The challenge of liberalism in a world of different traditions and cultures.
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There are various answers depending on different traditions. The attempt to impose the American version of liberal democracy on the world is destined not only to fail but to provoke conflict.
Paul Robinson | Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa
The World Post
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Patheos
Shri Narendra Modi, Hinduism, and Resurgent India
David Frawley, (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is an American Hindu author
Shri Narendra Modi, Hinduism, and Resurgent India
David Frawley, (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is an American Hindu author
Narendra Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh faction of the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party (Hindutva). RSS is dedicated to Indian culture and values. Modi has also stated that he will reinvigorate India's ties to Buddha, who is also recognized as one of the ten Hindu avatars (incarnations of the God in human form).
And no, the Islamic revolt against the American Empire at its periphery is not about their "hating our freedoms," but rejecting Western liberal values that they see the US attempting to impose on the rest of the world by force against the will of the vast majority who are traditionalists.
5 comments:
I think that the supposed "rejection of Western liberal values" is ephemeral at best: the "cultural" rejection is mostly a reflection of cynically-fostered opposition to foreign threats to ruling elites' power.
For instance, the ideological heritage of groups such as al-Qaeda is Salafism, a movement that began in Egypt and was imported into Saudi society during the reign of King Faisal. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, the Middle East was gripped by a struggle between the traditional monarchies and the secular pan-Arab radicals, led by Nasser’s Egypt, with the pan-Islamist Salafis an important third force. By embracing pan-Islamism, Faisal countered the idea of pan-Arab loyalty centered on Egypt with a larger transnational loyalty centered on Saudi Arabia.
In the same way, "traditional, Orthodox Russian values", which date, essentially, from the fall of Communism (since women had a very different place in the USSR), harken back to a romantically imagined past which most Russians never had access to! Evocation of these values serves to bolster support from the state, much as appeals to a revived Serbian nationhood supported Milosevic's rule for years.
The problem is that the fears of the elites are well-founded: the US in particular, but the West in general too, has only promoted democracy instrumentally, as a way of controlling resources. When the US was not preserving its national interests by killing moderate nationalists, such as Mohammad Mosaddegh, it was arming client dictators of all stripes to protect its interests.
So, having deliberately thwarted democracy for 50 years, the development of supposed "cultural" response was inevitable.
The affected peoples quite rightly do not see the US, with its joke of a democratic system, as promoting democracy so much as directly contributing to their oppression.
Agree. After WII the US had enormous soft power and could have used it to build the foundation for a socially, politically and economically liberal world, but instead said one thing and did another. While Washington talked liberalism and its virtues, it soon began pursuing a not so hidden agenda of global hegemony based on the need to prevent the spread of totalitarian Communism. However, over time it became clearer that US policy was forged by corporatism with the aim of making neoliberalism the model for globalization. Neoliberal is a political theory based on an economic philosophy of winner takes all.
Had this not been the case, things might have been very different. However, the situation now is that former Communist foes, Russia and China, are rising in power as they adopt greater economic liberalism. While this may be a positive influence in the sense of confronting neoliberalism on Western terms, Russia and China are highly illiberal socially and politically, and their economic liberalism is producing their own oligarchs.
Ironically, Russia and China are also adopting their own approaches to economic liberalism in order to confront Western neoliberalism using its tools to build powerful economies. But the Russian and Chinese approaches to social and political liberalism are quite different from the US, other than the American authoritarian conservative bloc.
If the US can balance its economic liberalism with social and political liberalism more holistically so the walk matches the talk, it can regain its soft power and become an example worth emulating.
The obstacles in the way of this, as I see it, are chiefly two. First, the liberal philosophy of the US is deeply flawed in its manifestation by class and power structure. US foreign policy is pursuing global change in the interest of the top of this class and power structure.
Secondly, US foreign policy is trying to force liberal change too quickly. The bias of history is toward greater liberalization, but cultures change gradually. Forcing issues is seldom productive toward achieving idealistic goals. Forcing acceptance of "freedom" is not freedom.
Since WWII, the UK and Europe have existed pretty much in the shadow of the US. There's a lot there to contribute but there is no platform on which to stand at this point.
Tom: Excellently written. I hope nobody takes my comment as American-bashing, because it is not. Look, I'm a Canadian, and I am painfully aware that we are currently just holding the bully's coat (which has often been our role, whether for the French, British, US Empires, and sometimes now the Chinese). I think it is worth recognizing that the one thing one can say without question is that Obama has made a genuine (even valiant) attempt to extricate the US from the second obstacle that you mention, but that he has been constantly opposed and limited by the first. A problem for the US, with respect to the first obstacle, is that even great and progressive minds like Joe Nye argue sincerely that simultaneously a) the US's main strength is its soft power, and b) that it is not an Empire. Until the inherent contradiction in those positions is accepted, it will be difficult for the US to extricate itself from the first dilemma. I would hold hope that our incipient return to a multipolar world could help the US populace reavaluate the US's "role" in the world, except almost all the BRICS are run by thuggish and undemocratic régimes.
"The attempt to impose the American version of liberal democracy on the world is destined not only to fail but to provoke conflict. "
When we interact, trade and engage with any society, perhaps norms, values, laws and expectations are unwelcome part of the exchange going in both directions.
Most trade and participation in international institutions is voluntary. The US has helped to create and design many of the large international institutions that probably serve US interests. But nothing prevents other groups of countries from creating better institutions and then inviting the US to join.
To put it bluntly, the traditionalists of the world, including those in America, view American pop culture and much of advertising as pornographic.
Neoliberals see any attempt to limit this as contrary to the free market and free trade, and liberals in general view it as depriving people of their freedom of choice to purchase what they want.
These are irreconcilable differences.
To make matters worse, traditionalists often base their objections on religious grounds, which liberals then mock, adding insult to injury.
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