Bush is in Saudi Arabia as part of his tour of the Middle East, spreading democratic good will and the like.
Because I don't think its the American president's job to spread democracy, I can't fault Bush for not talking about politics with his Saudi buddies. However, it still remains a highly hypocritical situation. With so much money at stake, it just makes good business sense to be hypocritical. So whose job is it to spread democracy? First and foremost, it is the job of the population in question. Second, it is the job of the international community, including NGO's, to help these populations achieve their goals if they do not have the resources to meet it themselves.
And so I come to my next point, foreign aid. After taking a class entitled Global Poverty and Peace, I decided that governments giving aid for "democratic" movements in foreign states is a bad idea. The American government has historically proven that democracy isn't as important as strategic interests, and so the aid given in many countries is usually seen with immense skepticism and resent. Best example, Operation Ajax in Iran. The spectre of American involvement in that operation is still very fresh in the minds of the Iranians, and similar events have happened all over the Middle East.
The new movie Charlie Wilson's War touches on the subject of American involvement in the creation of the Taliban. I'm not going to see the movie, but its also another good example.
My conclusion is, the American government should just shut up. Not the American people, but the government.
I don't think I'm likely to get a job at the state department anytime soon. What do you think?
Monday, January 14, 2008
Ssshhh!
Posted by The Odalisque at 10:41 AM
Labels: afghanistan, democracy, foreign aid, george w. bush, iran, operation ajax, saudi arabia, taliban
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4 comments:
Supporting fledgling Democratic movements in otherwise hostile countries is very much so a "strategic interest." Whether our efforts so far have been wildly successful is up for debate, but there's no doubt that democratic nations are our natural allies and despotic ones are not.
Are foreign democratic governments our allies? I don't think that's always true. Mossadegh, the man who was elected to power in Iran, was not an American ally. He was in favor of economic policies that were not amenable to the US. That's why British intelligence and the CIA over threw him and put the Shah (a monarch) back in power.
The same argument can be made for Palestine. Hamas was democratically elected to power, and they are not an American ally. I will post more about democracy and strategic interests soon. Look out for it.
I wasn't saying that every democratic nation, ever, will be our ally and that every non-democratic nation won't. There are obviously going to be exceptions in the complex world of international politics.
Also, "democracy" is little more than a buzzword these days for the political ideologies America was founded on and to some extent functions under today. That is to say, "democracy" or "spreading democracy" doesn't refer to unlimited majority rule (which is just as oppressive as any old tyranny). It refers to a set of values that, unfortunately, are rarely identified, but definitely exceed simple majority rule.
This is why when despots are elected "democratically" or when minority rights are voted away by a majority, America should be there to stop them.
well said.
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