Democracy and Terrorism
Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle write about the Bush administration’s coupling of Democracy and Terrorism fighting and why this is a bad idea in the Wall Street Journal. Here is the central tenet of the article:
Authoritarian political cultures do function as enablers of radical Islamism, but the essential cause of the latter–today as before, in dozens of historical cases concerning violent millenarian movements–is the difficulty that some societies and individuals have in coming to terms with social change. That is why rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less. Muslims in democratic Europe are as much a part of this problem as those in the Middle East. This is not a trivial point; it is a central one that directly challenges a key tenet of the administration’s view.
I don’t disagree with this statement. What I disagree with the op-ed is what we should do about it, and how social change can be made easier. I also think that economic change is as big a factor, and related to social change.
Basically, without Democracy I don’t think that a people can effectively deal with social change. Totalitarian regimes tend to be stagnant and deal with social change by repressing it. In a globalized world, this necessitates other signifigant human rights violations. Additionally, it seems to me that peoples under these regimes end up growing further from what we would consider the ‘norm’ while at the same time becoming less able to deal with social change. Lack of economic growth, and lack of equal opportunity that often accompany these regimes exacerbates this problem as well.
The tremendous challenges of integrating a stagnant culture with the modern world, which full transition to a democracy often causes to come to the fore will not grow easier with time. Indeed the reverse seems much more likely to me. At the same time, world technological advances are going to make destructive power easier and easier to obtain. This means, that if ’short-term radicalism’ is inevitable during the social challenges of entering the modern world, we should want it to occur sooner, rather than later.
The op-ed makes several other points, many of which I agree with and all of which are worth considering. This bit here though is something that is especially important to think about:
We should not even think about wanting to roll back recent election results; rather, the emphasis should be on pressuring newly empowered groups to govern responsibly. Islamist parties in Egypt and Palestine have gained popularity in large measure not because of their foreign policy views, but because of their stress on domestic social welfare issues like education, health, and jobs, and their stand against corruption. Fine, let them deliver; and if they don’t or turn out to be corrupt themselves, they will face vulnerabilities of their own not far down the road.
I do think we have made an error in how we promote democracy. Rather than focusing on elections, we should probably focus on basic human rights. Free speech, freedom of conscious, certain economic freedoms and similar freedoms should be the focus of our efforts rather than elections. Democratic elections will probably follow naturally if the former can be achieved, while if they do not exist, elections are not democratic in any event.
There are of course regimes that will never reform on their own. It is unlikely that any internal revolution, peaceful or not, will be able to succeed in ousting them. These regimes will remain a permanent, and increasing, danger to free nations, and dealing with them will require tough decisions and signifgant sacrifice. Iraq was a regime of this nature. Iran is probably another.
