Democratization – Week 4
So here’s a pretty sobering graph..
Green: Iraqi Civilian Casualties
Blue: Afghan Civilian Casualties
Grey: US Casualties in both Wars
Red: September 11th Victims
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” , it seems, was a bit of a misnomer. True, US troops are finally out of Vietnam, sorry, i meant Iraq. And they have left a ‘functioning parliamentary democracy’ in their wake, but we should not forget that this was the least of the effects the ‘war on terror’ had on Iraq. As I elaborated in my previous blog post about Myanmar, democratization is a ultimately a self serving motivation. It seems that helping a ‘country in need’ to ‘transition to democracy to free it from the clutches of a tyrannical dictator’ immediately adds a shining veneer of legitimacy to the wanton destruction of a nation’s infrastructure and social fabric for gains other than humanitarian ones. This trend is hardly new in history. Even democratization itself can be the self-serving motivation for somehow promoting democratic transition abroad. We saw it done in the Cold War, where democratic regimes were propped up by the United States around the globe simply to counter the spread of Communism. It was the apparent basis for the Korean War, and later, Vietnam. Democracy for the people by the people is never the endgame for foreign support of democratic transition. We live in an anarchic international arena. Realist interpretations are the only ones which make any sense. The second which democracy in a country doesn’t work for the foreign power, it is entirely expendable. We saw this in Iran. The democratically elected government was going to nationalize the foreign owned oil industry, much to the opposition of USA and British interests. Result: the CIA stages a military coup to overthrow the perfectly legitimate government of Mosaddegh and install the fiercely autocratic one of Pahlavi. Democracy is simply a buzzword to legitimize foreign action. In Iraq, the stated objective was to free the Iraqi people from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and to install a democracy. Interestingly, the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein wasn’t a problem for the US when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew their autocratic Iranian Pahlavi puppet government and started becoming a problem. In fact, the US funded and supplied intelligence to Saddam Hussein throughout the Iran-Iraq war to counter Iran’s growing power. Democratization wasn’t even on the table at the time, it didn’t serve any US interests. This is also around the time where the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein took place, which were the basis of the evidence that he needed to be overthrown… only some 30 years later.
I feel I might be being a bit cynical, but the evidence seems to suggest that democratization always has an ulterior motive. If those motives are absent, then western democracies couldn’t care less if people are being oppressed by a dictator. If they are being made to feel guilty by international or domestic pressure to take action against said dictator, they do it for PR reasons, not out of the goodness of their heart. There is always a motive. Democratization by governments in a realist international arena is a self serving behavior. If you believe that this is being done for humanitarian purposes, explain how it is only done when convenient and opportune.
