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The spread and use of Democracy as a geo-political change agent, has dominated American foreign policy in South Asia since World War II. Was Pakistan's recent democratic election really about democracy? Inquires Chris Cork
Compared to the European nations and some of the pre-colonial countries of Africa, United States is a young country. Youth and folly are often synonymous where the follies of our youth are usually forgiven by our elders as we move towards maturity.
America was built on a spirit of independence and self-help, on the rights of the individual and once the dust of the Civil war had settled, on the Constitution. The country was peopled by a polyglot of races who pushed westwards across the Great Plains and over the Rockies in lumbering covered wagons called Prairie Schooners. The settlers going westwards faced appalling hardship, and many died without realising their dream. Some decorated their wagons with slogans, a common one being ‘California or Bust – which translates into ‘I am going to get to California at all costs, including perhaps my own life and that of my family and companions’. Many got there, and laid the foundations of what is today the world’s only ‘superpower.’
Today, America is settled from coast-to-coast, prosperous and powerful. But young, r. Rich kids often have an inflated sense of their own importance and place in the world and their follies, fuelled by wealth and privilege, tend towards the grandiose. The Great American Project of the last hundred years has been to proselytise the creed of democracy, and whilst hardly a folly is not a universal panacea either.
Over the last 25 years democratisation has been a central and massively funded pillar of American foreign policy, with over $1 billion spent in the 1990’s alone on the post-socialist European countries. At the same time democracy was being aggressively promoted in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia. Where there was very limited investment in the process of democratisation, it was perhaps the place most in need of it – the Middle East; a folly coupled with a political conceit that now bites the hand that failed to feed it, a folly that dominates the skyline across the Muslim world.
As of 2000, about 63% of the world’s population in 120 countries are living under democratic rule or something that to American eyes at least, approximates it. Pakistan has never matured as a truly democratic state, and even in the periods (now the least part of the life of the state) of civilian rule the military were closely engaged in the management of civilian powers and institutions. A façade of democracy has been maintained since the coup that overthrew the last Nawaz Sharif’s government; a facade of sufficient cosmetic value to satisfy the nebulous criteria applied to those states that America finds useful partners in fighting The War on Terror, its principal foreign-policy preoccupation since 9/11.
Democracy, markets and globalisation nowadays all come in a single unwieldy package that for many countries on the receiving end of the drive to democratise the rest of the world a-la America, has been a Pandora’s Box of troubles and woes. The partnerships that America forms in the course of pursuing its goal are less than altruistic, and the commentator and foreign policy scholar John L. Harper observes…’the one indispensable factor in forming reliable partnerships is not democracy or the lack of it, but self interest, and there is not the slightest reason to think that will change.’ Democracy, then, does not seem to be a prerequisite in the spreading of democracy – and the mantra of ‘Democracy or Bust’ has picked up a few casualties along the way in south Asia, with Vietnam being the most costly to both the target and the delivery system. India has been a beneficiary, and the Green Revolution that sparked the growth evident today was in part fuelled by American money, and India has managed to avoid the traps of military rule to emerge as the most powerful of the democracies in the region.
Within the process of democratisation lays both the subtext and the assumption on the part of western policy and intellectual cadres that democracy and the markets go hand in hand. However, a glance at the countries around the world that are managed by a market-dominant minority (such as Pakistan) suggests that for some the opposite may be true. The effect of even a limited democracy – the democracy-lite of the Musharraf years – on vibrant and bullish markets has been a recipe for instability, upheaval and ethnic and sectarian conflicts as the increasingly affluent minority who occupy the market spaces outstrip (in every sense associated with power and disposable income) the majority and come to dominate the institutions of governance.
No more is this true than the way in which a rapacious and avaricious military machine has invaded the markets in Pakistan; creating a creature dubbed ‘Milbus’ (‘military business’) by Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa in her scholarly and defining work ‘Military Inc.’ (2007). The drawing back of military personnel from civilian bodies by the new Chief of Army Staff is a step towards amending the relationship, but the reality is that Milbus is like a bulk oil carrier – difficult to stop in a short time and distance and even harder to turn around.
Amy Chua, writing in ‘World on Fire’ (2003) suggests that in countries with a market-dominant minority, the forces of democratisation and marketisation directly collide. The markets enrich the minority whilst democratisation increases the political voice and –sometimes but not always – power of the poorer majority. Thus, it may be that the minority have no investment in democracy or its attendant processes beyond a minimal compliance in order to ensure a place in the comity of nations. Chua posits that there may be a backlash against the minority when the tension between the minority and the majority finds a trigger; a backlash that can take three forms.
The first is a backlash against markets and targeting the wealth of the minority. We have only to consider the havoc wrought on Pakistan’s banks and commercial and financial institutions in the days following the Bhutto assassination to see the reality of Chua’s hypothesis.
The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favourable to a market-dominated minority. Consider here the attempts to derail the electoral process in Pakistan. ‘Militants’ – shadowy figures rarely clearly identified – continued to bomb and kill all through the run-up to polling; creating an environment of fear among the electorate that certainly inhibited the process of campaigning and may have significantly influenced voter turnout in many parts of the country. The last thing the ‘militants’ (who may also be sections of the ruling elites or their proxies who have an investment in the maintenance of the feudal status-quo) want is the consolidation of a secular democracy, the empowerment of women and a host of other impediments to the establishment of a Caliphate.
The third, and by far the most terrifying form of backlash is ethnic cleansing and other forms of majority-supported (read disempowered and/or poor) ethnic violence. This has not occurred in Pakistan but the ingredients to create an environment in which it might happen are all there. The religious, sectarian, ethnic and provincial fault lines widen by the month, exacerbated by a profound sense of national unease, power outages, rising prices and a pervasive rumour-mongering that feeds the paranoia from which ethnic cleansing springs. A nation as hot-blooded and prone to irrational violence as is Pakistan could yet see a backlash, a product of the process of democratisation coupled with globalization that would make the massacres of Rwanda and Kosovo pale into a dreadful insignificance.
The Great Democracy Project rumbles on and real democracy, devoid of military trappings, has yet to emerge in Pakistan and perhaps never will if only because ‘democracy’ is not a unisex garment. America will continue to play a significant part in the life of Pakistan and will continue, though slightly tongue-in-cheek, to promote ‘democracy’ there but at the same time wary of altering a fine balance. The ruling elites have done little to modify the underlying and ossified feudal cultural structures, and give no indication that they will allow significant change to these structures in the foreseeable future. It is in neither their interests nor the interests of America, which will have observed that in some states in the region where a meaningful functional democracy has emerged there has been a marked swing towards the election of governments that in religious terms are considerably to the right of where America is comfortable with them.
The last thing that Uncle Sam wants is a democratically elected theocracy in Pakistan, and the best way of ensuring that does not happen is to support the devil you know, rather than gamble with the one you don’t. The really intriguing question is whether current US foreign policy is going to survive regime change – in the White House.
Chris Cork is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. He writes extensively on Pakistan’s domestic politics and society.
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