[Mb-civic] MUST READ: A more democratic world rejects Bush's globalism - Robert Kuttner - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  A more democratic world rejects Bush's globalism

By Robert Kuttner  |  February 4, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

THE GOOD NEWS: Democracy is breaking out all over. The awkward news: The 
more that people freely vote, the more fervently they reject the global 
designs of George W. Bush and the America he projects.

In the Middle East, the people have freely chosen two governments that 
could not be more a repudiation of Bush's vision for the region, nor 
more alarming to broader hopes of peace and stability -- Hamas in 
Palestine and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Even in Iraq, whose 
election was held under direct American tutelage, our preferred henchmen 
were decisively ousted.

In Latin America, voters in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and most 
recently Chile, have chosen governments that are social-democratic at 
best and caudillo-populist at worst. Mexico, where a popular radical, 
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leads all polls, is probably next. Some, 
like Chile's new president, Michelle Bachelet, are admirable, others 
less so. But none supports Bush's vision of corporate globalism.

America was once a universal beacon. Ever since America asserted global 
leadership in the mid-20th century, people around the world have 
expressed nothing so much as ambivalence.

They despised the US military might that frequently installed local 
dictators who served Washington and Wall Street, enriched themselves, 
and slaughtered domestic opponents; they continued to admire America's 
internal democracy and vitality.

They hated the economic imperialism that often made their local 
economies appendages of America's; they liked the consumer products and 
spread of advanced technologies.

They resented the universal projection of America's pop culture at the 
expense of their own; they wore the jeans, bought the records, and 
flocked to the movies.

The most effective of US postwar presidents deftly navigated this 
complex ambivalence. They maximized what people everywhere like about 
America -- the openness, the idealism, the dynamism, the support for 
universal human rights. American presidents sometimes resorted to force, 
but tried to do so after consultation and consensus. Until lately, 
global public opinion, on balance, respected America.

Enter George W. Bush. He offered the worst possible combination of 
strategies -- unilateral swagger, combined with loudly proclaimed 
promotion of democracy. Should anyone be surprised when the democratic 
elections produce a string of repudiations? Or that America dare not 
foment democracy in its faithful despotic allies, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, 
lest the people vote in two more radically Islamist regimes?

It used to be an article of faith that free elections and the American 
way of life went together. During the Cold War we reassured ourselves 
that no nation had ever freely voted in a communist government. But 
evidently the post-Cold War world is different.

Yes, the roots of this backlash go far beyond the presidency of George 
W. Bush. They date back a century, to the era of gunboat diplomacy in 
Latin America, and the imperial carving-up of the former Ottoman empire 
into modern Mideast states of convenience, ruled by instant dynasties 
created by Winston Churchill and western oil companies.

More recently, the backlash reflects local resentment of the 
''Washington consensus" -- the imposition of one-size-fits-all economic 
policies that have shredded local safety nets and advantaged a global 
corporate class at the expense of ordinary people. But however complex 
their roots, the festering resentments are now deeply embedded in local 
cultures.

Some of those cultures have features that are truly odious by universal 
standards, like repression of women, brutal versions of summary justice, 
and religious fanaticism. But they become more deeply popular, precisely 
to the extent that America misunderstands them and attempts unilaterally 
to impose its own order.

Bush is not a widely read or worldly man. What's truly astonishing is 
that the neo-conservative cabal of advisers who got control of his 
foreign policy, many of them serious intellectuals, could believe that 
the United States could simultaneously promote disdainful imposition of 
its military might and expect that proliferation of democracy would 
yield popular governments that were also faithful US clients.

Given this backlash, some neo-cons have lately put in a kind word for 
empire. This, at least, has the virtue of consistency. But empire is not 
exactly attractive to the global public, much less feasible.

The world that Bush inherited was not an easy place in which to promote 
US-style civil society, or a civil world order. But Bush has poured oil 
on the flames (or in his case, flames on the oil).

It will take decades to undo the damage and restore a world in which 
pro-democracy again equals pro-America. In the meantime, we need nothing 
so much as an outbreak of democracy at home.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/04/a_more_democratic_world_rejects_bushs_globalism/
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