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For Democracy, Warts and All Karl E B•• KS Karl E. Meyer is the editor of World Policy Journal. For Democracy, Warts and All Karl E. Meyer The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror Natan Sharansky, with Ron Dermer New York: PublicAffairs, 2004 The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad Paperback edition, with an afterword on Iraq Fareed Zakaria New York: Norton, 2004 In turning these pages, I was reminded of right-wing Likud Party. He presently serves the Pushmi-pullyu, the creature with iden- in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition tical horned heads facing fore and aft that cabinet as minister for Jerusalem and dias- enlivens the Dr. Dolittle children’s stories pora affairs. What gives ampler resonance to by Hugh Lofting. Like the Pushmi-pullyu, his arguments is their endorsement by Pres- these volumes are joined at the hips but face ident Bush, who invited the author to an opposite ways. For Natan Sharansky, former- Oval Office meeting. And who indeed has a ly a prisoner in the Soviet gulag, now an Is- better right than Sharansky to uphold the raeli politician, freedom is for everyone and cause of dissidents, and to reproach those its expansion promises universal peace. Not who pander to tyrants? Besides facing down so fast responds Fareed Zakaria, the India- his KGB tormentors, he joined with the emi- born Newsweek editor who also favors the nent physicist Andrei Sakharov in energiz- global promotion of democracy, but limited ing a broad-based Soviet human rights by serious checks on popular intolerance and movement during the 1980s. Justly, he illiberal demagogues. Together the books dedicates The Case for Democracy to the mem- constitute a linked pair of contrary argu- ory of Sakharov, “a man who proved that ments ably articulated on a theme all the with moral clarity and courage, we can more topical following George W. Bush’s change the world.” inaugural commitment to sowing democ- He did, and they did. Justly, too, Sha- racy even in rocky soil. ransky lauds the landmark Helsinki Final Both authors write with a passion and Act of 1975, in which the Soviet Union authority born of biography. As a Soviet dis- gained formal recognition of Europe’s post- sident and Jewish refusenik, Sharansky was 1945 boundaries while agreeing to a human punished for his heresies with nine years’ rights code binding on all 35 signatories, imprisonment. After his release in 1986, he including most Western democracies and resettled in Israel, winning election to the the Soviet bloc. The act thus forged a direct Knesset and becoming a hawkish ally of the link between human rights and East-West For Democracy, Warts and All 95 relations, a link whose true strength was invasion and the subsequent scandals over misjudged alike by Leonid Brezhnev and torture, America’s moral authority as a de- Henry Kissinger. Sharansky tartly faults the fender of universal rights has grievously former secretary of state for prizing détente eroded, as attested by polls in Europe, Asia, and stability at the expense of justice, and the Middle East, and in this hemisphere, for deferring to Communist godfathers as even in Canada. It is awkward, to say the well as tyrannies in Chile, Greece, Indone- least, to remonstrate others about secretly sia, and the Arab Middle East. Neither detaining political offenders—the common- Brezhnev nor Kissinger foresaw the prolifer- est of human rights abuses—when the Pen- ation of “watch committees” whose exis- tagon and Justice Department perpetrate tence enabled first Jimmy Carter and then the identical offense. This has been coupled Ronald Reagan to censure gross abuses at with the administration’s attitude, ranging review conferences in Belgrade (1977), from indifference to contempt, toward inter- Madrid (1980), Ottawa (1985), and Paris national agreements of every kind, ranging (1990), by which time the Soviet empire from Kyoto and the law of the sea to the was nearing the boneyard. punishment of war criminals. So why not apply the same leverage to Thus the country that gave the world today’s autocracies? Sharansky details his the United Nations, the Nuremberg tri- vain attempts to end Western coddling of bunals, and the Universal Declaration of Middle East despots, and disputes the com- Human Rights now resists submitting mon calculation, even among Israelis, that a genocide charges against Sudanese warlords corrupt autocrat like Yasir Arafat could best to the International Criminal Court because gain Palestinian acceptance of an unpopular an American somewhere else (there are no compromise peace. The theory failed; until U.S. forces in Darfur) might at some future his death Arafat proved unwilling or unable point just possibly face the same Hague tri- to take the necessary risks for peace. Having bunal. On this as on other matters, Wash- a perpetual enemy was for Arafat evidently ington’s position is very like that of the rich essential to ensure his power. In truth, Sha- boy in the neighborhood who owns the ball, ransky reminds us, foreign policy experts re- bat, and baseball diamond, and who invites peatedly overestimate the inner strength of poorer youngsters to play, so long as he autocracy, and underestimate the appeal of chooses the teams and dictates the rules (and democracy. He cites the fallible consensus then wonders why he is disliked). It is an that long deemed Germany, Japan, and Rus- embarrassment that even Prime Minister sia somehow unfit by culture for free gov- Tony Blair, who at considerable political ernment. His own experience in living in “a cost supported the Iraq war, virtually had to world of fear” persuaded him that the dis- beg for the extradition of British subjects abilities of dictatorship were incurable and held incommunicado, without charges, in democratic progress irresistible. “There is a America’s offshore penal colony in Cuba. universal impulse among all peoples not to At home and abroad, in word and deed, live in fear,” he writes. “Indeed, given a from the 1940s until 2000, Washington choice the vast majority of people will always demonstrated a devotion to rule of law. prefer a free society to a fear society” (his Granted, there were palpable blots. It took italics). half a century for Congress to approve repa- Yet alas, beyond generalities, Sharansky rations for Japanese-Americans interned never really addresses obvious difficulties. during the Second World War, and it took America, for one thing, is not the same almost as long for the U.S. Senate to ratify America that credibly clamored for his free- the genocide convention. The Kennedy ad- dom in the 1980s. Beginning with the Iraq ministration authorized covert schemes to 96 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2005 assassinate foreign leaders, Jimmy Carter “rendition,” whereby foreign-born Islamic gullibly toasted the Shah of Iran, and suspects are deported—in effect, out- Ronald Reagan turned a blind eye to U.S. sourced—by U.S. officials to torture-ready complicity with death squads in El Salvador, interrogators in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and to cite only a moiety. Yet these misdeeds Egypt? And for that matter, what does and missteps provoked protests, legal chal- Natan Sharansky think about using the war lenges, and investigations by Congress, all on terror to justify the reputed tolerance of audible and visible to a watching world. torture in America’s gulag? That such ques- Especially important was the vigilance tions could even be posed speaks volumes of centrist political figures like the late sen- for Washington’s diminished luster as the ator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moyni- avatar of liberty. han. While serving earlier as chief U.S. del- There are, fortunately, glimmers of egate to the United Nations, Moynihan es- hope. The courts have struck down the Jus- tablished his reputation by excoriating Sovi- tice Department’s reprehensible contention et trespasses and shaming the General As- that the president can lawfully detain an sembly into revoking its resolution equating American citizen without charge for nearly Zionism with racism. During the Reagan three years. It is minimally reassuring that years, as chairman of the joint oversight the latest annual human rights survey just committee on intelligence, Moynihan pur- issued by the State Department cites reports sued with bulldog persistence the lawless by Human Rights Watch that the U.S.-in- arming of contra rebels and the covert min- stalled Iraqi government commonly permits ing of Nicaraguan harbors. He took aim at torture of detainees by “beatings with cables the CIA’s self-serving exaggeration of Soviet and hosepipes, electric shocks to their ear- strength, reminding his colleagues that lobes and genitals, and food and water dep- Russia was the only industrial nation where rivation.” At the least, it will be ever harder life expectancy continually shrank. It is hard for prosecutors and police to claim igno- to overstate Moynihan’s influence. In books rance about what constitutes torture as they as well as speeches, Moynihan steadfastly continue to interrogate that new Orwellian made the case for American adherence to adversary, the “unlawful combatant.” world law. He noted that the genius of the Helsinki Final Act was its reciprocity. The Warts of Democracy When the Soviet press, with pious indigna- Only briefly and in passing does Sharansky tion, invoked Helsinki in taking up the case address a second objection to his too-simple of Russell Means, an American Indian thesis. The objection is phrased succinctly Movement activist jailed for his part in by Fareed Zakaria in The Future of Freedom: killing an FBI agent, the senator welcomed “Young democracies have a very poor record this chance to compare criminal justice sys- of handling ethnic and religious conflict.
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