Taki Magazine

A War Between Democracies?

by Grant Havers on January 08, 2009

As we all watch the crisis unfolding in the Middle East, I cannot help but think back to that time in the not so distant past when most neoconservatives faithfully promulgated the following credo:  that democracies do not go to war against each other.  It is tempting to believe that the war between Israel and Hamas puts an end to this promise.  For both the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis have elected governments, both of which have often enjoyed majority levels of support over a considerable period of time.  Can democracies choose war-warring over jaw-jawing, after all? 

Even before the Bush II era, famous neoconservatives like Francis Fukuyama and David Frum confidently expressed the optimistic view that duly elected governments would embrace peace, since it is in their self-interest to do so.  Tyrannies, by contrast, need not worry about the popular demand for accountability or transparency in governance, as they do not have to face the wrath of voters.  It is also advantageous for a tyrant to start a war, to distract attention from oppression and incompetence.  Voters in a democracy will tolerate only wars against tyrannies, since these are a matter of survival against war-like polities.  Since democracies are peace-loving out of necessity, it would be prudent for democracies to encourage the growth of their own regimes.  In his work The City And Man (1964), Leo Strauss clearly articulated the full rationale behind this argument.  As he lamented the decline of belief among western leaders in the superiority of democracy over other regimes in the tense Cold War period, Strauss wrote wistfully of that bygone age—between the two world wars—in which western democracies had once believed in the wisdom of spreading freedom to all.  The popular embrace of tyranny in Germany and World War 2 shattered this noble optimism:

For it had come to be believed that the prosperous, free, and just society in a single country or in only a few countries is not possible in the long run; to make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic, each country in itself as well as the society of nations.  Good order in one country presupposes good order in all countries and among all countries.  The movement toward the universal society or the universal state was thought to be guaranteed not only by the rationality, the universal validity, of the goal but also because the movement towards the goal seemed to be the movement of the large majority of men on behalf of the large majority of men:  only small groups of men who, however, hold in thrall many millions of their fellow human beings and who defend their own antiquated interests, resist that movement.

Strauss was describing a hope, not issuing an expectation.  Perhaps lacking the realistic moderation of their teacher, numerous students of Strauss have argued since World War 2, and especially after the end of the Cold War,  that the mission of America is to encourage more democracy, for the sake of global peace, justice, and other probable outcomes.  Yet the post-Cold War period has not provided many inspirational vindications of this policy.  Afghanistan and Iraq are far from being functional democracies.  The Balkans still simmer with tribalist discontent, despite the appearance of democracy (backed up by the occupying NATO forces).  And, finally, the identity war between Israel and Hamas doesn’t give one reason to hope for a new birth of freedom in the Holy Land.

One could say that this war is a special case, which does not refute the overall wisdom of the progressivist democratic vision of neoconservatives or neoliberals.  Critics of Hamas’s regime argue that it is not a “liberal” democracy, given its intolerance and suppression of dissent (particularly the supporters of Fatah).  Critics of Israel argue that neither Hamas nor any other regime can possibly develop a free and open democracy when it is under military occupation.  (Surely neither case illustrates the “good order” to which Strauss was referring.)  The assumption which both sides in this debate seem to share is that it is not enough to have democratic institutions.  What is necessary for a successful democracy is the triumph of western liberalism, or the reasonable toleration of minorities within a majoritarian democracy.  As I have argued elsewhere, however, liberal toleration is one western export which the rest of the world often refuses to import.  Illiberal democracies may turn out to be the rule, not the exception.  How does one force liberalism on people?  How does one force a people to be free? 

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