Financial Times Deutschland, Germany

Head Winds for the Reign of the People

 

"Supporters of a liberal, humanistic respect for basic democratic values now must do battle on many fronts - and their greatest ally - the USA - now constitutes one of the greatest battle fronts of all."

 

By Thomas Klau

                         

 

Translated by Julian Jacob

 

November 29, 2007

 

Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)

Authoritarian governments are witnessing a renaissance that the democrats of the world must fight – and they must do so forcefully.

 

Eighteen years have passed since Francis Fukuyama gained worldwide attention and fame with his forecast of the “End of History .”

 

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such, wrote the American intellectual wrote in his essay, published in the revolutionary year of 1989. Mankind may have reached the end of its ideological evolution, namely, "the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

 

Fukuyama long ago distanced himself from this analysis, and not a few of his statements now seem like hastily formulated nonsense. Nevertheless, for a long time they had an astonishing resonance. The Soviet dictatorship that competed with the liberal democracies had disintegrated into dust, and the USA was the shining proof that a working democracy and military superiority are compatible. After this experience with the Soviet bloc, the triumph of liberal government seemed imminent in China, Asia and eventually even Africa.

 

DEMOCRACY ON THE DEFENSIVE

 

Tempi passati [Italian for Time has past]. Nowadays the hope of democracy’s triumph no longer dominates. Quite the contrary - the fear of a lasting renaissance of authoritarianism now dominates. In Russia as in China, authoritarian central governments enjoy tremendous popular support thanks to strong economic growth; in Latin America, Venezuelan Hugo Chavez demonstrates that in the southern half of the continent, the long-term dominant trend toward more democracy is not at all irreversible. The situation seems even more dismal in the Arab countries, where almost everywhere, free elections would bring to power Islamic disciples of Savonarola , who would usher in democratic rule to achieve Puritanical terror.

 

In the central organ of the German Zeitgeists, the news magazine Der Spiegel, Dirk Kurbjuweit recently wrote of Chancellor Angela Merkel's most recent visit to China and of the sense of loneliness on the part of democrats. And he asked a heretical question. “It's getting exciting to see which side capital will gravitate toward in the future,” Kurbjuweit wrote. “Up to now it was on the side of democracy, since it has always been democratic industrial states which adopted the market economy. The Chinese model could eventually become an alternative. Man sometimes forgets that democracy could be only a matter of an era, and not the end of history.”

 

A Renaissance of Puritanism, a Renaissance of authoritarianism, and perhaps the decoupling of free-market principles from the principles of democracy - these are the messages heard by people today. And to this we must add the weakening of the fundamental values of democratic humanism, such as the ban on torture and arbitrary imprisonment in the United States. The wind has changed and it's blowing in the wrong direction.

 

America's democratic discourse has credibility, where Europe's punch has been lost - because the European Union, with the failure of its constitutional project, has created the impression that it's not worthy of the role of pioneer for a democratic post-national world order.

 

But Fukuyama's rosy forecasts of 1989 were just as wrong as it would be to inhale the now pessimistic visions of the future of democracy. No one today can reliably predict the development of China's political structures and political culture. In the first post-boom generation in China, prosperity and political stability are a matter of course for a numerically significant number of children. It may be that the primary issue for this generation of Chinese students will be increasing their personal wealth. But China's history also makes other developments plausible. In its turn, Russia may persist for decades more in authoritarianism, or perhaps it will benefit by discovering the taste of an opposition rebellion. If, of course, a future President has less luck and acumen than the incumbent, Vladimir Putin.

 

Looking back to the historic fall of the Berlin Wall 18 years ago, first and foremost we can see how quickly the wheel of history spins, and how quick certainties turn to error. Tempi passati [time has past], said my grandmother. Born in 1897, she lived through the empire, the First World War, the revolution, the Republic, the dictatorship, the Second World War and finally, experience the republic again. Compared to the political upheaval which those born in the 1860’s had to cope with, the changes of the past 20 years are largely irrelevant. The tendency to lose perspective by obsessing about the present is too often forgotten.

 

THE STRUGGLE FOR BASIC HUMAN VALUES

 

But the fact remains that supporters of a liberal, humanistic respect for basic democratic values now must do battle on many fronts - and their greatest ally - the USA - now constitutes one of the greatest battle fronts of all.

 

Out of the present flowering of authoritarian regimes and schools of thought, it would be exactly wrong to conclude that the struggle for greater democracy is a losing battle. Precisely because liberal democracy is under increasing pressure, its adherents must speak out against those who lay aside basic human values, like the authoritarian regime in China. And in similar fashion they must oppose the autocracy in Russia, where democracy is seen as a political stage play.

 

It is, incidentally, more than a shame that today's SPD leadership [Social Democratic Party] wants to suppress this simple insight, and more than a stroke of luck that, instead of Gerhard Schroeder, Angela Merkel is cooking the foreign policy soup at the Chancellor’s office.

 

Thomas Klau is an FTD columnist and heads the Paris Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

 

Click for German Version