Independent UK: Democracy has become a devalued concept

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Adrian Hamilton: Democracy has become a devalued concept
Thursday, 14 February 2008


It's not only the concept of humanitarian intervention that has been fatally undermined by the decade of Bush and Blair. It is the whole ideal of promoting democracy abroad. Not that either the White House or Whitehall have given up on the rhetoric. Indeed, President Bush still goes on about America's historic role in promoting democracy around the world. It was the one single theme that he picked up from the neo-cons at the beginning of his administration and has hammered on about ever since.

And now he's been joined by our own Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who, in a speech on Tuesday night, reiterated at length why democracy was the key theme of British foreign policy.

US presidents tend to present democracy – and have done so ever since the days of Woodrow Wilson – as a unique gift of America, an ideal which all people aspire to but which "realpolitik" European colonial powers have tended to obstruct with pragmatic talk of interests and stability. Interestingly, Miliband has now resorted to exactly the same rhetoric, rejecting the criticism of those who doubt the West's right to impose ways of government on other nations as somehow denying the rights of people to enjoy the same degree of and freedom that we enjoy.

But that is a false dichotomy. The problem of pushing a system of government as a universal value, as Bush and Miliband assert, is not that the value is wrong or should not be supported. That is what we believe in, that is what we should stand by in our dealings internationally. It is that western demands on governments, of whatever hue, to sign up to a list of democratic tick boxes as the price of aid, support or whatever, have proved largely self-defeating.

In the first place, they have laid Britain and America open to an endless charge of hypocrisy. We have said that elected leaders must be supported, and then promptly sought to crush the forces of Hamas voted in by the Palestinians. We have urged democracy on the Middle East, only to prostrate ourselves before Saudi Arabia. We have condemned Iran, but made that most oppressive of regimes in Libya our golden boy because it has given up on its nuclear ambitions. We lecture Burma, but pussyfoot on the subject of human rights with China

Even more damaging to our cause, however, has been the recent experience of democracy in so many countries. We may talk of democracy as a set of values; to most of the world it is a mechanism of power. And over the last decade – in Thailand, Pakistan. Kenya, Uzbekistan, Kyrgestan, Georgia, Zimbabwe and a host of other nations – the resort to the vote has been simply a means of sustaining tribes or tyrants in power. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-democracy-has-become-a-devalued-concept-781968.html