Getting rid of tyrants

What President Bush formulated in his recent inauguration speech was a hypothesis more than a doctrine. He said that the security of the United States depends on the existence of states that respect human rights and organize their coexistence in accordance with democratic norms.

Simply put, people never want to wage war; it's the ruling cliques that drag them into these bloody conflicts. Therefore, if the people can express their choices freely, they will probably choose peace.

The hypothesis is reasonable, although historic experience doesn't always support it: The principal causes of World War I -- Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire -- were states that had parliaments, elections and a free press, but these control mechanisms were incapable of preventing a lethal conflict that cost nine million lives.

Bush is right, however, when he assumes that the world is safer when those who govern must answer to the societies that elected them. The truth is that Bush's stance is perfectly consistent with the historic moment in which we live. For the next three to four decades, the United States will be the only superpower in the world and has an exceptional opportunity to unify the rest of the nations according to the values and interests of U.S. society.

Bush-style government

On the other hand, that's exactly what's being done in other latitudes, in other ways. When the European Union asks the Eastern nations that abandoned the communist camp to behave democratically and in line with a market-based economic model to join the union, benefit from its assistance and gain the advantage of its huge commercial circuit, the EU is actively sponsoring the type of Western government that Bush advocates.

When the same EU closes its Cotonou Treaty's preferential accords to Third World nations that do not respect human rights, the EU is using the carrot-and-stick to induce a democratic behavior that agrees with its values.

That's similar to what happens when Latin American nations add to the Organization of American States' charter, or to the founding documents of Mercosur, a democratic clause that punishes and excludes any member nation that fails to respect the basic rights.

It's the same logic utilized today by Bush: The political organization of a state does not concern only the government in question. All states are equal. A murderous satrapy is not the same as a democracy. Democratic behavior is an inescapable condition for access to the advantages of international collaboration.

However, the reaction of a certain left to the democratizing activism that now prevails in the world is quite paradoxical. The left believes such an activism is an intolerable intrusion into the internal affairs of other nations and -- to disqualify it -- invokes the allegedly violated right to the exercise of national sovereignty.

The left forgets that, for more than a century, since Karl Marx created the First International in 1864, the left itself has claimed a right to ''revolutionary internationalism,'' leaping over borders, ethnicities and races to build a world according to its ideological postulates.

How can those who claim that ''right'' deny to their adversaries the moral authority to advocate the ''democratic internationalism'' practiced today by the United States, the EU and other nations with similar convictions?

Right-wing dictators

True, the tremendous cost of this effort to democratize the planet has yet to be quantified, but there is no doubt that the objective is praiseworthy. Ironically, the United States used to be reproached for its selective defense of democracy. Washington was accused, with reason, of maintaining good relations with right-wing dictators such as Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza or Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner. But now it is criticized for its overall attitude of attack against anti-democratic governments.

Will democracies triumph in this battle? They might. It's worth trying. In the early 19th century, when England undertook to end the slave trade, many voices raised arguments similar to those now heard against ''democratic internationalism.'' Fortunately an end was imposed to that loathsome traffic in humans.

Let's hope that all human beings someday may be free. Such an aspiration is a beautiful cause.

©2005 Firmas Press