Review: The Case For Democracy, Natan Sharansky

Just finished this book (The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror)on the plane back from NYC. Picked it upon Cam’s recommendation. Overall, an excellent and very timely read, although Natan is quite long-winded to make his point. While this book is on the required reading for the entire Bush administration and while many cynics label Sharansky a right wing apologist, they clearly have not read the book nor do they understand the roots of his beliefs. Sharansky’s message on the power of freedom to overcome tyranny and terror is rooted deep in his own struggle as a Soviet dissident which was largely successful in bringing freedom not only to Soviet Jews, but to all the Soviet Union. The underlying premise is so simple, many people miss it’s power: ALL PEOPLES WANT FREEDOM. In a Free society, all people are free to express their views without fear of arrest, imprisonment or physical harm: what he calls the “town square test.” In this way, most countries cleave clearly into two camps, societies of freedom and societies of fear. Free societies tend toward peace (although not always), fear societies NEVER seek peace, they ALWAYS require an enemy (internal or external) to maintain their rule over the people. In free societies, the rulers derive their power from the people, in fear societies, the regime (communist, dictator, strong-man, pseudo elected, etc.) exists solely for SELF PRESERVATION even when that is in opposition to the best interests of the people. In free societies if leaders to things the majority of the people don’t like, they will be thrown out and new leaders brought in peacefully. In fear societies, this transition is rarely made and usually not peaceful when it is.

Sharansky spends allot of time making his point by recounting how the Soviet Union was brought down through the Helsinki accords and how the Israel/Palestine conflict is NOT being resolved because the Oslo accords take fundamentally the wrong approach. Natan effectively makes the case that accommodation of strongmen who repress the freedoms of their people NEVER works to curtail the ambitions of a fear society, although that is usually the first tool in the State Department’s belt. There is a deeply embedded assumption in the State Department that accommodation of a strong-man that “we can work with “ is better than allowing the messy process of democracy to happen with unknown results. That is why America has coddled dictators for so long. Bush is changing that. And that is a good thing for the world and the people ruled by those dictators. detente was a policy of appeasement of the Soviet Union. It only allowed them a breather from outside pressure to get stronger on their internal controls. We didn’t change anything by empowering the dictator. Only when in Helsinki we tied our support of the regime to their internal treatment of their OWN PEOPLE was the regime forced into a policy of Glasnost (openness) that eventually exposed the emperor as having no clothes.

Sharansky puts forward a pretty compelling case for how the whole dissent thing can (and has in the the Soviet Union and across the former communist world) allowed fear societies to transform to free societies. In a society of fear there are three kinds of people: True believers, doublethinkers and dissidents. The true believers are the hard core ones who started the regime and maybe really believed in its goals at the outset. But in every regime (religious, communist, etc.) which tries to impose it’s will on the people (even if it came to power through a “popular uprising”) and does not tolerate dissent, they will have to resort to ever more draconian methods of controlling the people over time. So the cost of dissent goes up. The level of open public dissent can be measured directly by the cost of open public dissent. Under Stalin and Sadam, the price of ANY dissent was DEATH. The media and all public institutions are controlled by the regime, so information flow is limited. From the outside it can look like there is no dissent. So are the people really happy? Should democracies ignore what is happening because there is no clear sign of dissent? Where does the dissent go when the price is very high? Into the doublethinkers. These are the VAST majority of a fear society who publicly tow the regime’s line, but privately want freedom. Under Sadam when reporters did “man on the street” interviews they never got any complaints. Neither did you get those under the Taliban or former Soviet Union. I bet if you did such interviews in North Korea today you wouldn’t find much dissent. The price is too high. The people are expressing double think. The cost of dissent in the most extreme fear societies CAN be brought down by external pressure. The Helsinki accords forced the Soviets to stop killing dissidents and merely imprison them on trumped up charges in show trials. International organizations monitored the dissidents and reported on their treatment. The spotlight was on. More people dissented. More cruelty was exposed, more freedom of expression resulted (supported by outside) since what the regime wanted (western legitimacy, technology transfer, support) was tied to their treatment of their dissidents. In this scenario, the doublethinkers, the VAST majority of the people, sit on the sidelines until it seems safe to choose a side. They invariably choose the side of freedom, usually the dissidents. Down goes the Soviet Union.

Now Sharansky is not a Bush apologists, because I bet he would not approve of the military tactics of causing regime change in Iraq, although I know he agrees with the goal which is a free Iraq society that respects all human rights. Only societies that respect the rights of their own people can be expected to respect the rights of their neighbors. This leads to the Palestinian problem. The Oslo accords basically say make the despot, unellected Arafat powerful and you will have peace. It is detente all over again. Yet Arafat has used his power not to help the Palestinian people, but to build a society of fear and hate. The PLO media daily call for “a million martyrs” against Israel, the schools teach that Israel has no right to exist, the PLO controls all the money and aide coming in and only funnels it to those that agree with it, dissent is not allowed. Sharansky argues that a policy which tied support for the Palestinian state with the ending of their culture of fear and hate would actually lead to peace. I tend to agree. Israel is the external enemy that the PLO regime has used as the excuse for their repressive command and control tactics. When Arafat died, he personally was a BILLIONAIRE while his people live in squalid camps. He built a strong-man regime that feed hate and terror against the US and Israel. This will not be dismantled over night. Yet I have got to believe that the majority of Palestinians under Arafat were doublethinkers. They couldn’t be true believers wanting to live in the poverty imposed by a terrorist only interested in self-preservation. It will be interesting to see where it goes now.

Here are my favorite quotes from the book. They mostly ring true to me. How bout you?

It is one thing to topple the Taliban and Sadam and install new strongmen in their place. It is quite another to replace those brutal tyrannies with free societies. For this, there are fewer precedents. (which is exactly why it is hard, but the only road to true peace)

Naturally, those who think that terror is largely unrelated to nondemocratic rule will not be convinced that the War on Terror can be won with the advance of liberal democratic values. They might argue instead of waging war on poverty or redressing the grievances that ostensibly drive terrorist to commit their savagery. (sound like a political party in America? This is simply wrong. Non-democratic rulers (of countries or Al Queda) fermenting hate against external enemies are the cause of terror and they must be dealt with directly)

Freedom House reports “Recent history shows that Islam is not inherently incompatible with democratic values. Indeed, if we take into account the large Muslim populations of such countries as India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the Islamic population of North America and Western Europe, the majority of the world’s Muslims live under democratically constituted governments.”

Only when the basic institutions that protect a free society are firmly in place - such as a free press, the rule of law, independent courts, political parties - can free elections be held. (hey don’t expect elections a couple months after toppling a despot to be true freedom).

..to stay in power, nondemocratic leaders invariably build and maintain fear societies.

Dictators do not depend on their people; their people depend on them.

nondemocratic regimes stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured. The result is that while the mechanics of democracy make democracies inherently peaceful, the mechanics of tyranny make nondemocracies inherently belligerent.

Twenty years later, the KGB has disappeared, the Soviet Union has disintegrated, global communism has collapsed, over one million Jews have left the big prison called the USSR, and hundreds of millions of people are free. One would think that no more proof was needed of the power of freedom to change the world. Just as they were wrong a generation ago about Russia, and two generations ago about Japan and Germany, the skeptics are wrong today.

The formula that triggered democratic revolution in the Soviet Union had three components: People inside who yearned to be free, leaders outside who believed they could be, and policies that linked the free world’s relations with the USSR to the Soviet regime’s treatment of its own people

…the extent of dissent in a society…is largely a function of price.

…only by ending the Palestinians’ fear society will it be possible to end Palestinian suffering.

We must also not wait for the support of international organizations. Many of the countries that wield influence in these organizations are nondemocratic regimes. Surely, we cannot rely on those who deny freedom to their own people to support efforts to expand freedom around the world.

Just as the institution of slavery has been all but wiped off the face of the earth, so too can government tyranny become a thing of the past.

Summary: A compelling look at a very current issue. This IS about world peace. Peace only comes through freedom. If you look at what has happened in the former communist countries, you know that it can happen in the mid east. I rate this 4 of 5 only because it is a bit long-winded to get the point across. But the point and perspective is one everyone would do well to understand.