If wishes were horses—liberals could democratize

The hearts of most liberals may well be in the right place; they bleed for the poor, care about the ill, and seek to reign in power. However, they often have a hard time facing up to tragic facts: that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; that simply throwing more and more money at unyielding problems is unlikely to make them budge; that there are severe limits on what even the ‘richest nation in the world’ can do (especially given the democratic need for majority support for government action).

Moreover, promising more than one can deliver generates a loss of credibility and backlash, further diminishing that which actually can be achieved. Worst of all, scarce resources—and there are always fewer available than we need—are squandered when one tilts against the windmills rather than following what a triage of social problems indicates (a variation on the AA prayer): let us do what can be done, avoid what cannot be done, and finally, gain the wisdom to tell the difference.

All this escapes the few remaining ‘lets-democratize-the-world’ enthusiasts. A telling case is a new book, Democracy’s Unsteady March by Tamara Cofman Wittes, dedicated to America’s role in promoting regime change in the Arab world. If it had been written at the height of the Neo Con wishful days, this book would have been simply idealistic and naïve. But, to so ignore the lessons of the last years—the retreat from democracy in Russia, the color and flower revolutions that have largely soured, the troubled state of democracy in several Latin American countries, and the bitterly disappointing political and social results of conducting elections in Iraq and Afghanistan—is as truly remarkable as it is regrettable.

Cofman Wittes declares that democratization of the Arab world is neither a dream nor a luxury, but a “necessity.” She is apparently unaware that historians, in response to the work of Arnold Toynbee, have recognized for generations that, sadly, need does not drive response.  Above all, the book presumes that the United States can play a major role in promoting democracy in Arab nations, ignoring the well-established fact that democracy is a delicate plant, one that grows only in a soil carefully cultivated in line with the local climate and mainly by those who inhabit the given turf. 
Moreover, Cofman Wittes frames the policy choice mainly in terms of the U.S.’s relationship to the Arab ruling class rather than in terms of the people or the society—she sees the policy debate as a choice between shoring up autocrats (stifling democracy) and pushing them out (which would allow democracy to bloom).  Although she professes to reject the approach that led to the disaster in Iraq (the fantasy of being greeted as liberators, etc.), she frames the issue in a way that suggests a similar approach, paying insufficient attention to major obstacles that obstruct this path towards democracy.

Instead of addressing these difficulties on the ground, Cofman Wittes argues that what is needed, in fact, is bureaucratic reform in Washington.  In order to promote democracy in the Middle East, she believes, we need a greater coordination among the various federal agencies that promote democracy abroad, especially Departments of Defense and State, but also coordinated efforts by the Treasury and Energy departments, the CIA and half a dozen others.  Moreover, true liberal she is, Cofman Wittes calls for vastly enhancing and coordinating the various U.S.-run pro-democracy programs such as Middle East Free Trade Area and The Middle East Partnership Initiative.  Successful democratization in the Middle East, she argues, requires that Congress and the American people as a whole come to “understand” the importance of basically more of what the Bush administration referred to as ‘The Freedom Agenda.’ That is, more of the same.

Cofman Wittes does not reject the numerous arguments against regime change; she simply ignores them.  It is as though she has never heard that nations in which illiteracy rates are very high, income per capita is very low, most people hold that the laws of God take precedent over those made by men, and in traditional societies such as Afghanistan, numerous changes will have to take place over decades before the basic conditions for true democratization are in place. (I say “true democratization” because there is an unfortunately widespread tendency to label a country democratic simply if it holds elections, ignoring that elections have been conducted in numerous undemocratic countries such as Russia, Syria and Egypt).  She pays no mind to the observation that in societies that were long oppressed (e.g., Iraq), civil society, a free press and competitive political parties must be introduced—all slow processes—before true democratic politics have a prayer. And she seems unaware that in societies in which tribal loyalties are strong—even if they take the form of confessional or ethnic groups—these will have to be attenuated before national politics can be carried out in a democratic form rather than via inter-tribal negotiations.

If wishes were horses, liberals could democratize. Sadly, they not only do not carry us very far, but often lead us to waste the limited resources available in the efforts to promote political reforms in far away countries at the cost of American lives and tax payers’ billions.

Comments

[banka]

that's the interesting part

[sevgi]

nice dude

[Sloan]

Perhaps I'm entirely missing the point and perhaps I have no grasp on what you've just written. However, it seems(keyword: seems) like you've just said that liberals pushed America into Iraq (from the last paragraph "at the cost of American lives").

Being supposedly a liberal, the ideas that reportedly appear in that "liberal's" book have been repulsive to me for as long as I could understand Western civilizations' ethnocentricity.

I'm not saying that to mean, "I'm a liberal denouncing that person from OUR group." I say it as a person who doesn't know enough to say whether he is liberal or conservative, while being aware that others most likely label him liberal, thus seeing nothing else but that label.

Anyway, I just stumbled across your blog about gas as I'm striving to educate myself for the upcoming election as well as my future. It just seemed like an odd definition of liberal(to me) if you were saying that they pushed America into Iraq. However, I realize you could be talking in a more historical sense; and that I could have misinterpreted something or everything; or that liberals were the driving force behind our invasion.

If you do have the time and interest, I would definitely appreciate an e-mail explaining anything that I may be misunderstanding. Anything.