The Real World of Democracy

Here’s the riddle: how could the British hold Iraq under mandate for many years, 1919-1958 or so, with nominal forces, yet the Americans now cannot keep reasonable order with two hundred thousand?

Or consider the parallel of Vietnam. How could the French hold all of Indochina from 1885 to 1945 with only 14,000 or so troops, yet the US could not hold it with 500,000?

Are the Americans simply incompetent?

Not militarily; perhaps diplomatically. The answer seems to be that it is much easier to hold a country as a colony than to turn it into a democracy.

And this stands to reason. Making a democracy is not merely a matter of holding elections. Elections are not going to produce a viable government unless there are existing organizations—parties, if you will—with established lines of authority, ready to run in them and then, if they win, step in and take over government in an orderly fashion.

Such organizations may be thick on the ground in established democracies. But in a country that has previously had an autocratic government, this is unlikely to be the case. For the simple reason that, in order to seize and hold power, an autocratic government is likely to systematically suppress all such organizations.

There are only two likely exceptions. Most obvious is the armed forces. By its nature, it has the discipline and command structure to operate as a large unit. This is far more important than its possession of weapons. Autocratic governments are caught in a bind here: they hobble or suppress the army, they leave themselves vulnerable to threats from without. Accordingly, the army is the most common source of government overthrow.

Unfortunately, in Iraq, the US disbanded the army. Therefore, it could not be used as an alternative government. In Vietnam, similarly, there was no established, professional Vietnamese officer corps when the American became involved. Defense had been the business of the French, at least at higher levels.

The second possibility is a religious organization. This is why the mosque, and “Islamism,” is the centre of opposition to Middle Eastern governments generally today: it is not easy for an autocratic government to suppress a majority religion, though many have tried. That religious structure, organization, and system of loyalties can then be adapted as a political tool. This worked very effectively, for example, in casting off repressive governments in Communist Poland, in British India, and among blacks in the US South. It is why the government of China is so concerned about Falun Gong.

Unfortunately, with the Shiites in Iraq, as with the Buddhists in Vietnam, the US finds this an unacceptable option. Indeed, faced with a Buddhist demand for popular elections in Vietnam, the US opposed them—because they feared the Buddhist parties would win. Similarly, Donald Rumsfeld is on record saying that Iraq can have any sort of government it wants—except a religious one.

This perhaps reveals a disturbing and self-destructive anti-religious prejudice on the part of US policymakers—anti-Buddhist in the 1960s, anti-Islam today.

But there is also some reason for concern. Majority rule is always dangerous to minorities. Democracy can, accordingly, be a disaster in terms of human rights. The US tends to think of the two as going together; they do not. Hitler, for example, was democratically elected. To create a democracy that is prepared to respect the rights of the minority is no small accomplishment.

And so, in both Vietnam and Iraq, minorities have had reason to fear democracy: Catholics, Cao Daists, and Montagnards in Vietnam, Catholics, Kurds, and Sunnis in Iraq. Accordingly, the attempt to establish majority rule is quite likely to lead to civil war. It happened in South Vietnam; it happened in Ireland; it happened in India. Heck, it happened in the US. It seems to be happening in Iraq.

And then there’s the very hardest bit: not only do you need organizations outside government, and plausible guarantees of respect for minority rights. You also need a gentleman’s agreement that, once in power, you will leave the doors open to the other side to one day overthrow you. And perhaps then hang you. That’s asking a lot, and requires massive trust on all sides. But without it, the first free election is also going to be the last.

Unfortunately, the US may have just blown that one as well, with the hanging of Saddam Hussein.


So: in Iraq, how does one get there from here? Given all the mistakes that have already been made?

The Americans are not likely to want to hear it, but my answer is this: historically, the situation most likely to transition to a working democracy appears to be a monarchy. An established, secure monarch can always run the experiment with the proviso that, should things get out of hand, he can step in and call a new election or appoint a new prime minister or even take back the reins of government for a time. If trusted personally, he can stand as guarantor for any threatened minority, and for any defeated government. This has worked to peacefully produce democracy in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Belgium; to a lesser extent, a period of monarchy seems to have aided the transition in Japan, Italy, Cambodia, the US, and Greece.

It also, not incidentally, worked passably well for the British in Iraq. Finding the country too hot to handle at first, they brought in Faisal ibn Husayn, made him king through a plebiscite, gave him a constitution including an elected assembly, and retired comfortably to the background for the rest of the mandate.

It worked once, and could still work again.


Failing this, military regimes can also sometimes produce democracy; again with the military able to step in to referee if things go sour. This has worked, if not always smoothly, in Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Korea, Taiwan. In a sense, it worked in the US: George Washington, a military leader, got things on their feet, and eventually handed over to a civilian regime.


Can a religious regime also produce democracy? Yes indeed: they have in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Utah, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, Holland, Switzerland. It was the origin of one of the world’s oldest democracies, San Marino. Again, the religious authority, if generally respected, can serve as a guarantor and a referee in those first few, awkward years of building trust. The same process may be taking place right now in Iran—but again, the US doesn’t like it, because its leaders have come, despite its own history, to fear religion.

And religious regimes have a natural check—the ethics of that religion—against turning into a bloodthirsty tyranny, which military regimes and aristocracies do not.

The specific moral I would derive here is that the US should lose its anti-religious prejudice, and cooperate fully with the Shiite clerics in Iraq. With the sectarian tensions, it might be well too to float the idea of a return of the Hashemite throne of Iraq; though that would at this late date require a rewritten constitution.

The general moral: strong independent organizations outside government are our ultimate guarantee of liberty. Resist any government that seeks to disempower them.