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The Voice of the Straussians Refuting Sharansky?

The evidence is even scarcer that non-democratic regimes inevitably generate extremism among their citizens. Some may have, such as Nicaragua and Iran in the 1970s and Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories since the 1980s. But in Africa, Latin America, and East Asia, non-democratic regimes have not, as a general rule, generated violent extremism. […]

The evidence is even scarcer that non-democratic regimes inevitably generate extremism among their citizens. Some may have, such as Nicaragua and Iran in the 1970s and Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories since the 1980s. But in Africa, Latin America, and East Asia, non-democratic regimes have not, as a general rule, generated violent extremism. Most of Western Europe’s historic dictatorships incubated more moderation than radicalism, which is why many of them evolved peacefully into today’s consolidated democracies. For that matter, well over a dozen substantially Muslim countries in Africa and Central Asia have so far not generated much extremism, despite durable authoritarian rule. Indeed, one of Sharansky’s core cases doesn’t support his claim: the USSR seems to have incubated apathy, not extremism.

This highlights a fundamental contradiction in the book. Sharansky argues that non-democratic regimes are doomed to see their citizens move increasingly in the direction of freedom. But a few pages away he argues that non-democratic regimes inevitably produce enraged and profoundly illiberal citizens who are easy fodder for radical recruiters. Which is it? If tyrannies produce not only Mohammed Attas but also Natan Sharanskys, then they must have effects far more complex than he suggests. To make matters worse, violent extremism has been bred, and sustained, in democratic Northern Ireland, and jihadis have found ready recruits among Muslims who are lifelong residents and even citizens of democratic Britain, France, and Israel. ~Gerard Alexander, Claremont Review of Books

Have intelligent Straussians abandoned Sharansky’s lunatic revolutionary call for democratising the world, echoed not so long ago by the President? Let’s not get carried away. Claremont Review, ere long a stronghold of Straussian-cum-militarist writings (and proud of it!), was not likely to criticise Mr. Sharansky unless it was to encourage hegemonism in another form.

As Mr. Alexander goes on to conclude:

Sharansky, like Joshua Muravchik and others before him, reminds us that dictatorial abuses remain a moral stain on our world and urges us to push at the limits of the currently feasible by setting our sights on the global expansion of democracy. It is surely true that there is no reason for Americans to be indifferent to regime-type when a democracy is within reach; there is every reason for us to want democratic reformers to become the future leaders of their countries; and there is little wisdom in America being identified with vicious dictatorships doomed to be overthrown. Then again, given the limits of our knowledge, it is also true that worldwide democratization is a project quite possibly of many generations and that, in the meantime, it calls for experimentation and pragmatic deal-cutting with dictatorships that we may well have to live with for a long time.

The good news is that U.S. policy since 9/11 looks a lot like that. Elections have been urged peacefully on several regimes, but force has been used against only two, and the Bush Administration has worked successfully with many dictators in the war on terror. We are pushing at many limits, but are feeling our way. A dictator of Mexico once explained his complex choices by saying that his country was so far from God, and so close to the United States. America’s margins of maneuver are greater than ever before, and much greater than Porfirio Diaz’s ever were, but we, like him, remain closer to the ugly realities of political variety than to the cosmopolitan ideal of harmony. The journey toward the latter is the noble task that Americans now confront. But nobility alone is still not a winning strategy.

For Mr. Alexander, as with so many hegemonists, there must be a “winning strategy” in ridding the world of dictatorships, as if this were the purpose of U.S. foreign policy, God’s will or perhaps both. Dictatorships are not a moral stain on our world simply for being dictatorships, nor are liberal democracies any great shakes for inculcating the practice of virtue and the upholding of moral truth. Dictatorships are “moral stains” when they commit atrocities, and for that they are justly condemned, but at no point does it become our obligation to abolish them from the earth. Always be wary of people who define particularly political ‘problems’, such as the existence of dictatorships in the world, as moral problems, such that ideology and policy take the place of ethics, as they are usually very willing to reduce grave moral problems at home to political “issues” or non-political questions all together.

It is a dubious claim to superiority that a regime allows people to be free in the way that liberal democracies allow, which is social and personal licence inside a cage of political conformity. The liberal democratist slogan might be: “Do what you will, provided you have ‘moral clarity’ on Israel, interventionism, secularism and democracy.” It is depressing how exhaustive that is of the liberal democratic view of the world–this is the system that will satisfy the yearnings of billions? Not likely. It is a product of our virtually unique, distinctly American capacity for voluntarily stifling debate and engaging in a kind of self-censorship that the greatest dictatorships could never teach. Who wants it? I think if the oppressed millions knew that this was their likely reward of liberation, they might not be so keen on the idea.

Besides, all earthly governments are subject to the taint of sin, because they are staffed by mortal men, and there are no structural safeguards that can be put up that will remove this taint from any government. The genius of mixed government, when it once existed, was that it limited the damage that any unadulterated form of government could do while theoretically keeping government at a minimum on account of the persistent rivalries among the powerful. Mixed government, of course, requires a sense of restraint cultivated by a religious and self-disciplined people–this is unmitigated Polybian political theory, yes, but it has something to recommend it.

Hat tip to Orthodoxy Today.

“The original neoconservatives would be the first to advise that trying to use government policy to achieve social transformation on that scale should be a project of considerable caution, study, and—even then—experimentation. It is not enough merely to issue a blanket call to just do it, now!”

Mr. Alexander is correct that, when it comes to domestic policy, earlier neoconservatives were skeptical of idealistic government schemes that were based on faulty assumptions, poor empirical research and which were subject to the pitfalls of all public sector endeavours. He is surely joking if he believes that this sort of rational scrutiny and caution has ever applied to neoconservative foreign policy views since 1981. It is true that “just do it, now!” is insufficient and rather puerile, but that is the view of the mainstream neoconservatives and their political tools in the government. Mr. Alexander would clearly like a smarter, more thoughtful hegemonism, but he will be waiting for some time.

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