Am I being overly suspicious? Maybe. Still, it seems clear to me that the left is focusing on the difficulties the United States will face in trying to establish political stability in Iraq mainly to gain an edge on George Bush in the next presidential election.
That tactic is all that is left for them since the war went so well for the United States on the battlefield. My guess is that they will point to anything less than a textbook version of participatory democracy as proof that we “lost the peace.”
Unfortunately, the Bush administration is leaving itself open for this attack. Its representatives talk consistently of the goal of establishing a “free society” and “democratic institutions” in Iraq. The odds are that they will have to eat their words, because democratic government is not a likely prospect in Iraq, regardless of our government’s commitment to that goal. Things don’t work that way, if history teaches us anything. The late-19th century British historian and political philosopher Walter Bagehot has much to teach us on this question, especially in his book Physics and Politics.
The title of Bagehot’s book can be misleading. By “physics” Bagehot means only that he is seeking to make an objective analysis of the roots of our political order, much as a scientist would observe physical phenomena. That is, he writes descriptively, not normatively, of how free societies become established, not of how they ought to be or should be established. In taking this approach, Bagehot forces us to confront some facts we might prefer to ignore. Specifically, he illustrates that free societies have historically been preceded by periods of authoritarian rule, even in what was once called the Christian West.
Test his theory. The social order of democratic Europe became possible only when a sense of national unity permitted political liberties. Democracy is impossible in a society made up of hostile factions seeking to impose their will through the ballot box. This is not a debatable point. None of us would sing the praises of democratic principles if we thought that the Nazis or the followers of Osama bin Laden were likely to win the next election. We would not be for democratic rule if we lived in a cellblock at a maximum-security prison. We must be convinced that our fellow-citizens are basically virtuous and trustworthy before we will entrust our families’ lives to their vote. We must be convinced that our “fellow Americans,” “fellow Canadians,” or “fellow Swedes” will not enact policies that we will not be able to live with as free men and women.
It is here that Bagehot gets interesting. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate that this sense of political unity upon which democracy depends does not come about spontaneously; or, at any rate, has not up until now. National unity was forced upon people who would have preferred to be separate. The English did not always think of themselves as English, the Spanish as Spanish, Germans as Germans, French as French. William the Conqueror forced Normans, Celts and Saxons to become Englishmen. Ferdinand and Isabella and Otto von Bismarck did the same with disparate groups in Spain, Russia and Germany. Indeed, Abraham Lincoln used military force to keep the Southern states from breaking away from the Union in our country.
Only after the experience of living together in this forced unity did the association become natural, a felt unity. From that felt unity, came the possibility for what the world now calls civil liberties and human rights. Why? Because the period of felt unity generated a sense of confidence within the societies in question. The members of the society no longer had to be subjects; they could be citizens, trusted to say and write pretty much what they pleased, since they could be presumed to have the best interests of the society uppermost in mind. They could be presumed to share an understanding about what was decent, honorable and fair with their national brothers and sisters. Thus the period of forced unity (the rule of men such as William the Conqueror and Bismarck), passed into a period of felt unity (when men began to think of themselves not as Normans and Saxons, but as Englishmen, and not as Northerners and Southerners, but as Americans), into a period of discursive unity, when free elections and political liberties became feasible.
Back to Iraq. Everyone agrees that Iraq lacks a sense of national unity. From all reports, Iraqis’ loyalties are directed toward whatever faction of Islam they are members, Sunni or Shiite. And large portions of the country are populated by Kurds, who view the Iraqis as a conquering force rather than as national brothers. We must not forget that the borders of Iraq were drawn up by the European powers after World War I out of the ruins of the old Ottoman Empire. We have come to learn that what the European mapmakers thought a reasonable grouping of peoples is not viewed in the same way by those placed within its borders.
There is no reason, then, to think that the people of Iraq will be able to create a democratic society without going through the process that the world’s other democracies went through. They too are likely to need rule by an authoritarian ruler for some time before democracy can take root. Like it or not, they will probably need their Bismarck to impose a period of forced unity, to instill the felt unity that will one day permit political liberty to proceed. Our goal then should be only to make sure that their Bismarck is not another Saddam Hussein. We should not view it as a failure if we cannot establish a government that will be acceptable to a good government seminar at an American university. If we can put in place a government that does not threaten us or its neighbors and which is committed to an eventual liberalization, we should count it as a success. New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman, no fan of the Bush administration, quotes Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International to make this point: “Elections are an important virtue of governance, but they are not the only virtue… Economic, civil and religious liberty are at the core of human autonomy and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands these freedoms, it should not be branded a dictatorship.”
There have been many governments that fit this description with which we were able to maintain amicable relations in the past: Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal. There are some in that category today: arguably, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Singapore. We should keep in mind that the American left has for decades made the case that we should learn to co-exist with dictatorial rulers in Cuba, Vietnam and China. There is no reason to set the bar very much higher in modern Iraq, unless the goal is to embarrass the Bush administration more than to achieve a successful outcome to our involvement there.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
