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Exporting Democracy

Deeply disturbing

of late is the changing political landscape and the associated pain that is linked with the international political turmoil affecting all our lives. From the price of oil to the mortal danger that is published every night on our television sets; none of us are immune to its insidious nature. No doubt the years 2000-2010 will be marked in history as the decade of the bomb and ‘murdering-suicide’ of extremists who see their role in life is to end others. And gloriously from the Muslim world’s perspective it will be the decade of the Jihadic martyr.  

These two perspectives are a product of a cultural schism that will continue on well beyond this troublesome decade with its root buried in the past and stock & bush floating in a theological future that is so to speak beyond reconciliation in today’s terms. This is disturbing for all of us and our children as it means there will be no letup of the economic-theological divide that currently splits the World East to West.  

So what’s really going on?

The West lead predominantly at this time by America is convinced that liberal economic democracy is the answer to the woes of what it would consider ‘backward nations’. This is reflected by the work of

Fukuyama in his account of modernity – The End of History. Here

Fukuyama expands on the notion that we the West have somehow arrived at a state of economic and democratic termination. According to

Fukuyama this terminal is a solid foundation in relation to economic growth, democratic governance, and long-term population prosperity for the World at large.

It seems according to Fukuyama, and other commentators of the many international liberal democratic schools of thought, that through a liberal-economic and Western based democratic evolutionary process we have attained a place that is somehow Lockean, even Neitschean, in maturity. In essence we have emancipated the individual, the government, the judiciary and the financial institutions from the state; and by us arriving at this liberal economic and democratic Wonderland it is obvious that the track of other nations, on a democratic and economical evolutionary progressive timeline, is simply inevitable. In essence

Fukuyama and other liberal-democrats suggest that all nations over the coming years will move, as if fated, to the pro-American liberalist economic & democratic model.

It’s not surprising then to hear the current United States president profess the necessity to democratise, and through aggressive foreign policy push for democratic liberalism to all of the rogue nations around him since this is considered by the American establishment – and other followers of their Western Wonderland view – as some sort of panacea to cure all the evils of their World. After all, most of the American establishment is centre-right Ivy League; and Bush an MBA graduate with an American right-wing Christian ethic. With this perspective the hawks of the Whitehouse view economic maturity of the secular liberal democracy as the cornerstone of American and European economic success. After all, the World’s free-market economy is built on the successful Western free-market economic model.

But there is a problem!

When we apply liberal democracy & economics to the nations of Islam we see hot conflict. There are four primary pillars of Western liberal economic democracy: Elected representation; Free-market economics; Freedom of speech; Freedom of association including religious tolerance. These pillars are supported by three principles: Separation of the state from religion; Separation of the judiciary from the state; Separation of the state from a hereditary monarchy. Considering the first principle of this model is the separation of state from religion it’s not hard to see that the Islamic World is very different in its view of state governance compared to the West.

Simply put, the nations that have Islam meshed into the mechanics of the state are at odds with the introduction of Western based democracy and its associated economics. So much so that there is an impasse that can not be bridged in Western liberal democratic terms. But even so, why is there so much friction between the two models if each model works effectively for each respective society?

The Islamic world is under an inordinate amount of pressure – more so than the West – to ‘modernise’ in Western terms, both internally and externally. From inside the Islamic states that make up the Islamic World, people – particularly the young – can see the humanly selfish trappings of the liberal West. This is causing an internalising pressure change that is challenging the traditional frugal views at all levels of the Islamic ruling governments, although somewhat denied at higher levels. This was seen in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and had a large part to play in the failure of the ideological Communist Left and ultimately dominoing the entire Eastern European bloc into numerous Western-based constitutional democratic republics.

Compounding this internal pressure are the financially stronger economies of the West and the institutions that are dominated by a Western free-market liberal economic view, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the United Nations (UN). These international agencies are placing substantial external pressure on Islamic states to a point where their theocracies choose isolationism over Western viewed international prosperity. To be sure, this was the position taken by the Taliban in Afghanistan during the late nineties. The rational for their view was simple: It’s better to be a simple purist, than a rich sinner; where sinner is assumed to be those who abandon the strictest view of Islam, as interpreted by the ruling council – this included in Taliban terms – being audaciously rich.

So what is left is a not a hot Christian crusadist war on Islam – as expounded by most Islamic anti-West proponents, although from the inside it seems like this – but a hidden agenda by the West of emancipation of nations from what it sees as Islamic repression.

Is this a naive illusion?

Maybe the West’s agenda is a little more sinister: Economic and democratic emancipation of the Islamic World with the end-game to remove the market skew for international resources which they, the West, can exploit within the capitalist multiplier. Noting that there is a great emphasis on emerging states’ valuable oil and gas reserves accessible under free-market trade. Personally I don’t think the West is so divisive, although the argument goes: The economic multiplier is a World phenomenon that can deliver economic prosperity to the World system at large, and set free those World citizens shackled to the apparatus of the ‘dysfunctional state’. In simple terms the West believes that by it democratising Islamic, and other autocratic and oppressive nations, we as the liberator will unleash the people from the shackles of state slavery into some realm of secular tolerance, economic free-marketism and democratic freedom. This end will release political stability and a fair distribution of wealth across a meritist environment. In other words – free the people and they will sell their assets at free-trade prices, or not sell them if they prefer, and in doing so will themselves see the riches of international prosperity.

It is not a great leap to consider this the worthy cause that underlines Western policy. But the pursuit of this ideal is where the wheels fall off. Fukuyama is wrong in having us believe that we The West have arrived at the End of History and we should drag others here to. And I doubt we will arrive soon at that destined terminal, nor those we drag with us.

To be fair Fukuyama looks into the West as proof of his argument more than he does the Islamic Middle East and Asia. In my criticism I’m looking for international proof as to the end of history as I would contend that until all nations, as the basis of the entire system, have arrived in Fukuyama’s Wonderland none of the others can be there either.

My last point is salient as an economic system that has to accommodate for dysfunctional elements is itself dysfunctional – particularly free-market economics with a foundation of information perfectionism. Yes I know this is a circular argument as it is clearly understood that the base value of the market is through imperfect information (arbitrage) – or at least the time-lag associated with perfection. The point being – Fukuyama’s End of History at an international level fails with its reliance on perfect information that is not just time-lagged, as experienced in the free-market, but over time guaranteed not to be perfect. Nations that purposefully skew the market for non-free-market ends – or rather, as seen in Islamic nations for theocratic reasons – will always fail the End of History test as well as the surrounding nations that rely on them for trade.

What I am actually saying here is for Fukuyama’s argument that the End of History has arrived to be true all market participants have to work within the framework of free-market economics. Failing this an altered version of liberal economic democracy is applied to all states to accommodate external distortions. Therefore

Fukuyama’s Wonderland is skewed and we have not arrived at the End of History; nor will we while Islamic states remain coupled to a non-secular governance model. But let’s not confuse free-market economics with democratisation, although in real-terms the two are mutually inclusive, i.e. a state must be democratic to practice free-market economics, and free-market economics needs an open government which is democratic to operate efficiently. In the Islamic world this is simply not possible. The thrust here is, at the heart of the Islamic state is the theocracy and since there is no separation of religion from the state liberal democracy in Western terms is simply not possible.

To understand this we need only look at Iraq. That country was, during Hussein’s tenure, the closest state we would have seen able to bridge the gap to secular democracy within the traditionally ‘hostile to Western democracy’ Islamic world. Hussein did not allow a theistic philosophy to reign over the governing council and for this reason Islam was not bound to the country’s governance. But scratching deeper we see this is actually a false statement and ultimately the reason why

America and its coalition will fail to deliver liberal democracy to this beleaguered nation. This I think is where the warring coalition has gone drastically wrong.

To recap the ‘Old Western World’

European history is one of post-Romanic Aristocratic governance where the Catholic Church was deeply intertwined into the workings of a mature feudal continent: Similar to Afghanistan prior to the Western invasion. The constituent states of Continental Europe from Russia to the depths of Ireland where ruled by groups of elite that held the Catholic Church close to their moral principles and legal & administrative governance. In short they were theistic governing clans. If we look closer at England there was a breakaway from the theistic model during Henry VIII’s rule where the monarch was at odds with the Catholic Church. He resolved the conflict by quasi-dissolution from the central influencing theocracy (

Rome). With Henry’s emasculation of the Catholic Church in relation to English politics and the installation of a liberal English Christian Church, the stage was set to review religion’s closeness to the country’s government and associated laws. This is not to say that the weight of the Catholic breakaway was wholly on Henry’s shoulders alone, but offers as an example of not only the will to go against the domineering Church in relation to constitutional change but also the desire to devolve the power of the Church from the state within a given population. The principle set the precedence of a monarch above the constitution without guidance from the Catholic Church.

Following Henry was Cromwell – not a monarch, but instead a republican – and with him a new view of religious tolerance which in the longer-term resulted in a state separated from Church. The secular state had arrived in Britain, the result of which, in psychological terms, was a transcended cultural shared-psyche based on Judaic-Christian belief for moral guidance. The Christian moral ethic became a reference for law, not the reason for law.

The key here is Henry’s break from Rome, followed by the disconnection of the Protector of the Faith – the monarch – from state governance, and the introduction of a Parliament that tolerated the differing belief systems of the land (although mainly rooted in the Judaic-Christian faith). The result is a secular state where religion is separated from state, and the judiciary, and the military; moreover the market evolved into a non-interventionist free-market rooted in capitalist economics.

So moving back to Iraq : Hussein – as the de facto monarch – held back the Mullahs’ influence as Henry had, and by ruling with an iron fist as Tito did in Eastern Europe, prevented ethnic factions from warring. This removed the pressure of internal historical factionists breaking the state apart. Equilibrium was achieved by the Sunni minority through the iron fisted rule of a Sunni ruler without that ruler being dominated by an external theistic force.

The problem with Iraq is the ruler was the holder of the equilibrium and that ruler did not do what Henry VIII did in Britain. That is to disestablish religion from the apparatus of the state to such an extent that the natural progression of the state would be secular governance. So what is left today is not only a political vacuum, but also a need by the population to resurrect historical political systems steeped in the dominating religion of the country – Islam. And this brings us to the ongoing conflict – ‘The Lost War’ – that we see ourselves being drawn into day by day.

The Lost War.

The catalyst for change in the Middle East was operating well before Osama Bin Laden, but not for the apparent reason of the Islamic martyrs’ brigades hitting The West the way they have over the past 25 years. The root of the war is in the Islamic World and how it is coming to terms with western based secular democracy. Its people are dieing for modernity, the bourgeois establishment pining to sell the assets (oil and gas reserves) spread over many kindred countries, and the World’s apparatus is pressuring it to respect life, gender, secularism, suffrage, and all other Western values including the rules of international free-trade.

It is the West’s foolishness – and to a great extent arrogant pride – that has dragged it into an internal factional fight that will result in all parties losing. This is why it is ‘The Lost War’. The problem is obvious, if the Islamic World is to democratise it has to come to terms with the problems listed earlier – particularly secularism.

However, let’s assume Fukuyama is going to be right. Let’s assume that there is a state where Islamic based democracy is feasible and a cross-democratic free-trade framework is established. The End of History may then be possible; but only when the two systems find a means to interface in a way that underscores the basic principles of free-market economics. Is this possible? The answer is short. No!

America will not find the road to world peace through the export of Fukuyama’s End of History democracy as it stands today, nor accommodate the Islamic republics in free-market terms. Not until the Islamic World ends its struggle through what will be its own reformation – as seen in the West over the last 600 years – will the world come close to

Fukuyama’s Wonderland.

Yet, Bin Laden’s view is without doubt: No reformation on any terms! He would argue that the only way to remove the West from interfering in the Middle East is to draw it in to a bloody conflict based on the West’s view that it can deliver democratic freedom to ‘the oppressed’, and for the Islamic world to prevail by consolidating it’s Islamic values. For Bin Laden this would result in the end of the Jewish state by Islamic nations discovering their joint strength – a substantial goal of most Islamic nations of the

Middle East. The end game would be solidification of the Islamic way resulting in a continuance of the theistic state. At the heart of this view is the realisation, no doubt by Bin Laden and other extremist followers, that the Islamic World is under pressure to change and that change must be resisted by the introduction of a stronger change-agent that can be rallied against – This is classical Machiavellianism.

In conclusion the West’s ‘War on Terror’ is a fool’s errand. As we have seen the emancipation of the Afghani and Iraqi people from repressive governments has resulted in democratically elected theistic republics with associated Shari’a law. The resulting rights and laws are to some extent as repressive as those of the previous incumbents as seen through Western eyes. This is due to the political strength of the mullahs who are seen by the population as both clerics and spiritual governors. The Western view is freedom of expression including religious worship. There are no western imposed religious limitations on those who stand for election in these nations. So it’s not hard to see why the parliaments of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Palestine, have become dominated by the Islamic Right. The West can not have it both ways in Islamic open suffrage nations – free democratic representation and secularism.

No doubt over the coming centuries the Islamic republics of today, regardless of Bin Laden and the other fundamentalist hardliners of the Islamic Middle East and Asia, will evolve into their own version of democracy in spite of the constant stream of suicide bombers and retaliations, or the West’s pressure through international institutions. To be sure, Islamic evolution will take much longer than the West would like.

In the interim Iraq will descend into a bloody civil war, whose fault will be the West’s as decided in the aftermath, and result in a shi’a Muslim theistic republic similar to Iran, with a bitter distaste of Western interference. No doubt over time Afghanistan will move back to a hard-line Taliban type republic and unravel the hard fought principles of Western secular democracy, again blaming the West for the bloodshed it will undergo as it did Russia. And the Western blood lost to the distant oil rich sands over the last decade will petrify as democracy will, and all the pain today and in the future would have been in vain. 

Ironically over the next 500 years, when the Islamic evolution results in some type of secular governance model, the Western World would have moved on to some other system beyond the exploitative liberal economic democracy promoted by Fukuyama, and alas history will show that Fukuyama’s End of History was too early an absolute statement.

Cameron Macdonald – 2006

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