Back in the old days of the cold war Realpolitik, mean the US propping up to dictators of countries with poor human rights records in order to gain their help in the global fight against Communism.
Now Communism is largely dead, and the US has been looking in the direction of (at least in terms of rhetoric) deposing dictators with poor human rights records to bring about Democracy for the countries involved. Looking the track record of democracy so far, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, this has by and large been a disaster for the populations of these countries, as it became clear that the only thing worse than a dictatorial government is no government and a brutal and bloody civil war.
As a bleeding heart Liberal I had previously been against Realpolitik and in favor of the masses rising up and gaining their freedom. Now from these results I am beginning to feel that it may be best to help going back to propping up dictators, not for the purposes of fighting Communism, but for the for the Humanitarian good of their own people.
IMO democracy has to be formed organically in a country for it to work best. Democracy in its evolution here in the USA has been in danger but the center has held because a majority of Americans support the system even if they dont like who is running it. The only other counterexample I can think of is Japan.
But the Syrian revolution was started within the country organically and still isn’t working out well for those involved.
The cases of success that I can think of, India, anti-apartheid South Africa, the USSR, seem to be cases where the controlling regime gave into reforms rather than being toppled in a revolution.
This is one of those things concerning what’s best (or projected to be best) in the short term verse the long term. Iraq is a perfect example. Would it have been better to leave Saddam and his merry band in power and just allow things to continue on as they had been? In the short term? Undoubtedly so. However, eventually the Iraqi people would have still hit the wall sometime or other…probably when Saddam died and the Ba’athist lost their grip on the Shia majority. Of course, our fumble fingered and cluster fuckish way of ‘helping’ did no such thing, we basically accelerated the Iraqi’s toward the wall AND provided no safety equipment or cushion from the impact, in fact, we made it worse by taking out all of the supports and restraints and ramped up the speed. However, it’s really the heart of the question…should we allow folks like Saddam to continue on for the short term stability, even at the cost of the brutality, or should we (or someone) intervene, or at a minimum do what we can to foment revolution to overthrow some of the more egregious assholes (I’m thinking 'lil Kimmy and HIS merry band)?
It’s a good question and I don’t know the answer…obviously neither do the leaders of my own country, since we seem particularly bad at helping other countries get out from under such assholes.
The Syrian Revolution was part of the “Arab Spring,” which was encouraged by certain elements in the West, under the (apparently naiive) hope that it would lead to the growth of democracy.
When it comes to the Middle East, there’s no getting around that the Obama Administration’s policies have been an unmitigated trainwreck. It comes from not realizing a very basic fact of politics: Nature abhors a vacuum, and a power vacuum will be filled by someone. In the Middle East, the most readily available group to fill any vacuum are the Muslim Fundies. This is why keeping a sizeable force in Iraq was so important. We were the power source that supplied stability. This is also why it is often a good idea politically to tolerate dictators, if you have reason to believe that the guys who would replace them would be even worse.
I guess it depends on the country. Countries with per capita income above $6000 do much better transitioning to democracy than those below. I’m sure people have identified many other factors but factors such as racial, religious and ethnic divisions, degree of female education, cultural attitudes about human rights, religious leanings, etc all play a role in nations transitioning to liberal democracies.
Decolonization in India and ending apartheid in South Africa were successes, though that says more about how bad the prior regimes were than anything else, but I certainly wouldn’t call the collapse of the Soviet regime a ‘success’ (except for the very top echelons of Russian society, and I suppose for the Poles and the Baltic states). Most economic and social indicators cratered after 1990, and didn’t start improving for another ten years. (Outside the Baltics, the one Soviet republic to do the best is the one that underwent the fewest economic or political reforms). Most people in Russia, East Germany and Romania nowadays say that they preferred the communist era.
In general, though, I’d say that my preferred US foreign policy is one that does as little as possible, because more often than not, our interventions end up making things worse.
For sure, a nation has to grow at its own pace. And of course democracy is deeply entwined with capitalism, often proto-capitalism which itself takes several decades to mature.
It’s a really very long and troubled birthing process followed by an even more troubling adolescence. Maybe a good example now is Russia, which basically needs someone like Putin to hold it together as it finds its feet.
Is the USA another example - 100 years before you had a civil war to sort out the shape of the nation and its institutions?
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a 21 April 2003 press conference said that any suggestion that the United States was planning a permanent military presence in Iraq was “inaccurate and unfortunate.”
Rumsfeld said "I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting. … The likelihood of it seems to me to be so low that it does not surprise me that it’s never been discussed in my presence, to my knowledge. Why do I say it’s low? Well, we’ve got all kinds of options and opportunities in that part of the world to locate forces, it’s not like we need a new place. We have plenty of friends and plenty of ability to work with them and have locations for things that help to contribute to stability in the region. …
Rumsfeld: I think there is a down side. I think any impression that is left, which that article left, that the United States plans some sort of a permanent presence in that country, I think is a signal to the people of that country that’s inaccurate and unfortunate, because we don’t plan to function as an occupier, we don’t plan to prescribe to any new government how we ought to be arranged in their country."
The Obama Administration’s policy of failing to develop time travel in order to send a Terminator back to the year 2000 to prevent the election of George W. Bush to the presidency.
If you can resist the urge to universalize your society to everyone else’s, the answer becomes clear. Different systems work best for different people in different environments. Democratic republics with constitutions that protect minority interests and mixed market economies are not necessarily the best system for every society.
In fact, monarchies have a proven track record in pretty much every country on earth. Now you can argue that they don’t work as well as Western democracy works in Western countries, but they rarely commit genocide or run their countries into the ground. Demotist movements, on the other hand, have an extensive history of failure.
The government may not have actually PLANNED to have a permanent troop presence, but it’s a virtual certainty that we would have if the Iraqi government had been more cooperative. Other than a very few exceptions, once American troops enter a country – regardless of the circumstances – they do not leave.
The “urge to universalize your society to everyone else’s” sounds like a very chauvinistic thing to do. It probably is. But if we agree to not do that, what do we do instead? Adopt a policy of strict non-interference such as China does? That would basically mean we abandon any commitment to the universality of human rights. Under a philosophy like that imposing sanctions on the South African apartheid regime would not have been permissible. You cannot just look away when your neighbours are beating their children.
I would argue that if we firmly believe that a different social or political system would be better for the people in a given country, we should actively support development in that direction. So yes, we should “meddle” in their affairs. At least to an extent. That is not the same thing as imposing your own system on others. Countries have to have the freedom to find their own way. Yet there is a lot we can do to help them along.
I am German, and I woud very much like to know what gave you the idea that a majority of the East German population today would favor a return to communism. The most recent poll on the topic that I could find was performed by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (Central German Broadcasting, MDR - cite in German) in 2014. In it people of age group 45 to 59 were most sceptical of reunification. Still 80% within that group said it had more advantages than drawbacks. Among 14 to 29 year olds 96% said advantages outweighed drawbacks.
I hope you do understand that this very argument is the same that has been made by Mubarak, Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and nearly every other dictator when the people revolted against them.
They said to the West: It’s either me or terrorism.
They said to their people: It’s either me or total chaos and terrorism.
Chaos, extremism and other problems that arise nearly every time a long-time dictator has been dethroned by whatever means, ARE the results of this dictator presiding over a country for a long time without building and maintaining economic and political institutions or providing democratic means for change. These dictators that US and the West (most recently Germany) have long done business with are the result of realpolitik; when those Western democratic countries accepted and supported regional brokers of stability around the globe, regardless of which means were used to bring forth that stability, and without any real consideration for the long-term consequences of such enforced, tyrannical and hollow stability.
It may be easier, and may take less time, to brush the dirt in your house under the carpet, but it’s sounder, better and more intelligent to take up a moderately long process of cleaning up that ensures sustainable cleanliness and hygiene.
Therefore, the solution to the chaos harnessed and nurtured by the realpolitik of the 70’s and 80’s isn’t with seeking to provide for new, ‘moderate’ dictators.
You recognize the chauvinism of it, yet you cannot resist the urge to universalize Western standards of conduct (which you refer to as human rights) to societies that have no desire for your ‘rights’. Imagine telling an Amazonian hunter gatherer that he has the Universal Human Rights to “join trade unions” and paid holidays!
Rights don’t exist beyond government because in the state of nature no one has rights, and so-called ‘human rights’ are a travesty antithetical to the classic Lockean view of rights as the ability to perform an action without government interference. Modern ‘human rights’ are merely claims on other people’s property and are plainly dependent on a functioning Western government to exist.
If a country would be best served by a dictatorship, as many Middle Eastern nations clearly are, would you support propping up such a government?
I hope you understand you’re begging the question because you assume a priori that dictatorships are bad, and therefore the arguments they make must be bad as well. This is the middle Eastern equivalent of “You know who supported animal rights? Hitler.” Their arguments are also clearly correct; is Libya a better place now or when Gaddafi was still in charge?