Prosperity comes before democracy
by Conrad Black https://www.conradmblack.com/736/prosperity-comes-before-democracy Libya's 6.6 million people have a per capita income of about $13,000, low by Western standards, inexcusably so given their oil resources, but far from grindingly poor. The average life expectancy is about 77 and the literacy rate is about 90%. The country's problem is that for 42 years it has been despotically governed by a psychotic transvestite. Bahrain has about a fifth of Libya's population, and a little better than twice its per capita income, its women are emancipated and it is a relatively free country. But it is a majority Shiite country governed entirely by the Sunni Al-Khalifa family in a comparatively gentle but unmistakably authoritarian manner. The gradations of discontent in any political disturbance are approximately: first, strikes and widespread demonstrations; second, widespread violence and civil disorder; third, direct attacks on the leadership; fourth, the overthrow by physical armed takeover of the instruments of government and the arrest, rout or execution of the leaders. If the first phase can be solved by negotiations, as is being attempted in Bahrain, where the opposition is having difficulty organizing a negotiating side, it isn't much of a groundswell. Where fire hoses, truncheons and rubber or plastic bullets suffice to end the demonstrations, the public tends to be a bit peevish for a while, but a few gestures go a long way and the problems are manageable. (Where the government is legitimately elected, a combination of an election to let off steam, and official force to prevent chaos, usually suffices, unless there is massive foreign intervention.) Once we are into stage two, the army is usually needed and some people are going to be killed. The litmus tests are: Will the regime order the use of live ammunition on crowds and will the orders be carried out? If the answers to those questions are positive, only a very well organized and fervent opposition will succeed. If the answer to either question is negative — as in the cases of Louis XVI, the Shah and Hosni Mubarak not asking for deadly fire on demonstrators, or Romania's Ceausescu demanding it in 1989, and being arrested and summarily executed instead (by an immense firing squad, so numerous were the volunteers) — the regime is doomed. In Libya, we are almost at stage three, as Gaddafi has ordered deadly assaults on his opponents and has publicly boasted that they will be killed, and the orders have been partially carried out, and partially have resulted in mutinies. As this is written, in what has now become a civil war, Gaddafi has suffered the defection of his interior minister, lost control of 75% of the country and is ranting over the radio that Osama bin Laden has drugged the youth of Libya into insurgency. He is reduced to the use of mercenaries, who, as Machiavelli wrote, are never reliable: They can be repurchased by a higher bidder, will take no risk for a cause and will always try to live to fight another day, since that is their occupation. Strafing or assaulting unarmed mobs may be good sport, but exchanging fire with heavily armed defectors who represent most of the population and much of the armed forces is too robust an activity for most mercenaries. The leader of the revolt in the country's second city, Benghazi, Colonel Hussein, (who looks like Pierre Trudeau 40 years ago), says he does not expect to see Gaddafi again "in less than 40 or 50 pieces." The barracks are very restless and there is no recent history of any leader coming back from being so far down the well as Gaddafi is now. If Gaddafi goes down, that could embolden the opposition in Iran. The Persian tradition is far more sophisticated than the Nubian (Libyan) one, and in the agitations over the fraudulent elections in Iran two years ago, the Iranian army did not fire on demonstrators: The thuggish elite guard of the governing movement did. Their resources are not unlimited, and they could not deal with any mutiny in the armed forces. If the Iranians see Gaddafi put to flight or executed, despite the savage fight he has put up, they would realize how close they may be to evicting the whole hideous theocracy that has degraded Iran. Repulsive and psychotic though he is, Gaddafi has not been a worse ruler than the Khamanei-Ahmadinejad duo. And in Iran, the opposition already includes some of the most powerful people in the country, such as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. The lesson of Bahrain's perturbations is that when a country is prosperous, its people want freedom. The takeaway message of non-democratic government in the last 50 years is that those who put democracy ahead of economic development just get back to despotism, and economic progress is spotty (as in Russia). Those who put economic development first achieve prosperity and then democracy, as South Korea, Chile, Taiwan and even Spain have shown. From this perspective, China bears constant monitoring, as, eventually, in prospering countries, freedom usually comes. The absence of Palestinian flags in all these demonstrations has been deeply gratifying, and significant. Israel is, in the end, a red herring to the whole Muslim world, useful to distract the masses from the almost uniform misgovernment inflicted on them, which is their real grievance. But where the late presidents Hafez Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein of Iraq massacred thousands of people at a stroke and prevailed, these were partly described as tribal quarrels and therefore somewhat time-honoured regional methods of problem-solving, and were carried out in times when it was much easier to keep the public-relations lid on such outrages. It is unlikely that whatever government emerges in Egypt will be a significant change from what Egypt has had, unless someone there understands the need for economic growth and tries to replicate, as much as is possible in a tropical Muslim country, the South Korean economic model. In these circumstances, the wise move by Egypt would be to offer to install the rebels in serene control of Libya in exchange for some sharing of oil revenues, as long as it was not just piracy or extortion. It should be a relief that no outsiders to the region have played an effective role in these events, as the world steadily recedes from the era of the omnipotent superpowers, to a restoration of regional national balances. Gaddafi promises martyrdom for himself; may it come quickly. National Post A version of this column also appeared in National Review. © 2024 Conrad Black |
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© 2024 Conrad M. Black |