“A Declaration of War” - Reflections on the Lebanon Crisis
Writing by abuhatem on Thursday, 8 of May , 2008 at 2:11 pm
We have been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Ever since January and the absence of a President in Lebanon, we have been waiting for the civil war to break out.
Today with the Sanoira government’s seizure of the telecommunications system, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called the acts “a declaration of war.” There has been gunfire and RPG fire in the streets.
For the first time in a long time, CNN and MSNBC are covering something other than the Presidential campaign.
What is next for Lebanon?
Well, this is the failure of democracy in the Middle East. Democracy just does not work, especially the factionalism and confessionalism of the Lebanese system, in the Arab world. It is not that democracy is outdated or a bad form of government, it is just that the Arabs are not advanced enough for democracy at the current moment. What is the use of democracy without the rule of law, democratic institutions, and civil society?
Instead, we find that democracy in the Middle East actually precipitates problems. Contrary to the neoconservatives’ arguments, democracy simply increases competition amongst the various factions in Iraq, or Lebanon, and simply turns each group against each other, increasing tensions. As they say, “all politics is tribal,” if in the U.S. Obama is getting over 90% of the black vote - and Hillary is getting a clear supermajority of the white women vote - then why do we blame anyone for voting their tribe?
Lebanon, to any hardheaded realist view of the situation, is not going to be solved by lofty ideals like democracy. Lebanon is a pressure cooker of Sunni, Shiite, Maronite, Druze, secular, socialist, and capitalist. Everyone is in their little camps which eventually break down to a March 8th alliance supported by Iran and Syria, and a March 14th alliance supported by the U.S. and France. Everyone is playing their cards. It is international politics, each side seeking to alter the Lebanese bloc of the wide balance of power.
“Democracy,” just means a way of choosing leaders. Unlike common belief, it is not the “only” or “best” form of government. Throughout the centuries philosophers have defined governments not by the way of choosing their leaders - but whether they rule for their own sake or for the sake of their peoples (like Aristotle). Moreover, the American founding fathers themselves feared and hated direct democracy for the “tyranny of the majority,” and ignorance of the people in directly choosing their leaders. In the words of American political philosopher Willmore Kendall, the founders made it such that majorities would have to be so enduring that they lasted several years - in electing a President and a Congress - and to survive many challenges of minority rights, until they would be passed.
Friedrich Bastiat, an eighteenth century French economist, writes in his The Law, that one unfortunate byproduct of democracy is that because one group will use government to achieve unfair advantages - for instance big business - then the people will use government to also achieve unfair advantages - for instance creating more and more regulations and programs against business and pro-labor. In the end, Bastiat claimed, you had a hodgepodge of laws created for the sake of injustice on other groups - and since two wrongs don’t make a right, you had a web of injustice.
This has been the theme of many modern political scientists. James Buchanan, the founder of economic public choice theory, notes that one of the major flaws of democracy is that different interest groups can often change the rules of the game in their favor. Since human beings are rational actors, he argued, they will rationally want to benefit their groups through government law. Instead of a market economy and fair playing field and instead of the preservation of human dignity and natural rights, we have such absurdities as the government (specifically the Federal Reserve) bailing out the investment bank Bear Stearns, and then the Congress attempting to bail out owners of failed mortgages. This is a classic textbook example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.
Many places in the world are simply not developed enough for democracy. It is not the tell all be all. Nor is it the raison de’Etere of American foreign policy. Every state looks out for its own national interest first and foremost. In Lebanon, democracy has brought about two civil wars since its inception following World War II, and now most probably a third. People vote for their tribes. It is true, all politics is tribal.
There is no doubt that tyranny and totalitarianism are oppressive regimes. Yet, how many states in the world enjoyed peace and prosperity under limited benevolent monarchy? Although speaking of monarchy is today taboo, many monarchies - classical and modern - have been limited governments which did not dare to transgress against human rights. In fact, the first “limited” government in the world, and indeed one of the forefathers of a society based upon liberty and human rights, was the British monarchy following the Glorious Revolution of the sixteenth century. The monarchy of the Muslim world, even under the Abbasids, still recognized certain inalienable human rights. In fact, some modern political scientists noted that monarchies taxed their citizens far less than democracies.
Does this mean democracy is bad? Of course not. But like every government system conceived by man, it is flawed. And one of its chief flaws is that it simply cannot maintain the limited government it strives for. As Winston Churchill said “democracy is one of the worst systems of government, but the best conceived by man.” Its power grows throughout the ages, like it has in every country it has been tried in. Although it may start out divided and limited it slowly becomes more absolutist and in favor of certain special interests and factions. This is what Israeli historian J.L. Tallmon called totalitarian democracy, or absolutism by the people. Tallmon noted that some of the worst regimes in history have been absolutist by the people.
Although America’s divided branches of government have saved it from much of these squabbles - one must still note that executive power has grown severely, especially in the past eight years, while at the same time Congress encroaches slowly upon our civil liberties (the Patriot Act), our property (zoning laws and eminent domain) and everything else in our lives. When Hillary Clinton decided that she wants a “windfall profits tax” i.e. - the government thinks, in its subjective preference, that the oil companies have made too much money with their record profits (with I may add, go along with record expenses - the oil companies’ profit margins are about 7%, very “reasonable”) and thus choses how much is “too much” and then steals its view of the “excess” with a 90% tax for whichever “reasonable” time period the government wants.
We may vote these people in, it may be democratic, but it is injustice nonetheless to transgress against the natural human right to one’s property and to limit one’s economic liberty. It may be the will of the majority, but justice, in the monotheistic religions as well as the natural law tradition, is - to quote Aristotle “giving everyone his due.” It is yet another example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.
Furthermore, value economically is subjective. There is no such thing as an “excess profit” except to one’s subjective mind. Profits are subjective. Goods are sought because of their marginal utility. One of the greatest economic blunders of the Middle Ages was the notion of “just price,” or the conception of some sort of objective price value of economic goods. The neo-socialist Muslim world does not understand this, but their ancestors would. As the Cambridge History of Economics notes, Muslims affirmed the price mechanism even back to the Prophet Muhammad (saw) himself who banned price controls. It was Ibn Khaldun himself whose works influenced the Salamanca school of the Thomist monks who refuted Aquinas’ view of the just price.
Democracy has in it that unfortunate tendency, as all government, for a growing encroachment of government power and the curbing of liberty. “Power corrupts,” Lord Acton says, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more absolutist our democracies become, the more dangerous they become domestically and abroad. This is especially manifest in the streets of Lebanon at the moment and the war between Hezbollah and the government. What we are witnessing now is simply a power struggle - a power struggle by person, by sect, by faction, and a proxy-war by different great powers. Whether they are fighting for an Iranian proxy to fight Israel or threaten Arab hegemony in the region; or for the United States or France’s attempts at establishing a proxy to maintain a regional balance-of-power: make no mistake, this has nothing to do with democracy. This is simply realpolitik.
I am not a hard headed realist, but sometimes thats the only thing that a situation portends…
Category: Lebanese Politics, Political philosophy
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