Accidental Blogger

Last year, we watched with fascination and a sense of solidarity, a tide of orange take to the streets of Kiev,  in support of the popular but battered, Viktor Yushchenko, the eventual winner of the presidential election in Ukraine. The process was widely viewed by the world as a triumph of ordinary citizens’ voice and democratic will. Nearly a year later, the Ukrainian Orange Revolution has lost some of its glow. The new administration is beleaguered by corruption and chaos. Ukrainians are crestfallen. But on the one year anniversary of the revolution, Ukrainians will don orange, celebrate and hope that the promise of democracy will bear fruit in the near future.

It is difficult to predict whether a country breaking out from under the oppressive yoke of totalitarianism, colonialism or plain corruption, will succeed as a democracy. What are the parameters that determine the trajectory a newly formed sovereign nation will launch itself into? No economic, political or military model has accurately foreseen the outcome of a peoples’ revolt – peaceful or violent. In 1947, Britain packed up and left India after two hundred years of the Raj, leaving in its wake a divided subcontinent. The two new independent nations of India and Pakistan were products of almost identical history, culture and ethnicity.  India went the way of a secular democracy and Pakistan became an Islamic military dictatorship. Corruption, nepotism, social and economic inequities are commonplace in the region. But India manages to muddle through it all with a free press, regular multi-party elections and an expanding educated middle class. Pakistan, which is the godfather of the Taliban and Al Qaida, on the other hand, has slipped further and further into the chasm of religious fundamentalism, terrorism and narrowing of modern educational opportunities for its citizens. Yet, the USA until recently, allied with Pakistan, not India – even when the Pakistani government unleashed a genocidal mayhem on its own people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971.

Is easing into democracy, rather than the overnight liberalization of the political process, a better option for societies unaccustomed to self determination? Does the euphoria of sudden freedom foster the re-emergence of dormant, ancient hostilities and factionalism kept in check by oppressive regimes? Are newly acquired democratic rights often interpreted as opportunities for corruption, nepotism and lawlessness by both the citizenry and the leadership? Most of Africa and the new "democracies" which sprouted after the fragmentation of the erstwhile Soviet empire, indicate that this may indeed be the case. Are China and Vietnam, with their totalitarian governments imposing discipline and political order, along with a single minded focus on the education and economic betterment of their citizens, likely to emerge as more stable grounds for democracy in the long run than Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria or Kenya? Case in point, South Korea today and a decade or two ago. Or is democracy hastened by a society’s  collective catharsis which unites the leadership and the populace in their determination to go in a new direction and never again revert to the old ways of a disastrous past?  Examples, the shame and humiliation of post WWII Germany and Japan or the tragic trauma of European Jews and the formation of Israel. Or, perhaps the process just takes time – like the two hundred plus years of American democracy.

We are currently engaged in the business of imposing democracy in two faraway lands whose history and culture we do not understand very well or don’t care to. The ancient society of Iraq, consisting of Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Jews and Christians, was transformed into its modern incarnation by Britain during World War I (when Britain was butting heads with the Ottoman empire for the control of middle east). The British plan was almost identical to our own government’s in 2003 – regime change and territorial reorganization of the middle east. What began in 1914 as a strategic and political calculation, became the petro-politics of later years.  The west’s need and greed for cheap oil has necessitated a succession of "friendly", corrupt and oppressive rulers to govern the middle east. That in turn, has made the region hostile to democratic changes and created a breeding ground of Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, until the Iranian Ayatollas and Arab Islamic terrorists reared their ugly heads, it was not in the "interest" of the west to have a democratic middle east! The US is in Iraq now for the same reason as Britain was – hoping to control the region by installing a supplicant (??) government and ensuring the free flow of oil. The establishment of a free and fair democratic system, if it happens in the foreseeable future, will be a very fortunate accident. If only an exuberant show of purple fingers and a hastily cobbled constitution were guarantees of an easy and peaceful transition to democracy in an area that has for years been manipulated and exploited by its own leaders as well as foreigners. 

Afghanistan, which through the centuries, has been a poor, battle hardy land of proud people, is our other experiment in democracy. In the best of times, Afghanistan has been a loose confederation of tribal strongholds, run by fiercely independent warlords who paid taxes but not homage to the ruling powers. During the British colonial rule in India, Afghanistan was coveted by both Russia and Britain.  Neither succeeded in colonizing or conquering it. (See my book review The Man Who Would Be King ) In 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan and managed for the first time, to install its puppet government there. We armed the "democratic" anti-communist insurgents to their teeth, fanned their religious and nationalistic fervor, only to see them later transmogrify into the dreaded Taliban and Al Qaida after the Soviets were forced out. We are there now to try and "civilize" the country, run free and fair elections and put another "friendly" regime in place. But we did not do a thorough and serious job of ridding Afghanistan (and Pakistan) of  Islamic fundamentalists  – the perpetrators of 9/11 and the real obstacles to democracy. Now the Talibs are training in Iraq and streaming back into Afghanistan, Osama is hiding in a nearby city or cave and the warlords with their American armed militia, are doing a booming business of growing poppy in the countryside.

If the US does indeed successfully unload the modern day "white man’s burden" in the middle and near east and democratizes the region, it will be a miracle.  We can then boast of a new and successful formula for creating democracies in the world – by foreign fiat and military force. But I am not so optimistic. After all, one definition of insanity is "repeatedly performing the same action and expecting a different outcome."

Speaking of democracy, last Sunday I saw George Clooney’s excellent movie "Good Night and Good Luck", about the efforts by  Edward R. Murrow and a handful of courageous CBS newsmen in exposing the dangerous tactics of Senator Joe McCarthy. I was not around in the McCarthy era but I watched Indira Gandhi in 1975, when in a naked grab for power, she suspended the freedom of the Indian press, curtailed civil liberties of citizens, threw dissenting intellectuals in jail and held nearly a billion cowering people in a state of utter nervousness. (India later extracted its revenge in the voting booth). I have no doubt in my mind that the greatest danger to the democratic character of a nation is not a hostile foreign power or terrorism abroad or any other external real or imagined threat. Democracy is in danger when we become fearful of our own government. A government which is secretive, stifles debate, uses national security as an excuse to trample on domestic rights and liberties, demands that science play a secondary role to corporate interests and theology in national policy debates and is antagonistic to its intellectuals, runs counter to democratic principles. Such a government can hold on to power only by creating a continuous state of unease in the public mind. In Clooney’s film the newsmen at CBS are played by actors. Joe McCarthy’s words are his own – from the archival footage of his speeches on the senate floor and on TV. Substitute the word "communism" in them with "terrorism" and you have fast forwarded fifty years to the Bush – Cheney era.