course, better than facilitate export democracy dictatorships. Like the United States were used to doing in the sixties and seventies, in Greece or Chile Certainly better than fighting only to bring democracy dictatorships right as that of Somoza or Rezha Palha and to compromise with those communities, like the United States became accustomed to do at the time of President Carter, in the late seventies. We settled with a joke or puzzle the Iraq debacle in Afghanistan, and resign ourselves to the idea that being a province of the liberal sovereign is certainly better than being outside it, and maybe complacent because we have been able to defeat those who in the years of lead was able to destroy life but only in a virtual addressing the eternal dilemma of whether it is better to live in economic misery and moral under communist totalitarianism or live in economic misery and moral right under an autocracy. But the
fact is that all schemes are to be skipped when religion is (re) instrumentum become kingdoms, and in addition a religion, Islam, which is interpreted by the majority of his people so pervasive, archaic militarism. They do not help most Marxist readings based on the robustness of the economic structure and those based on the liberal tradition and culture. The war is no longer just a question of boundaries, but arms and armies of subways, intelligence and security checks. Like it or not democracy, understood as self-containment and extremist factions of the public, from state business has become a matter of international politics.
is why the so-called export della democrazia non è un ennesimo incidente di percorso dell’idealismo wilsoniano, ma una necessità strategica cui l’Occidente non può rinunciare, nonostante i primi fallimenti registrati. L’importante è non fare gli struzzi, imparare dagli errori, riconoscere che il momento elettorale è soltanto uno e non il più importante dei passaggi obbligati in un quadro di democratizzazione (come il successo di Hamas in Palestina emblematizza).
Vale forse la pena rileggere il saggio “Dittature e Doppio Standard”, pubblicato nel 1979 su Commentary diretto da Norman Podhorez, che avrebbe portato Jeane Kirkpatrick, a quel tempo democratica, all’ufficio di ambasciatore Usa presso le Nazioni Unite sotto President Ronald Reagan. As is well known Kirpatrick accused President Carter of psychological subjection against Communist regimes and to support policy without all the opposition movements to the right of autocracies, such as those of Somoza in Nicaragua and Palha Reza in Iran, despite its good relations with the USA. Kirpatrick's arguments were solid: "Generally speaking, the traditional autocrats tolerate social inequities, brutality and poverty while revolutionary autocracies create the". And comparing with the governments of mainland China to Taiwan, with North Korea that the South and the communist regimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with the previous ones, he noted that was beyond any reasonable doubt that the former were much more repressive than the latter. From this analysis of Jeane Kirkpatrick played a key role in the definition of tough anti-Soviet policy of Reagan, made of star wars and affirmation of human rights, missiles and support Jewish emigration, which was within a few years led to collapse of the Soviet regime. Reagan was accused of giving too much room for moral principles and of failing in traditional doctrine Kennan's "containment", ie the limitation of Soviet power within the borders of Yalta, which was the lodestar of Henry Kissinger and all the "realists ".
But now we are interested in at least the part the essay discussing its export of democracy, and its limits. John Stuart Mill in his essay on representative government, he described the three basic conditions: "First, you need that the population wants it, and secondly, that wants and is able enough to do what is necessary to keep it; third party who is willing and able to perform to perform the duties and functions that a representative government requires it. " In addition to this, Kirkpatrick writes, we need strong institutions to channel and contain the conflict and non-official participation tools that can aggregate the different interests and opinions in society, the roughness limarne, brokering compromises. If this missing will be very difficult for the Government failed to transfer the popular demands in public policy. The same American company, although it is universally taken for example, "has built its democracy through a war of independence, a first failure constitutional, civil war and a long process of gradual acquisition of voting rights that ultimately led to a democratic constitutional government. "
As the U.S. foreign policy against many anti-communist dictatorships is often found brutally indifferent to human rights, so that drew Kirpatrick however, was not to abandon their fate to the people subject to dictatorships. It was necessary to prevent rather in loro soccorso giungessero, magari con l’appoggio degli Usa (o, oggi, dell’Europa), movimenti rivoluzionari che tutto avrebbero fatto tranne costruire quei presupposti minimi di libertà individuale e organizzazione della società civile che consentono il progressivo sviluppo di una società democratica.
Sotto la presidenza Reagan avvenne dunque un cambiamento fondamentale nei rapporti con l’Urss e col blocco sovietico. Come ha scritto Ian Buruma, lo storico anglo-olandese che ha coniato il termine “occidentalismo” per indicare l’avversione ovunque diffusa alla cosiddetta pax americana, “una volta che gli americani decisero di appoggiare la democrazia anziché l’oppressione in nome dell’anticomunismo, i democratici ne trassero profitto e il divario fra idealismo americano e interesse personale nazionale si restrinse”.
L’attacco dell’11 settembre, grazie anche alle riflessioni dei neoconservatori americani, in buona parte eredi diretti della lezione di Jeane Kirkpatrick (che faceva parte dell’American Enterprise Institute) ha ancora una volta portato il governo degli Usa a ribaltare la strategia verso il totalitarismo, che oggi ha assunto le vesti arabescate dell’Islam politico. Significativo è l’esordio del documento firmato dalla Casa Bianca il 17 settembre 2002 e intitolato ‘La strategia per la sicurezza nazionale degli Stati Unititi d’America’: “La grande battaglia del XX secolo between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom - and one possible model for the success of a nation: freedom, democracy and free enterprise. In the twenty-first century, only nations that share a commitment to the defense of fundamental human rights and to ensure the political and economic freedoms will be able to develop the potential of their people and assure them a prosperous future. People everywhere want to be able to speak freely, choose who you are governed, have their own faith, educate their children - men and women - own property and enjoy the benefits of their work. These values \u200b\u200bof freedom are right and true for every person in every society, and the duty to defend these values \u200b\u200bagainst their enemies is the common appeal by all freedom-loving peoples all over the world and in every age. "
Certainly, the rhetoric may sound false to American ears disenchanted European, whose ears were torn apart by too many explosions, and Buruma is quite right when he observes that the'occidentalismo '"was born in Europe as a reaction to European science award , Enlightenment, and the separation of church and state, especially the latter. Westerners see the West as a modern technological society without human soul. " Moreover the echo of these positions risuona sometimes in official documents of the Catholic Church itself, and much more frequently in the preaching of many Christians who are fascinated by the movements of resistance against capitalism and modernization.
But today, the friend-enemy distinction, which has always been based on the foreign policy of great powers, is not as clear as in the past.
Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic vice president who in 1963 succeeded John F. Kennedy, summed up perfectly the realist strategy of its time, referring to Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua: "We know it's a motherfucker, but he's our son of a bitch." Stop shooting in the eighties to apply it to a powerful U.S. ally (and USSR) in containing Iran's Khomeini, the Rais Iraqi Saddam Hussein.
But now what to think for example of the Saudi royal family? On the one hand claims to be a faithful ally of the West and the U.S. and weaves tight economic relations with international investors, on the other granting more power to the Wahhabi religious authorities that embody the most extreme reading of the Koran and mobilize millions of people to holy war against the Western infidels and Jews.
The sons of bitches are increasingly those, but less and less "ours." The power and democracy are more than before. We must learn to better use the power of democracy.
This article will be published in the next issue of the journal Charta Minuta
