Partially Reviewing Sharansky…

I hail from a country which still lives with the vestiges of a neo-colonial past. Whether illusory or real, the pervasive influence of France through the entire economic and political structure in Cameroon is evident. Even after a review of the “françafrique” (a term which harkens to the neo-colonial legacy) in the mid-1990s, those influences remain. These are the same influences which are said to account (to some extent) to the persistence of the monolithic Biya regime in power. So I know something about living in a “fear Society.” So much for the power of freedom to overcome tyranny and oppression.

After reading over 4 of 7 chapters of Natan Sharansky’s “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror,” I understand why he is one of President Bush’s favorite authors. He was extensively quoted in G.W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural address. Sharansky presents a simplistically selective case for democracy and freedom in the Middle East, based almost entirely upon his experience, living in totalitarian Russia. I have not read the entire book yet. However, as one inclined to the objective presentation of fact, the first chapter of the book sounded like a propagandistic justification of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as a quest to spread freedoms and democracy.

Sharansky’s simplistic quest for moral clarity based on dichotomization between “free” and “fear” societies and "democracy" and “tyranny,” fails to account for the majority of countries around the globe which have opted for a middle ground between totalitarianism and democracy, which Carothers will label as “pseudo-democracies.” While I agree with his perception that “an election does not a democracy make,” very little value is found in his attempt to delineate interest-defined and morally defined foreign policy decision making. The invasion of Iraq was as much about natural resources as it was about the geo-strategic remapping of the Middle East. The invasion of Afghanistan was as much a national security imperative as it was a firm response to international terrorism. It was a response to international terrorism short of taking action against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which appears as accountable for spawning Wahabism as Afghanistan was for providing a staging ground for Al Qaeda activity.

Hence for Sharansky to praise the Bush administration for its pursuit of freedoms, while blatantly dismissing the interest-driven imperative underlying this quest, is to devolve to the same simplistic explication of far more complex foreign policy decision-making issues. Furthermore, Sharansky makes a case for democracy without prescribing a methodology for the global spread of democracy and freedoms. Full of contradictions, Sharansky emphasizes the role of the Soviet Jewry as an internal force pushing for freedoms in the former Soviet Union. At the same time he does not propose a specific construct for the fusion of internal forces and external forces to dislodge hegemonic monoliths from power.

Does that imply the primacy of war as the most persuasive option in societal transformation of totalitarian states into democratic states? I read a much better case for democracy in Fareed Zakaria’s “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.” If you intend to make a case for democracy in the future. I'd propose youuse Zakaria and not Sharansky.