Liberal Democracy vs Autocracy, May 15, 2008
By Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) -
During the 1990s, after the fall of communism, it appeared that democratic capitalism had triumphed with no serious ideological challengers on the horizon. It was famously designated by Francis Fukuyama as "the end of history." Enlightenment had reached its final stage, there was no longer any beyond toward which progress marched. Most of the pundit class believed that China and Russia were well on their way to becoming liberal democracies. The theory was that once their respective middle classes reached a certain level of wealth they would be demanding the legal and political rights that are required of constitutional liberalism.

Robert Kagan does not believe this will happen. Autocracies such as China and Russia will not make the transition to liberal democracy on their own, nor will they change if they are safely embedded in the international liberal order. Kagan argues that the Chinese and the Russians do not view democracy as competitive elections, rather elections are something that asserts the popular will, which becomes the will of the ruling class. The ruling classes are not so much concerned with human rights as they are with satisfying public needs. In both countries a relatively small ruling class controls all the levers of power. Even though they line their own pockets, they have served their populations rather well, compared to the kleptocrats of smaller autocracies. The majorities of their populations actually seem content with this "style" of democracy.

Fareed Zakaria has argued in The Post-American World that autocracies do not hold beliefs other than becoming part of the global economy. They are simply pragmatists who will eventually become stakeholders in the system. Kagan begs to differ: He writes that autocrats believe in autocracy and will continue to reject the demands of meddlesome Western governments and NGOs. The higher cause they believe in is that they are providing economic success for their people and by extension getting international respect.

Autocracies seek to make the world safe for other autocracies as well. Their so-called respect for other nations' sovereignty and policy of noninterference sits well with lesser dictatorships such as Myanmar and North Korea. Autocrats prefer to do business with each other. After the successes of democracy in the 1990s, Russia and China would like to roll back those advances by promoting thier own successes. Kagan thinks that only dreamers would believe that China and Russia could become part of the liberal international order.

Interestingly enough, one of the most provocative and consequential foreign policy statements made by John McCain was in Kagan's neoconservative mold. McCain proposed that international organizations should only allow democracies as its members, as in a league of democracies, setting themselves against such countries as China and Russia. This would be the end of dreams and possibly the beginning of a nightmare. Although Kagan's point is well argued, I am more inclined the agree with Zakaria in that greater efforts should be made to make these important players part of the system rather than enemies of the system. The ideology of autocracy is inherently weak because power is too concentrated. Better to weaken it from within.