From Baghdad to Budapest (with stops in between)
by George de Poor Handlery | View comments |
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In the context of confusion, democracy can create through the electoral process conditions that hinder the creation of the political-economic foundations of liberty.
Theories are a “good thing.” Correct or not, they depict complex situations in simple terms: thereby the otherwise confusing becomes understandable. We embrace them when their implication confirms our predisposition. Any speculation that validates what we like to hear is more soothing than two double Martinis.
Recent events have again brought “surprises” that counsel against accepting postulates merely because they are agreeable and fit the events we selectively care to remember. To our disappointment, the cases hiding behind the terms “Baghdad” and “Budapest” reveal that general trends do not necessarily predict single instances.
As I do, you also like to believe that “democracy” and “freedom” will be near and dear to the heart of majorities that become free to choose. If this would be true then liberty would be the inevitable outcome of man’s striving. On the long run this might be true. Still, experience that better not to be repressed, teaches that “now and here” freedom’s attractions are not inebriating and that servitude’s burden is not necessarily dissuasive. Let the two cases, Bahgdad’s and Budapest’s — and the points in between — serve as illustrations.
Originally America intervened in Iraq to destroy her WMDs. These were gone by the time US forces occupied the country. Thereby from the standpoint of the national interest a subsidiary goal gained priority. It was to enhance regional stability by giving Iraq the democracy its oppressed population allegedly craved. This is the juncture at which what the title calls “Baghdad” enters the picture.
The theory and the praxis of the occupation rested on the premise that the Iraqis want liberty and that they are prepared to take control of their destiny to achieve it. Therefore the occupation was to create an opportunity to make freedom into a system for and by Iraqis. Noble as it was, this approach ignored some facts. Iraq is not a state created by the indigenous population’s wish that what belongs together should stay together. Iraq the country is not identical with a society. Iraq is an artificial total of Ottoman provinces fused by the interest of the victors of World War One. Local nationalism meant either separation along ethnic/religious lines or its misuse to justify the domination of a minority over the rest. Correspondingly, what the people’s group-think wanted from freedom was not to pursue their “individual happiness” under a government endowed with power to act as a mediator among all citizens.
Today’s Iraq was a product of circumstances created by dictatorship. The passing of tyranny did not come because a restless society had outgrown it. Nor was there a consciousness of the alternative elites that the system of tutelage is detrimental. The level of development the average person had reached identified him only with his group (Shiite, Sunni, Kurd). Individuality, and therefore also personal freedom and rights, were thereby made to be of secondary importance and were seen to be a derivate of membership in a group. Given the tradition of ethnic-religious rule, freedom became the right to suppress other groups. Without going into the details, from retrospect it seems that, the inhabitants of the state were not a constituency and that Iraqis lacked the maturity to want from liberty what it could extend.
A few weeks after the coalition’s entry and Saddam’s exit, the “resistance” grew active and effective. At that time this writer concluded that this terrorism could not unfold if that apathetic society would be able to muster a will to act to counter it. The ability of the militants, who desired to restore the old system or who wanted their own dictatorship, to act depended on the tacit collaboration of a prone society. As things seemed to be, at best the Iraqis were neutral in what was their own business. The case made then proceeded from the finding that the population does not yet know its interests and is unable to act upon its findings. Its passivity amounted to support for organized violence. Ruling Iraq to attain freedom through a short-term occupation implied extending something they rejected by not demanding it. By then America’s national interest had been served through the removal of Hussein. Her continued stay (and its price) was losing its meaning. Unlike in Japan’s and Germany’s case after 1945, the transfer of freedom proved to be a (disappointing) failure. The Iraqis “voted” by being inactive in liberty’s support. Concurrently, America’s system of government made it impossible to apply decisive power to enforce compliance and to export liberty against the will of its ultimate beneficiaries. In the light of this it seemed that the moment could be approaching when heading for home might need to be considered.
Early this April Hungary’s electorate held the first round of its national elections. At issue was whether the ruling ex-Communists, led by a “banker” who got rich under dubious circumstances and who took over from a former agent of State Security, would be reelected. While one might wonder about the original choice, the economic record of the country’s governors is impressive. In 1989, when the Kremlin’s rule folded, with good reason it was assumed that Hungary would lead the process of recovery among the crimson empire’s succession states. During the current term of the Socialists, Hungary slid to last place in the region and is increasingly losing contact with the pace-setters on the track. This, among other things, should have made the mostly free election’s results a foregone conclusion. It should have. But it did not. The Left leads a Right that is hardly perfect. The second round will presumably confirm the Socialists in power — making this the first instance that a ruling party in Central or Eastern Europe is reelected after ‘89.
How could such a thing happen in the Hungary whose 1956 revolution inspired the world, shook the Soviet system and sent it sliding to its ultimate dissolution? How could she elect in 1994 someone who fought in ’56 on Moscow’s side? Why is it about to reinstate a government that not only cost it honor but also deprived her of prosperity? The process behind the question is quite similar in its roots and answers to the one “Baghdad” raises. Add here the case of “Paris,” where an attempt was made to reduce slightly the job security of the few privileged who are employed in order to create a lot more jobs. Rejecting reform, those with time on their hand, knowing they take no personal risk, went on a rampage to maintain an untenable situation. The Hungarians’ vote for the safety of the “same,” while blind to the fact that no vote can ultimately prevent change, resembles France’s ailment expressed by the tantrum there. So the Hungarians will not get the desired “same” but the “worse” instead.
In all of the instances listed you see immaturity at work. Its symptoms are an inability to see, besides the perils of change, the larger opportunities development provides. At least in the Baghdad and Budapest case with Paris inserted, freedom does not work because whatever amount of it these people who fear the new have, is used to support an old, rotting but predictable order of things. We see that those who lack rationality and its discipline reduce their economic freedom and political liberty correspondingly. No people can be freer than it is mature. Part of this maturity is to know that freedom does not give hand-outs like some paternalistic government might. Liberty can only extend opportunities. To identify and to use them depends on the precondition of realism embedded in confident ripeness. Freedom will fail if a sense for attainable goals and a moral judgment capable of self-regulation without externally imposed laws are missing.
Iraq shows that you can not create or export a mature society and a matching government as a gift. True, the succor extended by the Marshall Plan brought the reconstruction of Western Europe after 1945. However, this only tells that you can help an existing society by providing it with the capital and security it lacks. Hungary’s contemporary case suggests that in the context of confusion, democracy can create through the electoral process conditions that hinder the creation of the political-economic foundations of liberty. If a constituency’s mind-set is that of political subjects and economic clients, then even a democratic vote’s outcome will only be able to reflect the developmental state of the voter. In such cases free elections will be likely to produce non-democratic outcomes. Lastly, let us take another apparent failure of freedom, namely the transfer of the decision making process in France from parliament to the street. The development in France demonstrates that when particularistic interests preempt a mature civil society that lacks consensus and information, the resulting corrupted “democracy” assuming the form of “mobocracy” will preclude reforms.
The cases listed lead to a conclusion the we, the writer and the reader, probably dislike. “Freedom’s march” might describe the ultimate destiny of mankind. However, the path there is full of track-backs and detours. At no moment is liberty that can jell into a system inevitable. The preconditions of freedom must be present through self-generation within the society that gets a chance to reach for it. If this foundation is missing some form of dictatorship, ranging from benign paternalism to the totalitarian mutation, will come about. Disturbingly, as we have so often seen, this deviation along the Creator’s plan for “history” can occur with the freely given consent of those concerned.
handlery@sunrise.ch
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