FDD

Out of Africa (CM)

Ralph Peters writes:

Kenya's sudden nightmare is also the fault of pompous Western theorists and impossibly arrogant diplomats. (Our embassy in Nairobi's botched response to the stolen election alienated both sides in turn.)

The horrific violence in Kenya has its roots in three things: the corruption we overlook, the forms of democracy we demand - and, above all, the tribes that left-wing academics insist are only wicked European inventions.  …

Kenya was long one of the continent's few stable states - yet people there kept on voting along tribal lines. As they do in Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria . . . just throw a dart at the map. Impose Western forms of democracy, and majority or plurality tribes win - then view their victories as license to loot. It doesn't even occur to them to share.

The process has played out hundreds of times, in dozens of countries, but we still insist that democracy means "one citizen, one vote" for a central government with Western-style ministries. The model we've enforced around the world assumes that enlightened citizens won't be bound by tribal or religious loyalties.  …

Our type of democracy works in homogeneous countries, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, where campaigns are strictly about issues - or in countries, like our own, that are so diverse no "alpha tribe" can lord it over everybody else.

But democracy as we know it doesn't work in countries where competition for resources persists along tribal or religious lines. …

[O]ur attempts to ride roughshod over fundamental identities to which human beings cling for dear life only resulted in the sort of failures we've witnessed in the post-colonial years - and the problems we faced in Iraq as we brushed aside sheiks in favor of corrupt bureaucrats.

To make democracy work in the developing world, you must adapt it to the pre-existing social structures and traditional loyalties, rather than assuming they'll wither away at the first election. Even Stalin couldn't finish off the Chechens. Afghanistan's Pathans won't vote for Tadjiks, or Sunni Arabs for Sunni Kurds.

The utterly wrong-headed and ultimately deadly insistence that everybody is just like us has led us to prescribe poison: In tribal societies, Western-style presidential or parliamentary systems produce, at best, authoritarian regimes. (As I argued years ago, our question in 2003 shouldn't have been "How do we bring our democracy to Iraq?" but "What would an Iraqi democracy look like?")  …

We vote our individual consciences. In much of the world, that's unthinkable: You vote for your own kind.

Until we see the world as it is, rather than as we wish it to be, elections will tear tribal societies apart - as in Kenya today. The problem isn't democracy. It's "one size fits all" democracy.

More here. 

How Do Nations Die? (CM)

Mark Steyn writes:   

Not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal. 

More here.   

Who Makes Policy? (CM)

Ever wonder why president’s policies don’t get implemented? Peter Baker in the Washington Post relates an exchange between a government official and a State Department bureaucrat over President Bush’s policy to promote democracy abroad:

The official recalled a conversation with a State Department bureaucrat over a democracy issue.

"It's our policy," the official said.

"What do you mean?" the bureaucrat asked.

"Read the president's speech," the official said.

"Policy is not what the president says in speeches," the bureaucrat replied. "Policy is what emerges from interagency meetings."

More here.

Middle East Memo

On March 19 the Egyptian parliament passed a set of constitutional amendments that were proposed by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), amidst strong protests from opposition parties which have described the changes as a major blow to Egyptian democracy.

The proposed amendments to 34 articles of the constitution were formally presented to the two houses of parliament by President Mubarak on December 26, 2006. These amendments have incited a heated debate in Egyptian political circles for the past three months, as they are viewed by many as a step that would significantly undermine the reform effort in Egypt.

Click here to continue reading "Egypt: Proposed Constitutional Changes and their Impact on Democracy," the first issue of the Middle East Memo, a new publication of the Center for Liberty in the Middle East. CLIME is a joint project of the European Foundation for Democracy and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

International Law

FDD's Mario Loyola argues in today's National Review Online that "international law should be a principal weapon in the conservative arsenal." He writes:

Conservatives must expose the liberal monopoly on “international law” for what it is — a way to turn fashion trends in liberal opinion into commandments for the rest of us. But conservatives must go further: They must aim to establish a powerful presence of conservative scholars within the law faculties themselves. There is room for a conservative philosophy of international law — a philosophy based upon respect for democracy, peace, and the obligation of contract.

But there is a problem among conservatives, too, because their thinking on international relations is dominated by “realists” who tend to take a dim view of international law. This is a mistake. A strong balance-of-power foreign policy, which is vital to maintaining peace in those areas of the world where states still challenge the status quo militarily, cannot be constantly struggling against international law and the diplomatic structures it creates.

"The Bolivarian Revolution" (RWC)

Chavez recently yanked the broadcast license of a large and popular Venezuelan TV station that has been critical of him.

And he has been working overtime to inculcate his “socialist” ideas in schools and universities. A few months ago hundreds of his high-ranking supporters underwent training through classes in socialist thinking and “Marxist Analysis” as part of what he calls the Bolivarian Revolution. 

All of this is tied to Hugo Chavez’ widely government-touted cult of personality. 

It all sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hoxa, Castro – Chavez, all part of a continuum.

One-Party States Have Failed in the Past (RWC)

Chavez supporters say a strong one-party state would cut down on “excessive bureaucracy” and “reduce corruption.”

Ha. That’s likely!  History says that just the opposite would be true and anyone with experience, for example, in the pathetic one-party states of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, East Germany, Lithuania, Albania, North Vietnam, Estonia and the Soviet Union during the last sixty years, or Cuba and North Korea today, would know what a completely stupid lie that is.

The effect would be exactly the opposite. Bureaucracy would suck the oxygen out of everything, and “corruption” would be “reduced” only to the extent that it would take a new form, to benefit those on top of the newly-created monster bureaucracy.

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (RWC)

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is trying to grab even further political power in Venezuela and turn the country into a single-party state.

The hard-left president is forming a single socialist party from elements of his various supporters and he intends to use it to dominate the country’s politics.

The new entity is called the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the speed and intensity of his plan to form it has unnerved even some of his most liberal supporters.  You’ll recall that Chavez is strongly admired by Cindy Sheehan and her “Code Pink” and anti-war friends here in the US.

Chavez, in turn, is an admirer of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and wants to emulate the one-party totalitarian system Castro installed more than forty years ago.

A Long Goodbye to Democracy

Hugo Chavez is consolidating his power in Venezuela, according to FDD Fellow Mario Loyola:

For students of the Cuban Revolution, it was an ill omen to hear Hugo Chávez in the final weeks of Venezuela’s presidential campaign proclaiming that “there is no longer room in Venezuela for any project other than the Bolivarian Revolution.” Sure enough, just one month after his reelection victory, Chávez is moving against both opposition parties and opposition press. Venezuela is staring into the abyss of fascism.

The law and terrorist charities (AV)

In this morning's National Review online, I have an article with Howard Anglin, Esq. on a recent judicial decision out of California authored by Judge Audrey Collins that seriously hampers the government's efforts to restrict terrorist financing. Read the article.

To be fair to Judge Collins, her opinion is nothing like the hatchet job performed by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor on the NSA’s terrorist-surveillance program earlier this year. Judge Taylor’s opinion was roundly — and rightly — condemned as poorly reasoned and unworthy of the legal craft by lawyers from across the political spectrum. Judge Collins’s decision, by contrast, is neither overtly partisan nor irrational. With one exception it is a workmanlike application of precedent to fact. Unfortunately, that one exception has catastrophic potential.

...

There is, however, a compelling basis for a government ban on any assistance — even self-described humanitarian aid — to terrorists. Because terrorist organizations are not known as models of corporate transparency, there is no way of knowing whether a terrorist entity’s humanitarian arm is funneling money to its militant one. What is more, the fungible nature of money means that donations to the peaceful arm free up money to be spent by the militant arm.