Benjamin Barber is the author of more than a dozen books, including Jihad vs. McWorld, The Truth of Power and Fear's Empire. He is a fiercely outspoken critic of the Bush administration's war on terror.
There's an article in today's Washington Post entitled 'Is Bush right?' in which some of the president's critics reconsider democracy's prospects in the Middle East. How would you respond to that question, is Bush right?
I have argued in Fear's Empire and other places that I am friendly to the fundamental premise that democracy is a powerful way to impede terrorism, or at least the conditions that breed terrorism. So the question is not for me, Is democracy a useful strategy in combating the causes of terrorism? The question is, Do we understand democracy, and do we understand how to democratize countries that are not in Western Europe or North America?
But when you look at what's happening in Iraq and Palestine, in Egypt and Lebanon, as well as in Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf, is that not democracy?
First of all, my definition of democracy is plural. I believe we should speak of democracies, not democracy. And one of the things the Bush administration has not understood very well is that there are many different roads to democracy, many different ways to do it, and the success of democracy depends in part on the ability to adapt democratization to the indigenous culture - to the history, to the local institutions - that are already in place.
You ask, 'How is democracy doing in the Middle East?' I would answer that the aspiration to democracy, which is a good thing, is doing well. Clearly, many people who for a long time believed that democracy was out of the question - or who lived in repressive regimes where there was little space for democracy - are beginning to think that aspiring to and working toward democracy is a good thing. But the proof of the pudding comes in our capacity to implement and execute on those aspirations - and it's there that we have a lot of questions.
The voting in Iraq was wonderful, and everybody has to admire it. I think the Bush administration deserves some credit for pushing hard not to postpone the vote. But, on the other hand, the outcome of the American invasion - of the externally developed constitution, of many of the politicians who come from outside and of the uncertain relations between Sunnis and Shi'ites - all of that is yet to be determined.
So are you optimistic about the prospects for democracy in Iraq or not?
I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I'm a realist, and I will simply wait and see. I hope very much that the outcome is not a civil war, but I think there is still a possibility that we will get not democracy but civil war, because so far the only thing that stops the civil war is the patience and tolerance of the Shi'ite majority, who obviously know that they have a lot invested in majoritarianism. But at some point I imagine the murder of their clerics, the murder of officials, the murder of young policemen and their families, the murder of women - at some point, all of that is going to explode and at that point it's very possible that you're going to get what the insurgents want: a civil war that destroys the possibilities of democracy.
The United States has made a lot of mistakes, which for me includes the armed invasion. It's very difficult to impose democracy by force from the outside. We've also made the mistake of confounding privatization with democracy: the United States is clearly hoping to establish permanent economic and military bases there, which could turn out not to be compatible with what the Iraqi people want. A lot of things are as yet undecided. I would give Bush some credit for his stubborn insistence on democracy, but I would say that his administration has not shown very much understanding of what it takes to nurture democracy in non-Western cultures.
What does it take? What don't they understand?
The first thing they don't understand is that you build democracy from the bottom up, not from the top down. Their tendency is to want to have elections and a constitution first - but elections and a constitution come last. First, you need civic institutions, you need civil society, you need citizens, you need education. Schooling is an absolutely crucial issue. At the time of the invasion, the US put Humvees and tanks in front of Iraq's oil ministry and the energy ministry and the industrial ministry and the foreign ministry - but they let the schools, libraries and museums be stripped bare. The future civic infrastructure was allowed to be largely destroyed. It's just not clear to me that this administration has put the kind of energy into bottom-up civil society building that they put into top-down elections and constitution-making. But that really is the superstructure that one builds on top of a democratic foundation.
Look at the United States: we had 100 years of experience under British colonial administration with local democracy - in Virginia and Massachusetts, of local township governments - and by the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, we already had a long experience with bottom-up local government that was very important to the success of the new American constitution. That kind of work I think has not been done, the money has not been made available for it, and the kind of work that it's necessary to do has not been done.
Does the Middle East have that kind of time: a century to build all those institutions? Can't these all things be built in parallel?
Of course it doesn't have a century, but it probably does have 10 years. The point is if you try to do what we did in six months in 100 years, you're probably going to be in trouble. Of course, people aren't going to wait around for three or four generations for this to happen. But you could say, 'Let's give ourselves a 5-10 year horizon, let's go slowly.'
We know from the Soviet Union that shock treatment doesn't necessarily work. I have predicted that China will be democratic before Russia - because China is taking it slow and maintaining political control and moving slowly toward free markets, whereas the Soviet Union was transformed overnight into a privatized capitalist economy, but a corrupt one, in which had no real experience with civic infrastructure. The result is what I would call a democratic distemper, an unwillingness to have the patience to deal with change. One of the things it takes to be democratic is to have the patience to deal with the kinds of corruption, the kinds of inefficiencies, the kind of strife and conflict that come with a democratic society. So 100 years? No. But 100 days? No. We need perhaps 100 months.
You mentioned China. Do you think that in the Middle East trade liberalization and integration into the global economy could lead to democracy?
No. Look at the history of the West: democracy comes first and capitalism second. If capitalism comes first, you often get tyranny. Chile proved that, China proves that. I don't think there's a necessary connection between a free economy and a free society.
That sounds like the opposite of what you just said about democracy in China.
It's not. I'm not arguing that China is likely to become democratic because of free trade or privatization. I'm arguing that because it's adapting very slowly, and as democracy appears slowly, it's more likely to take root. You simply can't do democracy in a hurry. And while it's certainly true that we don't have the time that we had in the 15th or 18th or 20th century, there's too much impatience. Those who take more time are the ones who do better: it's not the first election, it's the second and third elections that are the proof of democracy.
We need to show greater patience, a willingness to build slowly, and that kind of patience hasn't been there. And we also need to show a willingness to pay the price. The administration likes to talk about Europe after World War II: but there was no democracy in Europe in 1945 or 1946 or 1947. It took seven or eight years of ongoing support - the Marshall Plan, a major reeducation program and the development of local government - for nations like Germany and Italy to become democratic. It takes hard work, time and a major commitment of resources.
What about Egypt, where the United States is providing an awful lot of money? Is it appropriate that the US is being patient, giving money, and the country appears to be becoming a tiny bit more democratic?
That's a case of too much money and too little pressure. Of course, there's a special issue there because this was partly to buy Egypt off in the Israeli-Arab confrontation. In effect, we paid a $2.5 billion a year bribe to the Egyptians to keep their mouths shut and make sure there wouldn't be another war on Israel's borders.
But take the example of the UAE, of Qatar, of those smaller Gulf states where you do see gradual reforms, changing attitudes towards women, greater political participation. I spent some time last year in the Emirates, and it was very interesting to see the way in which the rather paternalistic sheikhs - the families that run the Emirates - have continued to run it, but at the same time gradually push for reforms. Those are useful models. Finding the right mix between pushing hard enough so that there is motion but not pushing so hard that the circumstances outrun the capacity of the civic infrastructure to support democracy, that's the hard thing to do, to find that balance.
But that's essentially a choice made by an enlightened leadership. It's not being imposed by the United States.
I agree. Look at the history of any democracy: external military intervention is not what creates democracy. Overthrowing the Nazis did not create democracy; rather, it destroyed tyranny. There's a gigantic gap between destroying tyranny and creating democracy. When you destroy tyranny, what you get is chaos, anarchy and instability - nothing more. The idea that ending tyranny is the same as establishing democracy is a very dangerous myth. And that, of course, was the myth of the United States in Iraq: Saddam was overthrown, his statue toppled and that was the beginning of democracy. In fact, it was the beginning of chaos. To build democracy, you have to generate its spirit and aspirations from the inside out. You cannot force people to want rights. They have to want them themselves.
© Arabies Trends 2005
