After World War II, the U.S. oversaw the establishment of democracies in
the defeated Germany and Japan. However, it had no policy of promoting democracy
in most other foreign countries. Indeed, for a long time after World War II,
the U.S. government under both major parties supported non-democratic (often
called illiberal) foreign governments that were run by authoritarians or
dictators. In its anti-Communist fervor, the U.S. aligned with right-wing and
stood against left-wing movements.
Beginning with the Carter administration and continuing thereafter, the
U.S. shifted toward democracy promotion in foreign lands. Democracy promotion
is now a firmly-established cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. This goal is
the moral foundation of U.S. foreign policy planet-wide. Other goals, often
also associated with democracy, such as security and prosperity, are myths,
and they lack the moral gloss and appeal of democracy as now promulgated by
American leaders to its captive domestic body politic.
Following the immoral rule that the end justifies the means, this policy
of democracy promotion is in U.S. hands one of interfering in other nations,
intervening militarily, conquering, killing, collateral killing,
infrastructure destruction, subversion of standing governments, aid to
dissident groups, overthrowing elected leaders, sanctions of all kinds, and
training and arming selected rebels.
However, in the rhetoric of U.S. government leaders, “democracy” is the
term that embraces the many values that make American hearts beat faster,
that foster American hopes and dreams and that present the promise of better
lives. For American leaders and Americans, democracy has come to represent
freedom of speech, of association, and of religion. It means the capacity to
vote. It means equality and equal opportunity. Democracy now has come to mean
justice and human dignity. One need only read or hear a few speeches on the
subject to verify these observations.
The U.S. government follows up on democracy promotion with destruction and
a pronounced inability to replicate the construction of democracy in two
countries that had been reduced to rubble: Germany and Japan. Indeed, in country
after country it is U.S. policy (or at least its effect) to reduce the
country to rubble, drive the standard of living sharply lower and create
masses of displaced persons and refugees. This was the pre-condition to
conquering Germany and Japan, and it now appears to be the sought after
pre-condition in places like Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
There is nothing moral about this, but American leaders, living in a
delusionary world of their own rhetoric, continue to insist that what they
are doing has been successful and right. They say that they have saved or are
saving the masses from dictators. The gulf between belief and reality has
never been wider than in the present among American leaders.
Democracy promotion is a failed goal that has given rise to one policy
failure after another, benefiting only the military-industrial-intelligence
complex. It is more than apparent that the moral goal of enhancing freedom
cannot be furthered by the U.S. government deploying its vast powers of
finance and spending in the service of immoral means that destroy entire
peoples, nations, countries and states for the purpose of promoting
democracy.
This goal is futile in the theory of government, and it is futile in
practice as employed by one government in an attempt to impose or create its
version of government in other lands.
The futility in theory rests on a basic misunderstanding of government. No
government of any kind, including democracy, is anything but a wild beast.
Governments in control of states are all at heart ready to devour their
peoples because the control and containment of them by the people is such a
difficult proposition. Government of the people, by the people and for the
people is never achieved in modern states and can’t be achieved because
government powers are too great, even under constitutions, maybe especially
under constitutions. Legalities often do not present bars to greater
government power; they present loopholes to subvert and around which
government power is augmented.
The notion in theory of extending democracy as if it were going to free
peoples and save the world is fundamentally flawed. All it aims for is the
replacement of one form of government by another, but they are all beasts.
When the U.S. chooses immoral means to further its supposedly moral goal of
promoting democracy (which is actually also an immoral goal), this verifies
the beastly and totally immoral nature of government and of this democracy
that is supposed to be the exemplar of democracy on the planet.
The U.S. government, if it wanted to choose a better goal and were capable
of it, should support neither authoritarian nor democratic regimes. It should
leave the matter of foreign government structures to the foreign peoples.
It’s pointless to destroy a country and many of its people, all the while
creating enemies and blowback, in order to replace one beast by another. This
doesn’t create free speech, freedom of association, due process of law,
freedom of religion, and all the rest. Pre-emptive or any other kinds of
interventions intended to alter forms of government cannot accomplish this,
because they merely substitute one form of government for another.
Moreover, who is to say that when America attempts to or succeeds in
substituting a tiger for a lion that this is an improvement? How do American
leaders know that they are improving some foreign situation? They don’t.
Why do American leaders think that their judgment is superior to the
governmental outcomes that have evolved in other lands? There exist, as we
have seen in Iraq and elsewhere, often hidden reasons why a state is
authoritarian. Governments are generally not all-powerful. They are contained
in various ways, even if imperfectly, and the caged beasts serve some ends,
even if American leaders do not recognize, understand or acknowledge them.
Promoting democracy? What kind of democracy? Who is to say that a revolution
brought about by the residents of a country or brought about by the U.S. is
going to result in a better government, one that is of the people, by the people
and for the people? What happens when the “people” is actually several
peoples or tribes or ethnic groups or religious groups that do not get along
with one another? What happens when a power struggle to control a new
government appears? What happens when new revolutionary forces emerge? What
if secessionary movements appear or people demand new borders? What if new
constitutions have provisions that are worse than the old ones?
In practice, the U.S. goal of promoting democracy is just as flawed as it
is in theory. America’s leaders do not appreciate or understand the
equilibrium of domestic interests that has produced a foreign government.
They think that replacing a foreign government is like replacing a hard drive
or a fan belt. Maybe it’s harder and requires more resources, but it is a job
with well-defined parameters. They are completely wrong. In practice, every
intervention is beset with immense confusion. One need only read the history
of U.S. interventions in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya,
Ukraine and many other countries to see that confusion is the rule, not the
exception.
The U.S. keeps failing over and over and over again with every
intervention it attempts, in the sense that Americans are harmed and foreign
nations are harmed. Only those who benefit from wars, fighting and confusion
gain, and this includes some foreign interests, defense contractors, military
personnel and many in government.
Democracy promotion remains the dominant moral rationale for U.S.
interventions but it’s profoundly flawed. It would be far, far better if
Americans openly recognized the inherent evil and flaws of all governments of
any kind, including democracy, and then took this as a cue to limit this
domestic government wherever possible. That would mean avoiding foreign
interventions. That attitude is more in line with at least some strains of
thought that were voiced closer to the creation of the U.S. government, even
if history shows that the nation went in precisely the opposite direction.
