From Ukraine to South Africa: The End of History (Again)? By Leon Hadar. The American Conservative, December 19, 2013.
In Kiev, High Stakes for Democracy. By Chrystia Freeland. New York Times, December 6, 2013.
Hadar:
Despite
the promises of liberal internationalist elites, religious fundamentalism,
ethnic identity, and the old notion of nationalism have proved more resilient
than unrelenting global democratic progress, not only in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,
and Libya, but even in the advanced industrialized nations of the European
Union.
Meanwhile,
as the latest Pew Research opinion polls suggested, a majority of Americans
have no interest in making the world safe for democracy and would prefer the
United States to “mind its own business.” The American people are largely
indifferent to the Freedom Agenda, and what they want, to paraphrase what
Stalin once said about socialism, is liberal democracy in one country, the
United States.
But
after the death of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and in the throes of
continuing political unrest in Ukraine, liberal internationalism seems to be
coming back to life. It’s as though we’re back where it all started, at the time
of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, followed by the downfall of the apartheid
regime in South Africa, with the sense that in spite of many setbacks,
universal liberal democracy is once again on the march.
“The
true surprise—and one that should inspire democrats around the world—is the
spontaneous and spirited resistance of Ukrainian civil society” to what
Chrystia Freeland described in the New York Times recently as the “thuggish
leadership” of Ukraine and “Moscow’s ferocious intervention” in that country’s
affairs. A “new, well-educated, well travelled, comprehensively wired
generation has matured” in Ukraine, and these “young Ukrainians know the
difference between democratic capitalism and state capitalism and they know
which one they want,” Freeland concluded.
But
didn’t we hear the same sort of arguments during the so-called Orange
Revolution in 2004? Those who are depicted today as proponents of state
capitalism were bashed then as “remnants of the communist elite” or “former
communist party bosses” and today’s friendly yuppies, as Freeland portrays
them, were hailed as democratic activists. But then the current “thuggish”
president Viktor Yanukovych came to power through open and democratic
elections.
The
American media tend to downplay the ethnic and regional strains underlying the
political tensions at the core of the color revolutions, not to mention the
Arab spring. Recall that President George W. Bush was not even aware of the
historical conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq when he set out to
establish democracy there, and that it took some time for the press and
official Washington to understand that what was happening in Iraq has less to
do with the struggle for democracy and more with sectarian fighting.
Hence
while there is no doubt that the current political tensions in Ukraine give
expression to cultural frictions between young urbane professionals and aging
conservative politicians, bureaucrats, and their business cronies, it’s also a reflection
of historical antagonism and the conflicting sense of national identity among
Ukrainian speakers in the Western and Central parts of the country and Russian
speakers in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
So it
was not surprising that during recent elections voters in the Western and
Central Ukrainian provinces voted mostly for political parties (Our Ukraine,
Batkivshchyna) and presidential candidates (Viktor Yuschenko, Yulia Tymoshenko)
with pro-Western platforms, while voters in the Southern and Eastern areas
voted for parties (CPU, Party of Regions) and presidential candidates (Viktor Yanukovych) more oriented toward Russia. And both sides look toward outside
powers (the U.S. and EU on one side; Russia on the other side) to support for
policies that are rooted to some extent in historical-cultural experiences.
One
could probably empathize with those Ukrainian nationalists who prefer to be
linked to the EU rather than Russia (and Belorussia), and have access to the
EU’s economic and cultural milieu while rejecting subservience to Russia which
for many years repressed and exploited Ukraine.
In the
same way, one could also identify with black South Africans who fought to
liberate themselves from minority rule by the Afrikaners who had deprived them
of political and economic freedoms.
The
fight against apartheid has been viewed in the liberal internationalist
narrative as an extension of the saga of the civil rights in the United States.
In fact the struggle against apartheid took place in the confines of the West,
and was aimed at the rulers of white controlled South Africa who had resisted
pressure to reform a racist political structure.
The
apartheid system collapsed because at the end of the day, F.W. de Klerk, like
the last communist rulers in Eastern Europe (or for that matter Serbia’s
Slobodan Milosevic) and their people, wanted to remain part of the West and
succumbed to the pressure to change.
The
same kind of pressure operates today on the leaders of Ukraine and Israel. But
the Enlightenment Project as it evolved between 1789 and 1989 in the West is
mostly irrelevant to the aspirations of the political elites and people in the
Rest. Whether the new post-Mandela South Africa remains in the West or joins
the Rest remains an open question.
Freeland:
When Soviet
communism collapsed, the West’s declarations of triumph were so full of hubris
that it was easy to forget what was right about them. The Ukrainians protesting
in downtown Kiev are a reminder that there was actually a lot to glow about.
But the
struggle that seemed to be over in 1989 is still going on, and today’s
battleground is the square that protesters have renamed the Euromaidan, or
Euro-place. The people there are again insisting on the choice of a regime, a
type of government, that they and their Soviet compatriots first tried to make
in 1991. They know they want what we have and what we are. As our own
self-assurance fades, we need to see what they are showing us.
When
the Berlin Wall fell, Francis Fukuyama wasn’t the only one who believed history
had ended. It was tempting then to imagine that the authoritarian form of
government and centrally planned economic system that Moscow had championed and
inspired in a lot of the world would inevitably give way to capitalist
democracy and the greater freedom and prosperity it delivered.
But the
new century brought disappointment. The spread of freedom had seemed inexorable
in the 1990s: As Eastern Europe was rejoining the rest of the Continent,
apartheid was being dismantled in South Africa, and India and China were
becoming full participants in the world economy.
But in
Iraq, Afghanistan and then even in the countries that made a bid for freedom
with the Arab Spring, the progress of the Western idea began to seem a lot less
inevitable. Russia and the former Central Asian republics developed a new,
post-communist form of authoritarianism; China never dropped the original,
communist version, though it finally figured out, at least for now, how to
combine it with robust economic growth.
Meanwhile,
back at home, free-market capitalism is feeling tired. Europe is economically
sclerotic, politically fragile and flirting with xenophobia. The United States
is still struggling to recover from the 2007-9 recession. The
neo-authoritarians in Beijing and Moscow are, by contrast, increasingly
confident.
In the
developing world, particularly Africa, China presents state capitalism as a
more effective alternative to paralysis-prone democracy. Russia, too, is
reasserting itself, and in ways designed to create maximum Western discomfort,
ranging from an 11th-hour chemical weapons deal in Syria to offering Edward
Snowden safe haven.
State
capitalism’s latest power play is in Ukraine, whose thuggish leadership backed
out of signing a trade and association agreement with Europe at the last
minute. It did so under fierce economic and political pressure from the
Kremlin. Brussels did not expect Moscow’s ferocious intervention. It should
have. Ukraine has always been Russia’s first and essential foreign conquest.
The
true surprise — and one that should inspire democrats around the world — is the
spontaneous and spirited resistance of Ukrainian civil society to this
about-face. For more than a week, Ukrainians have been protesting in the
Euromaidan, and in front of government buildings throughout the capital and
across the country. They have done so in miserable winter weather and in the
face of police brutality.
What is
important about the demonstrators is their certainty that democracy matters,
and that it can be made to work. That’s remarkable, because this is 2013, not
1991, or even 2004, when the Ukrainian Orange Revolution prevailed, and then
sputtered.
Democracy
and independence are no longer shiny imports. Ukrainians have enjoyed some
version of both for more than two decades; nine years ago, starting with
protests in the same square, they succeeded in getting the democracy and the
independence-minded president they wanted.
None of
that worked out very well. The democrats who came to power after the Orange
Revolution were such a disappointment that Viktor Yanukovich, who tried and
failed to seize the presidency in 2004, was democratically elected in 2010 and
is at the center of the current fight. If anyone has a right to be cynical
about the power of an engaged civil society to make a real difference, it is
Ukrainians. But they aren’t.
The
people have taken to the streets in support of political values, rather than
nationalist ones, or short-term economic interests. More than 20 years after
the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Ukrainian economy remains closely connected to
Russia’s, and Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Ukrainians will pay higher
prices for energy and face stiffer barriers to Russian markets if they choose
Europe.
For the
protesters, these economic sanctions are direct and personal. I spoke to one
Ukrainian executive whose company exports more than half of its products to
Russia. (For fear of economic reprisals, he asked that his name not be used.)
Since Ukraine strongly signaled a few months ago that it would sign the
European deal, exports are down 10 percent. If the agreement goes through, he
thinks his sales will fall by 40 percent. But he has spent several evenings in
the square, joined by many professional colleagues. His company’s bottom line
notwithstanding, he wants Ukraine to make what the protesters call “the
European choice.”
That’s
because, in some ways, history really did end in 1989. Authoritarian societies,
even ones that are able to generate strong economic growth, deny their citizens
the freedom and the dignity that Western market democracies provide. Over the
past two decades, Ukrainians have suffered from inept, corrupt and occasionally
brutal government. But under that ugly skin, a new, well-educated, well-traveled,
comprehensively wired generation has matured. These young Ukrainians know the
difference between democratic capitalism and state capitalism and they know
which one they want.
One
community on the Euromaidan is computer game developers. Ukraine has a lot of
them. One of the most successful is Andrew Prokhorov, head of 4A Games. He used
his Facebook page to urge fellow gamers to join him in the square. His activism
caught the attention of Polygon, an American gaming website.
“People
want to move toward European values, especially the younger generation,” Mr.
Prokhorov told Polygon. “The government aims for the quickest way to fill up
their wallets. There is no place for our corruptionists in Europe. I come out
to say, ‘Yes to Europe.’??”
From
Washington to Warsaw, democratic capitalism is demoralized. Our political
institutions aren’t up to the challenges of the 21st century, and the economy
isn’t delivering for the middle class in the way it did during the postwar era,
when the original version of the struggle between democracy and
authoritarianism, the Cold War, was at its peak.
That
conflict has become a cool war, and those of us on the democratic side of the
barricades aren’t so sure we have all the answers — or that it is a struggle we
are all that interested in engaging. Russia has no such qualms. China, where
Ukraine’s president traveled this week, knows which side it is on, too.
But as
in 1989 the most important fault line in the world today runs through a cold,
crowded, euphoric public square in Eastern Europe. The Ukrainians there are
fighting for themselves, but their battle should also help us to remember where
we stand and why it matters.
A More Machiavellian World than Ever. By Gianni Riotta. Real Clear World, December 19, 2013. Also at Worldcrunch.
“Duck Dynasty” vs. “Pajama Boy”: Two Americas? By Matt K. Lewis. The Daily Caller, December 18, 2013.
Duck
Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Says Being Gay Is Illogical: A Vagina Is More Desirable Than a Man’s Anus. By Zach Johnson. E! Online, December 18, 2013.
What the Duck? Phil Robertson interviewed by Drew Magary. GQ, January 2014.
The obligatory “Pajama Boy” post. By Allahpundit. Hot Air, December 18, 2013.
“Pajama Boy” on Obamacare: Will Millennials hear a grownup in a onesie? By Peter Grier. The Christian Science Monitor, December 18, 2013.
Big trouble for the Duck Dynasty folks. By Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham. Video. The O’Reilly
Factor. Fox News, December 19, 2013.
Paglia: Duck Dynasty uproar “utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist.” By Caroline May. The Daily Caller, December 19, 2013. Audio.
Disraeli and the Eastern Question. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, December 19, 2013. Also here.
The Real Problem With the American Studies Association’s Boycott of Israel. By Peter Beinart. The Daily Beast, December 17, 2013.
Beinart:
Why did
the ASA ignore far worse abuses in Burma and Congo? For the same reason lefties
rally endlessly against the economic policies of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund but not against the economic policies of North
Korea. And for the same reason that in the 1970s and 1980s, academics across
the globe boycotted apartheid South Africa while saying barely a word about
post-colonial African tyrants like Sekou Toure, Macias Nguema and Paul Biya.
Because for the global left, imperialism is the great sin of the modern world.
And only Western governments and institutions—the United States, South Africa,
the World Bank, IMF and now, Israel—can commit it. For institutions like the
ASA, Israel’s real crime is not being a country where Jews rule non-Jews. It’s
being a country where, in their view at least, whites rule non-whites. That’s
empirically dubious and morally myopic. But not all political action fueled by
moral myopia is wrong.
. . . .
The
best argument against the ASA’s boycott isn’t about double standards or
academic freedom. It’s about the outcome the boycott seeks to produce. The
Association’s boycott resolution doesn’t denounce “the Israeli occupation of
the West Bank.” It denounces “the Israeli occupation of Palestine” and “the
systematic discrimination against Palestinians,” while making no distinction
whatsoever between Israeli control of the West Bank, where Palestinians lack
citizenship, the right to vote and the right to due process, and Israel proper,
where Palestinians, although discriminated against, enjoy all three. That’s in
keeping with the “boycotts, divestments, and sanctions” movement more generally.
BDS proponents note that the movement takes no position on whether there should
be one state or two between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But it
clearly opposes the existence of a Jewish state within any borders. The BDS
movement’s call for “respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties” denies Israel’s
right to set its own immigration policy. So does the movement’s call for
“recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel
to full equality”, which presumably denies Israel’s right to maintain the
preferential immigration policy that makes it a refuge for Jews. Indeed,
because the BDS movement’s statement of principles makes no reference to Jewish
rights and Jewish connection to the land, it’s entirely possible to read it as
giving Palestinians’ rights to national symbols and a preferential immigration
policy while denying the same to Jews.
This is
the fundamental problem: Not that the ASA is practicing double standards and
not even that it’s boycotting academics, but that it’s denying the legitimacy
of a democratic Jewish state, even alongside a Palestinian one. I don’t think
that position is inherently anti-Semitic, but I do think it’s profoundly misguided.
Britain is not illegitimate because it has a cross on its flag and an Anglican
head of a state. Germany is not illegitimate because its immigration policy
favors members of a dominant ethnic group. Jews deserve a state that takes a
special interest in their self-protection, just like Palestinians do. And
disregarding both peoples’ deep desire for such a state is not a recipe for
harmonious bi-nationalism (if such a thing even exists); it’s a recipe for
civil war. That’s not just my view. It’s the view of the most popular
Palestinian leader alive, Marwan Barghouti, who said earlier this year that,
“If the two-state solution fails, the substitute will not be a binational
one-state solution, but a persistent conflict that extends based on an existential
crisis.”
Some Lessons in Effective Scapegoating. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, December 16, 2013.
On Academic Freedom and the BDS Movement. By Omar Barghouti. The Nation, December 14, 2013.
Boycott a sting to Israeli apartheid. By Yousef Munayyer. CNN, December 19, 2013.
The ASA’s Boycott of Israel Is Not as Troubling as It Seems. By David Greenberg. The New Republic, December 19, 2013.
How the ASA Became the RASA (Racist American Studies Association). By Divest This. The Algemeiner. December 19, 2013.
The Academic Boycott of Israel Is a Travesty. By Leon Wieseltier. The New Republic, December 17, 2013. Also here.
Wieseltier:
For all
the politicization of the ASA, it is indifferent to the politics of what it
piously deplores. The occupation of the Palestinian territories is a political
problem that requires a political solution. In the attempt to attain such a
solution, the Palestinians are not inert victims or bystanders to their fate.
They are historical actors; and their refusal to accept any of the plans for
Palestinian statehood that have been proposed to them—the imperfection of the
solution disturbs them more than the imperfection of the problem—is one of the
reasons—one of the reasons—that they
find themselves in a condition of such weakness. The Israeli settlement of the
West Bank indeed must end; but even if it ends, Israel is a state by right with
a perfectly understandable anxiety about its security. “We do not support the
boycott of Israel,” Mahmoud Abbas, in South Africa for Mandela’s funeral,
declared. He supports only a “boycott [of] the products of the settlements.”
“We have relations with Israel,” he added, “we have mutual recognition of
Israel.” But who is Abu Mazen to speak for the Palestinians, compared with an
associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San
Diego?
Comment by delta5297:
True,
there are many countries that commit far worse human rights abuses than Israel,
but only Israel is considered to be a First World democracy, and it must be
held to a higher standard.
Also,
the author criticizes the ASA for being “anti-Zionist.” But was Zionism ever a
good thing? Zionism, as I understand it, was the idea that the Jews should
create a state for themselves in their “historic homeland.” However the Zionists
either did not care about the consequences, or they considered the fact that
their ancestors lived there over two thousand years ago to give them greater
rights to the land than the people who were already living there in the
present. If this is what Zionism is, then it is a morally bankrupt ideology and
we are right to be anti-Zionists. This does not mean that Israel’s existence
should be abolished, after all the Israelis have been there for several decades
now, but it does mean that the historical record should be re-evaluated and
Zionism deemed immoral, just as the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans
was eventually deemed wrong in the United States. Moreover, when Zionist
sentiment is invoked by the religious-nationalist settlers as justification for
claiming the West Bank in whole or in part, this argument/sentiment must be
soundly rejected.
Lastly,
it may be true that Palestinian leaders unwisely rejected peace deals in the
past, but this does not give Israel the right to unilaterally alter the status
quo with its settlement expansions. It was once said that Israel lacked a
credible partner for peace on the Palestinian side, but today Mahmoud Abbas
could justifiably point to Benjamin Netanyahu and say the same thing.
The radical anti-Zionist Left. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, November 10, 2013.
A still, small leftwing voice against BDS. By Gerald M. Steinberg. The Times of Israel, November 10, 2013.
The Third Narrative. Two states, peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians. Ameinu.
NGO Monitor.
Divest This!
