Self-righteous democracies
By Phar Kim Beng
MR BILL Clinton made the promotion of democracy the centrepiece of
his foreign policy when he was president of the United States.
President George W. Bush, especially after Sept 11, did the same,
looking to democracy as a means of reforming Arab/Muslim societies
and awakening them to their faults.
But do democracies admit their errors? Do they confront unsavoury
aspects of their own past?
British historian Eric Hobsbawm once said that the 20th century was
an age of extremes. Western democracies, however, have hardly given
any thought to the destruction they have wrought in World War I,
World War II and the Cold War.
When asked by throngs of journalists 'if he slept well' after
ordering the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US president Harry
Truman, for instance, answered in the affirmative, without even
batting an eyelid.
Across the Atlantic, as World War II came to an end, Winston
Churchill could counsel magnanimity even as he tried to restore the
status quo ante, with Britain retaining its colonial empire.
What is amazing about the US or Britain is not only their
unwillingness to confront their unsavoury pasts, but also their
ability to remain innocent despite that past. The capacity of
democracies to repeatedly claim innocence is one reason why their
histories often have an aseptic quality.
America, for instance, almost obliterated Native Americans, both
before its War of Independence and after. Americans, however,
remain effectively oblivious of this.
In the case of Britain, it controlled at one stage up to 80 per
cent of the world's surface. Colonialism is still seen as a sign of
English genius, not a cruel infliction on non-Western
peoples.
What is at issue here is not self-censorship. It is certainly not a
case of enforced amnesia, with textbooks rewritten to whitewash or
erase an unsavoury history. The nasty facts of history can be found
- in libraries, government archives and academic publications - if
citizens were so inclined to find them.
Rather, what repeatedly distinguishes these democracies is their
conviction, in the teeth of all the evidence, that their motives
are always pure.
As Professor Richard Falk, an international law don at Princeton
University, once wrote: 'One of the most harmful features of global
dominance, Western-style, is the perpetual rediscovery of its own
innocence'.
No amount of abuse and exploitation, however catastrophic its
consequences for non-Western victims, seems able to erode this
sense of innocence.
There are perfectly logical reasons why democratic leaders, as well
as the laity, can feel unremorseful about their past. For one,
democracy is a brilliant instrument for reclaiming innocence.
Though democracy as such does not necessarily lead to moral
prevarication, it allows for more than one idea to prevail at any
one time. Its very ability to allow for a contest of ideas and
policies makes it easy for it to abandon ideas and decisions that
turn out to be wrong or tragic.
The very ability of democracies to criticise and dismiss their own
errors enables them to also emerge from moral crises smelling like
the proverbial rose.
In the case of the US, charges of war atrocities in Vietnam or
Korea - or even in World War II, the 'good' war - for example,
failed to dent its mantle. Each president, like every generation of
Americans, can begin with a new slate. Policy errors and tragic
mistakes can be ascribed to one particular political segment, and
dismissed.
Still, there is a downside to the sense of perpetual innocence that
democracies exhibit. When such a beatific belief shapes the mindset
of the decision-makers in democracies, democracy can quickly
congeal into a system that feeds on its own righteousness.
The war on terror, for example, though justly prosecuted to
eliminate evil - in the words of President Bush, to rid the
international community of vengeful 'malcontents and murderers' -
ignores the root causes of terrorism.
As such, the negative consequences of US policy in the Middle East
- in particular, America's one-sided support of Israel and its
support of oppressive Arab regimes - are ignored. Americans,
convinced of their moral purity, cannot acknowledge their
guilt.
Their claim of innocence renders them oblivious to America's past
foreign policy derelictions in the region, making Washington almost
unable to change its present behaviour.
The writer is an analyst at the Institute of Strategic and
International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.
