look stupid and duplicitous, and it did nothing to help Gorbachev. It also ultimately cost Bush I his reelection.
As Kaplan observed, our foreign policy leaders must keep in mind democracy and economic well-being are not synonymous:
Because both a middle class and civil institutions are required for successful democracy, democratic Russia, which inherited neither from the Soviet regime, remains violent, unstable, and miserably poor despite its 99 percent literacy rate. Under its authoritarian system China has dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of its people. My point, hard as it may be for Americans to accept, is that Russia may be failing in part because it is a democracy and China may be succeeding in part because it is not.
The Palestinians and Egyptians need jobs, not elections for one non-entity or another.
Let us proceed wisely in this area and in this regard we should remind ourselves: IT'S THE ECONOMIES, STUPID.
posted by Ignacio | 8:07 PM
1 Comments:
Wisely said and aptly put. However, let us not forget that for the economy to grow, they (President Bush & Co) should stop sustaining those corrupt regimes (not that they should go for a "liberation campaign"..or whatever..)
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