Insulting Police in Georgia: Totalitarianism Criminalizing Politics

Whereas the Georgia in North America has been a member-state of the U.S. from that union’s beginning, the Georgia in Europe was still not annexed by the E.U. slightly more than 30 years after that Union’s beginning. Whether to join an empire-scale union of states is a political decision, as a union of states is a political animal. When a prospective state government criminalizes political protest and public discourse on that decision, such a government violates the federal requirement that the state governments adhere to democratic principles, which exclude criminalizing the political opposition. The government of Georgia in Europe crossed this line when a politician of the opposition was arrested for insulting the state police.

Just days after protests against the pro-Russian leanings of the ruling Georgian Dream group began in May, 2025, police detained Nika Melia, “one of the figureheads for Georgia’s pro-Western Coalition for Change” and who was in his car at the time rather than at a protest.[1] That “he was bundled away by a large group of people in civilian clothing . . . on charges of verbally insulting a law enforcement officer” undercuts the government’s claim that the arrest was of a criminal rather than a political nature.[2] Typically when a motorist is given a speeding ticket, a large number of people not wearing police uniforms does not deliver the ticket and haul the driver away.

As for the charge of verbally insulting a police employee, which is distinct from assaulting such an employee, not even municipal employees are gods (although generals on a battlefield may come close). In fact, Nietzsche’s expression human, all too human sadly applies all too often to police around the world because such power as in being legally permitted to use a club, taser, or gun is all too tempting for human pride and presumptuousness to abuse. In other words, police itself can be said to be a necessary evil because human nature itself is not strong enough to responsibly and proportionally use police power.

Continuing on the distinction between verbally insulting and physically assaulting someone, only the former can fall under free speech (i.e., political speech). Only the former brings to mind the thought police in George Orwell’s book, 1984. In other words, to make insulting a state functionary a crime comes dangerously close to making certain thoughts or beliefs illegal if they are verbally expressed. Even criminalizing publicly insulting a deity, which no police employee has been, is, or ever will be, essentially makes certain thoughts or beliefs, which are interior to a mind and thus inherently beyond the reach of the state, verboten. The contradiction is in making something inherently beyond the reach of the state to control subject nonetheless to such control. Totalitarianism itself may be said to end in such a contradiction.

Georgia’s chances of being annexed by the E.U. were thus being lessened by the criminalizing of verbally insulting police employees, who are, after all, taxpayer funded, and the detention of Nika Melia in particular. His criticism of the pro-Russian ruling Georgian Dream group was also a criticism of that government putting on hold the annexation process. Russia’s President Putin had made no secret of his strong preference that the E.U. not extend eastward, and the Georgian Dream group in Georgia’s government may have been doing Putin’s bidding in literally arresting pro-E.U. political beliefs. If in fact the vast majority of residents in Georgia were in favor of their state being annexed by the E.U., then the Georgian Dream regime was on tenuous grounds from a democratic standpoint not only in unilaterally bringing that process to a stop, but also in arresting pro-E.U./anti-Russian politicians. Interestingly, most of Serbia’s residents may have been opposed then to Serbia being annexed by the E.U. because of the higher prices and decrease in population (and increase in immigration) that had occurred in Croatia since it had become an E.U. state; and yet, Serbians tended to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So being against annexation by the E.U. did not necessarily come from pro-Russia sentiment.

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1. Euronews Georgia, “Georgia Arrests Second Opposition Figure in Days as Ruling Party Faces More Protests,” Euronews.com, May 30, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Democracy Waning in Former French Colonies in Africa

The subversion of democracy in former French colonies in Africa stymies the African Union from developing from a mere confederation, wherein all of the governmental sovereignty resides with the states, to modern federalism, whose chief characteristic is dual sovereignty. There is good reason for the requirement in the U.S. that the states be republics rather than dictatorships, for the latter would be more likely to ignore the federal jurisdiction within their respective states.

As of 2024, the president of Senegal “tried to cancel an election. In Niger, a military coup d’état toppled an elected president, who eight months later [was] still imprisoned in the presidential palace. In Chad, the leading opposition politician was killed in a shootout with security forces. . . . In Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the Arab Spring rebellions, the president [was] steering the state toward increasing autocracy.”[1] With such political upheaval going on at the state level, any discussions at the AU level on whether the states should delegate any governmental sovereignty would only be stymied and thus useless. This in turn kept the AU impotent in being able to act as a check against tyranny at the state level. This vicious cycle cannot, I contend, be totally blamed on the former colonial status and the ongoing interventions of France, though both have been playing a secondary role.

To the extent that French governmental pressure led the former colonies to mimic the French system of government wherein the office of president is strong, France is culpable in inhibiting democracy in Africa. “After they won independence from France in the 1960s, nascent states modeled their constitutions on France’s, concentrating power in presidents’ hands.”[2] This statement implies that the former colonies wanted a system of government with a strong unitary leader. That the indigenous political culture in Africa emphasized the tribal chief figure likely figured prominently in the decisions to emulate the French system, rather than it being imposed from France.

To be sure, “France maintained a web of business and political ties with its former colonies” that has involved “propping up corrupt governments”—including autocratic ones.[3] The salience of news reports from Africa on France24 and TV5Monde alone attest to France’s continuing interest in Africa. France could arguably make a difference in reducing political instability and enhancing democracy in the former colonies were autocratic rulers and coups discouraged rather than encouraged. Perhaps French government officials fear, and thus seek to prevent, the potential rival power of the AU that could manifest were political stability improved at the state level. Such a narrow perspective would differ significantly from the American position that a stronger union in Europe is in America’s interest, especially considering the cost to America in having fought two World Wars in part in Europe.

Even if France has been propping up cozy autocratic rule in the former colonies, the disillusionment with democracy has been stronger in the former French colonies than in other African states, according to Boniface Dulani, a director at Afrobarometer.[4] “While a majority of Africans polled [in 2024] still say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, support for it is declining in Africa, where approval of military rule is on the rise—it has doubled since 2000. That shift is happening much faster in former French colonies than in former British ones.”[5] Such sentiment may be a preferment for political stability precisely because of the extent of political instability in the former French colonies. In an indigenous soil of tribal chieftains, the allure of a “strong man” to restore and maintain political stability could easily thrive even though it would come at the cost of political freedom. Perhaps in the former British colonies, with the notable exception of Sudan, there is less reason to bear the cost of foregone political freedom. “Eight of the nine successful coups in Africa [between 2000 and 2024] have been in former French colonies.”[6] The coups themselves reinforce the allure of autocratic rule as providing for political stability, even though such stability can only be until the ground shifts again enough for the next coup. This cycle too is difficult to break. In the meantime, the AU has been stuck as a mere confederation, powerless to provide a breakthrough. 

It is not for nothing that the founders of both the U.S. and E.U. emphasized that the states be democratic republics. This lesson finds harder ground where the historical culture is not in line with democracy. So perhaps the quest for the AU might be how to go from being a confederation to embrace modern, dual-sovereignty, federalism by making it in the interest of state-level dictators even though a system of modern federalism would include viable constraints of the power of the states. Delaying the constraints so the current dictators would not face federal strictures would be key, as well as the inevitable political deal-making that is basic to any political animal.

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1. Ruth Maclean, “Democracy Teetering in African Countries Once Ruled by France,” The New York Times, March 23, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Putin's Fear: Autocratic War Triggering a Russian Revolution

Having watched Oliver Stone's lengthy interviews of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, which had been taped several years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I noticed something very different about the autocrat's demeanor in a video made after a year of the war: his shifty eyes.[1] It was not difficult to infer that the former KGB spy's trained suspiciousness of people had intensified. At the very least, the man looked pensive or nervous. A few weeks earlier, an anti-Putin Russian group may have been responsible for flying a drone over the Kremlin to blow up the dome, and even more recently such a group may have attacked militarily on Russian soil elsewhere. Putin may have been afraid of being assassinated. It is even possible that he had realized that a full-blown revolution could happen. 

Days after an anxious Putin had sat down with the head of Russia's constitutional court, the head of the mercenary military Wagner group, which fights for Russia, warned that if Russia continued to suffer more casualties, "all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917."[2] It is highly improbable that Vladimir Putin would release power as easily as the weak Russian emperor Peter III did after just six months of his reign when Russian troops loyal to Catherine enacted a coup even though she was German and the Russians had been fighting a war against Fredrick's Prussia. 

Whereas the Russian revolution in 1917 was in line with Russia's autocratic-state historical culture, a revolution against Putin could be in democratic direction because Putin had squandered the opening for democracy in the 1990's by incrementally tightening his reigns until it could be said that he had become a dictator. Russians were being locked up during the war just or calling the conflict a war; protests against the war were firmly put down by police wielding clubs. Police initiating violence against non-violent people, as if they were disobedient dogs, naturally triggers the impulse for democratic accountability rather than for tightened autocracy. While this impulse was up against a formidable cultural headwind when absolute monarchy was the norm in the world, the world in 2023 provided the prospective Russian revolutionaries with enough functioning democratic republics abroad for there to be a tailwind in moving in a democratic direction. 

Of course, I am biased in that I was born and raised in a democratic system in which the ideology was instilled in me even when I was a child. Even so, I have not read of a country in which its dictatorship has been held accountable from within the system of government. Furthermore, Rousseau had a good argument against dictatorships in claiming that we are born free but live our lives in chains. The liberty is innate whereas the chains are artificial, hence, I submit, a natural right can be derived. 

1. "Putin's Latest Move Includes a Map of the 17th Century," CNN, May 23, 2023 (accessed May 24, 2023)

2. Rob Picheta and Mariya Knight, "Wagner Chief Warns Russians Could Revolt If Invasion Continues," May 24, 2023. (accessed same day)

Before Infiltrating American Democracy, the Kremlin Had Curtailed Democracy (and Federalism) in Russia

Officials in the Russian government may have ordered computer hackers to infiltrate the U.S. presidential election in 2016 not only in order to influence the outcome to be more favorable to Russia, but also because those officials did not respect federalism and democracy, which, after all, had been so weak in Russia.  

 
For instance, when it looked like Igor Morozov, an insurgent candidate from within the local nomenklatura in Ryazan, might beat the Kremlin-appointed incumbent governor in 2012, the Kremlin summoned Morozov and the next day he announced that he was dropping out of the race. He would be appointed a senator instead. His campaign, he explained, had created the “threat of a split in society.”[1] In actuality, the success of his candidacy was undermining the federal government’s control of the governorship races and Putin's United Russia Party. Federalism, it would seem, was a facade, and thus easy to disrespect.

 Igor Morozov, campaigning before the Kremlin intervened.  Kommersant.

Sergei Salnikov, the deputy secretary of the United Russia Party in Ryazan, had crossed party lines to back Morozov. Salnikov pointed to weakening of democracy should the Kremlin be able to install the next governor. It’s “as if you have simply been raped,” he said.[2] Democracy was being raped, and it was so weak all it could do was take it. How can such a thing be worthy of respect in a one-party dictatorship? 

To be sure, Putin would not have likened his “presidential filter” of candidates to raping. The filter itself contained a structural conflict of interest because a candidate for governor had to secure the endorsement of 10 percent of the republic’s lawmakers, who were heavily dependent on the sitting governors. Incumbents could thus see to it that “paper tigers” were put up as the opposing candidate such that in actuality no real competition existed. 

From the stand point of federalism, a conflict of interest existed in the Kremlin’s “filter” for “criminality.” For the Kremlin to filter candidates for the highest office in a republic's election has rendered the “state level” as subordinate to the federal government. A trajectory can thus be drawn toward political consolidation and away from federalism, including its checks and balances.

Therefore, the Russian political elite has been able not only to enrich, but also ensconce, itself at the expense of democracy and federalism. The latter, in fact, is ideally suited to the inherent diversity between republics in an empire. Neither democracy nor federalism has been strong enough, even in terms of being popularly valued, for the dictatorial tradition of the Czars and Soviets to collapse along with the U.S.S.R. Similarly, the Arab Spring showed the world, and Russia, that even when popular passion lies with democracy, an authoritarian tradition can still be stronger. 

Viewing democracy (and federalism, which is also relevant in U.S. presidential elections) as weak, as well as inherently inferior in terms of power to one-party rule, the Russian officials who ordered the manipulation of the American electorate likely saw themselves as tinkering with an inferior breed, or at least political system. As much as democracy is valued at least in principle in the United States, the form of government can be disvalued elsewhere, particularly where dictatorship has been the norm. Even Plato and Aristotle theorize strong (demos) and weak (mob rule) manifestations of democracy, yet those philosophers also wrote of a weak form of dictatorship: the tyrant, who can be expected to disrespect democracy for its (ideally) decentralization of power. A tyrant would naturally view himself as a bird of prey seizing on disbursed individuals who together form a people, the popular sovereign, in a democracy. Yet as Nietzsche theorized, a bird of prey who resorts to manipulation and other forms of domination is actually weak rather than strong, for were such a creature strong, it would have no need of subterranean means of increasing its power over others. 

1. Ellen Barry, “Not in Script For Kremlin: A Real Race For Governor,” The New York Times, September 28, 2012.
2. Ibid.

Selling Coal at a Conference on Climate Change

Peabody Energy, an American coal company and unlikely participant at a global conference on climate change in November, 2017, nevertheless previewed its presentation by trumpeting coal as part of the solution with: “As the world seeks to reduce emissions while promoting economic prosperity, fossil fuels will continue to play a central role in the energy mix.”[1] Besides interlarding economic growth at the conference that was on the climate, the company’s management felt the need—nay, even the obligation—to remind the world that coal would still play a prominent part in how the world obtains energy for its billions and billions of human beings. “The reality of it is the world is going to continue to use fossil fuels, and if I can throw myself on the hand grenade to help people realize that, I’m willing to do it,” said Barry Worthington of the U.S. Energy Association before the conference in the E.U. city of Bonn. Were people really unaware that reliance on coal was an intractable problem from the standpoint of reducing carbon emissions, or was the American company simply wanting to sell more coal?

Most experts at the time were insisting that we must shift from fossil fuels to meet the targets on emissions; not even short-term economic prosperity from coal should thus get in the way from the perspective of minimizing the worst expected from increasingly likely climate change. Accordingly, Worthington’s obligation could be viewed contrariwise as a crime against humanity. “Any country or company continuing to champion further exploration for and mining of coal and even other fossil fuels from now on would be willfully carrying out a crime against humanity, and they would be held accountable,” said Saleemul Huq of the International Center for Climate Change and Development.

A useful distinction can be made between helping developing countries to use cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels, as the U.S. had done at the last G20 meeting before the conference, and insisting that coal production be increased or even held at current levels so not to interfere with other social goods (e.g., economic growth). Even the insistence that coal would continue to supply 40% of the world’s energy takes away from the alternative narrative that coal use should be reduced as much and as soon as possible, realistically of course.

Humanity may unwittingly have already been on borrowed time from the standpoint of the Earth’s changing climate—unwittingly because the oceans were still absorbing carbon dioxide such that we could not perceive the full extent of the change already extant on land. So the public alarm from the self-aggrandizing selling of coal at a conference on climate change could be expected to be muted. Even if the oceans had been saturated such that the carbon in the atmosphere was spiking, the public alarm would likely have fallen short of taking into account that the species itself could face extinction—for a future equilibrium of the world’s climate will not necessarily be consistent with continued human survival. Indeed, as a result to natural selection, our species is not “hard-wired” to take the long-range future into sufficient account; we are much more oriented to instant gratification. I suspect that this innate proclivity will be the seed of our species’ destruction unless we can circumvent a changing atmosphere with the advent of technology fitting the scale and severity of the problem. Such technology would have to dwarf that of making coal more efficient.

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1. Lisa Friedman, “For Climate Conference, a Sales Pitch on Fossil Fuels,” The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2017.

Autocratic Regimes: Subject to the Domino Effect?

"In Beirut, gunfire broke out and crowds of people waved Egyptian flags. In Yemen, they gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy chanting, 'Wake up rulers, Mubarak fell today.' In Gaza, they fired shots in the air and set off fireworks. . . . [However,] in a telling sign of the divide between the rulers and the ruled, the region’s leaders, presidents and monarchs remained largely silent." This depiction by The New York Times of ripple effects across the Middle East in the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Mubarak in February, 2011 intimated the hoped-for and feared possibility that the popular unrest could spread.  Moreover, the entire world, which had been been glued to the events unfolding in Cairo, wondered if a domino effect might be in store in countries under autocratic rule. Indeed, The New York Times wrote of a possible domino effect quite explicitly: "The popular uprising that started . . . in Tunisa had claimed its second autocratic government, this time in the largest country in the Arab world. With more protests planned in coming days, some governments were clearly worried they could be next." But do autocratic governments fall like dominos?  That is, is revolution contagious? Fawaz Traboulsi, a prominent Lebanese writer and columnist, thought so in the days following Mubarak's resignation. “All the regimes are shaking now . . . They are becoming more and more fragile. This is just the beginning.” In Bahrain, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa apparently thought so too, for he ordered the equivalent of $2,650 be given to every Bahraini family a few days before a planned "Day of Rage" protest. “Arab people discovered their ability to make change,” said Nabeel Rajab, a human rights activist in Bahrain. “And with Egypt in the leadership once again, the change will reach all the Arab world.” In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would suspend constitutional amendments that allow him to remain in his office for life. He also raised salaries for the military and civil servants and cut income taxes in half. In Algeria, the government promised to lift the state of emergency that had been in effect since 1992. To be sure, nineteen years is a rather long time for an emergency.  Such efforts can be likened to building up wetlands or widening a beach to take the wind out of the hurricane out at sea should it hit. In other words, it appears that there was "revolution watch" in effect for the Middle East in the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime. One might reasonably question, however, whether revolutions are contagious.

It could be that autocracy itself had been weakened by the success of the protests in Egypt.  On the other hand, there had been revolutions before and dictatorship was not evicerated from the face of the earth. The belief that the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions were the start of a wave that would flood all autocratic powers in the Middle East (or the world) might also consider that even autocratic states differ in their respective internal conditions. To use the hurricane analogy, some beaches are better protected than others. If the unrest in Tunesia and Egypt were linked in such a way that other countries could be impacted internally, the ensuing domino effect could perhaps be compared to that among Wall Street banks in September 2008.  The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch as independent or viable going concerns contained a momentum that was beginning to bring down Morgan Stanley and threaten even Goldman Sachs when the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs at Treasury effectively pushed for the construction of a fortified sand-dune (TARP) a.k.a. an infusion of funds into the remaining banks from the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve.  As a result, the force of the strengthening winds ceased to intensify and began to diminish, leaving the economy in a long rainy season (i.e., a recession and a subsequent nearly jobless recovery).

In the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime, were the other regimes in the Middle East like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs after Lehman Brothers declared bankrupcy?  In other words, are autocratic regimes subject to a "run on the bank" in another? If so, there would still be a notable difference between the big banks and the governments.  Namely, the banks were deemed too big to fail, while the autocratic rulers were deemed too powerful to rule. That is to say, the continued viability of the Wall Street pillars was deemed essential to the world economy, while it was thought in the wake of the Egyptian regime of Mubarak that the world was better off less one autocratic regime. Hence there would not be likely to be a TARP program arranged to prop up dictators. Even with this difference noted, I contend that both big banks and big dictators are too big to exist in a world that values freedom and individual rights. Perhaps we ought to have been cheering the domino effect on Wall Street just as we cheered the fall of the Tunesian and Egyptian dictators. In both cases, destabilization that could lead to the collapse of the global economy and civic order would of course need to be avoided.  However, I contend that the U.S. Government could have intervened to maintain order on Wall Street by assisting as the big banks split into pieces, none of which being too big to fail and thus more in the public interest than retaining the big banks as such.  In the case of public autocratic regimes, their demise and replacement can typically be handled domestically, as in the cases of Tunesia and Egypt, rather than by an international organization such as the U.N.

In general terms, the "run on the bank" in Tunesia and Egypt may or may not be contagious in its nature, yet a consideration of the possibility of a domino effect can remind us of the domino effect that we witnessed in September of 2008 on Wall Street. Making this connection might prompt us to ask whether autocratic governments and big banks aren't both too big to exist. In other words, the collapse of one badly run bank after another and the subsequent need to deal with the question of such banks as going concerns can perhaps be likened to the collapse of one badly run government after another.  Was the world finally noticing around the end of the first decade (and the beginning of the second) of the twenty-first century that enormous concentrations of private capital (and thus power) and of public autocratic authority were not necessarily givens, and thus could, and perhaps should, be taken down? In other words, were long-standing givens finally seen as replacable?  The world was stunned when huge investment banks that had been around for more than a century were suddenly collapsing, just as the world was stunned when the government of the largest Middle Eastern country suddenly fell after two weeks of popular protests. Pillars, even those that are thought vital, can indeed fall, and the world can discover through the experiences that they are not essential--and they might even be bad for the public good. Surely this is the sense of the free world concerning autocratic governments, yet we are less convinced concerning the danger in continuing to allow banks too big to fail to continue to exist as they have for decades. In both cases, the domino effect may be natural and good, provided it is managed so public order does not collapse in the process. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/middleeast/12arabs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Knee-Jerk Reactions: On the U.S. Government Enabling Dictators

While in the U.S. Senate, Paul Kirk, the interim U.S. Senator who took Ted Kennedy’s seat, said, “Without a legitimate and credible Afghan partner, that counterinsurgency strategy is fundamentally flawed. The current Afghan government is neither legitimate nor credible. . . . We should not send a single additional dollar in aid or add a single American serviceman or woman to the 68,000 already courageously deployed in Afghanistan until we see a meaningful move by the Karzai regime to root out its corruption.” 

Kirk was essentially arguing that the U.S. was enabling (i.e., in the sense that one enables an alcoholic) President Karzai, who had been reelected by widespread fraud. Whether the U.S. Government was trying to have it both ways, or was utterly unwilling to put its money where American principles are, the perception around the world was probably that the United States had sold itself out for short-term strategic/military advantage. 

How resilient are principles that are upheld only when they don't cost anything?  Could it be that standing more on principle--insisting on fair and free elections as a precondition for any American aid and military involvement--would mitigate the need for a surge? Such thinking runs against the grain in the modern world, which is actually rather primitive in its insistance on knee-jerk force.  An eye for an eye and the world will be blind (Gandhi).  September 11, 2001: we must hit back.  There is no other option. They must pay. Ironically, practicing Christians were not only cheering, but also leading the charge.  An eye for an eye.

“Be realistic!” you might say.  "It's a real world out there!" Ok, how about this: the U.S. Government could have concentrated its military force in Afghanistan on the actual culprits, rather than on rebuilding the country or taking on the Taliban.  Is it really so idealistic to cut off U.S. aid to autocratic governments? I suspect that we are limited by the status quo as a normative and descriptive limitation that is actually quite dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.  In other words, we believe our self-constructed walls are real; we don't see how rigid we have become.

Given the emphasis on force, does it make all that much difference who is occupying the U.S. Presidency? President Bush invaded Iraq. President Obama criticized this policy then led a surge of his own in Afghanistan.  Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, and both Bush II and Obama played ball with these pay-masters.  Meanwhile, we were mollified with the government's “scoldings” of Wall Street banks (the strongest of which went back to their old ways anyway).  Can we blame the bankers for ignoring government officials whose principled leadership is so contingent? People, especially powerful people--like Wall Street bankers and Karzai--can sniff hypocrisy and automatically reduce the respect given.

The United States is like a giant machine, or a very fat person, who can only move slowly…turning woefully slow with a rudder that is too small.    Meanwhile, we vaunt our ship as the biggest ever made: A city on the hill, from Puritan lore. We can’t sink, we assure each other.  But our ship of state is made of iron. I assure you, it can sink, and all the more because we have drifted out into deep water without realizing how far we have gone…how far off course.  Our rudder is too small for our mechanized monstrosity--our Titanic laden with $14 tillion in federal debt alone (not counting those of the states). Our primative knee-jerk reactiong after 911 suggests that everything we know is wrong, even as we presume we can’t be wrong.   So as we rearrange the deck-chairs at our mascurade dance, we order more champaigne and congraduate each other on having the biggest ship.  Meanwhile, is anyone looking ahead for icebergs?  We are so sure of our ship, and thus so vulnerable.

Source:

Brianna Keilar, "Obama Ally Breaks with Him on Afghanistan," CNN, December 2, 2009.

Democratic Protests in the Middle East: A Conflagration of Historic Proportions amid a Constancy in Human Nature?

Perhaps by looking back on one's own time as though it were already historical, it is possible to assess whether what one is witnessing on the global stage is truly significant from the standpoint of human history or merely of that which history is replete. In the context of the popular protests in the Middle East in early 2011, the question is perhaps whether the world was witnessing a Hegelian burst of freedom or merely more of the same in terms of political revolutions. According to The New York Times, popular movements were "transforming the political landscape of the Middle East" in the wake of the protests in Tunesia and Egypt.  For example, in Bahrain, "as in Tunisia and Egypt, modest concessions from the government [were] only raising expectations among the protesters, who by day’s end [on February 15, 2011] were talking about tearing the whole system down, monarchy and all."  The prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle, had been in office for 40 years. Accordingly, the protesters were asking not only for the release of political prisoners, but also "the creation of a more representative and empowered Parliament, the establishment of a constitution written by the people and the formation of a new, more representative cabinet."

The New York Times placed the protests in Bahrain in the wider context of the protests that had recently occurred in Tunesia and Egypt. The Bahrain protests, "inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have altered the dynamics in a nation where political expression has long been tamed by harsh police tactics and prison terms." (italics added)  However, it was not clear at the time of the protests whether the thread of inspiration was determinative to such an extent that the landscape of the Middle East itself would be transformed as a result. In allowing the protests, the king of Bahrain may have assumed that he could stay in control and thereby reduce the strength of the "inspiration" by giving the protesters some space to do their thing and presumably get it out of their system. However, Ibrahim Matar, an opposition member of Parliament who joined the crowd of protesters, said, “Now the people are the real players, not the government, not the opposition.” It is interesting that he dismissed his own movement (i.e., the opposition) rather than trying to take credit for the uprising.  If Matar was correct, the spread of protests throughout the Middle East had the wherewithal to fundamentally change the means by which people would be governed in the region. That is, the protests could have been a transformative wave wherein people finally had within their sight the possibility that government could be of and by the people. The revolutions in Tunesia and Egypt would not have been isolated incidents in a long world history of sporatic revolutions without autocratic government itself being expunged from the tired face of the earth. The question that captivated the world watching the Egyptians protest was whether something different might have been going on. 

Whereas the twentieth century had hosted technological change on many fronts, political development was not among the areas of progress. When the twenty-first century had gained enough of its own years to claim its own time, the question may have become whether the human race was  ripe then for a leap in political development. If so, the trigger would not be in the democratic nations that preach representative democracy; rather, it would be in the people themselves who had lived under autocratic rule. It is as though there were a spreading suddent awareness that they didn't have to take the abuse anymore; they could simply say no--though "simply" is the wrong word here as saying no in a state such as Iran, for example, was at the time still prompting a barrage of bullets from government soldiers. It was clear that the autocratic governments had different strategies with respect to the protests.  The question was perhaps whether the thrust of the wave had rendered the choice of strategy nugatory. In other words, was the world witnessing the beginning of the end for autocracy or dictatorship as a means of governing human beings, or merely the latest round in a series of revolutions that have been an intractable part of human history?  Did Tunesia unleash a burst of freedom that can be placed in a Hegelian progression of human history wherein human spirit comes to realize itself in greater freedom, as per its nature? That is to say, were we witnessing a Hegelian moment? Can the protests in the Middle East in 2011 be interpreted as marking a fundamental political change or even a new awareness in humanity?  I suppose the answer would depend on whether the protests spread like a forest fire across highways and byways such that no dictator would remain standing not only in the Middle East, but, moreover, in the entire world as well.

Lest we get too carried away in celebrating the salubrious evisceration of autocratic government, we should not forget that representative democracy is far from perfect. Left without any viable competitors, this system of government could be more subject to abuses from within. If representative democracy is the beneficiary of the extinction of autocracy, might democracy as an ideal be like capitalism in the wake of the demise of the USSR (and communism in China)?  In other words, might the hegemony of representative democracy ironically make it more likely that the drawbacks of such democracy gain in force, or at least become more transparent?  Just as the financial crisis of 2008 rather than the USSR demonstrated that the market mechanism itself is flawed in how it accommodates increased volatility (by freezing up rather than accommodating it), perhaps once the world is populated by republics we might come to see the internal flaws in what the U.S. Founders called "excess democracy."

The protests in the Middle East reminded the world that history is not very predictable. Similarly, history can be quite ironic, given the fixity inherent in human expectations. As we the West welcome our brothers and sisters in the Middle East into the family of free nations, let us not get too self-congratulatory, for our institutions are far from perfect.  We are all human, all too human. Yet in spite of human nature as its constant, human history may contain a progression wherein humanity the world over comes to realizations that insist upon or inevitably lead to greater self-realization. Humanity's realization in the early twenty-first century may involve political development. I suspect that the next turn will concern religion. After that turn, the world will be quite different than for those who lived before even the technological revolution in the twentieth century.  In other words, modernity may well be characterized in terms of succeeding intervals of technological, political and religious transformation--altogether evincing a huge amount of change even as human nature remains constant.  The question might be how much change is possible given the constancy of our nature, or do some change elements change human nature? In the context of the protests in the Middle East, human nature looks pretty much the same as it has been for eons.  Yet the future change may shift the basis-point in human biology and psychology such that even more change becomes possible.

Source:

Michael Slackman, "Bahrain Takes the Stage With a Raucous Protest," The New York Times, February 15, 2011.

Futility of a League: Arab Action against Assad

With observers on the ground in Syrian cities, the Arab League conceded at the beginning of 2012 that the monitors had “failed to halt the lethal violence” in Syria.[1] Nabil Al Arabi, the organization’s chair, acknowledged that snipers persisted in major cities, but that the allegiance of the shooters had not been ascertained. Such cautiousness was itself likely a contributor to what the Journal refers to as “pitfalls of the organization’s self-reinvention as a regional diplomatic playmaker.”[2] Criticism had been mounting that the “monitoring mission has done little to resolve a conflict that the United Nations [estimated at the time had] taken more than 5,000 mostly civilian lives. Perhaps this might be an indication of the snipers’ allegiance.

As of January 3^, 2012, 390 people had been killed in Syria since the observers arrived on December 29^th—which is less than a week before the report.[3] The observers were tasked with monitoring Assad’s compliance with his promise to pull security forces from the city streets, release political prisoners, and allow foreign journalists and human rights workers to enter Syria. Unless the protesters were shooting on themselves, the gun-shots and 390 deaths suggest that Assad was furtively continuing the government’s involvement in the violence.

On January 11, 2012, Anwar Abdel Malik, one of the observers, abruptly resigned because “he felt that the mission was serving the interests of the government rather than trying to end the crackdown on protesters. The mission was a farce, and the observers have been fooled,” he said. “The regime orchestrated it and fabricated most of what we saw, to stop the Arab League from taking action against the regime.” He added, “The regime isn’t committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people.” A week earlier, the human rights group Avaaz had reported that the group’s “researchers had gathered the names of at least 617 people who had died under torture in government installations since the beginning of the uprising against [Assad].”[4]

On the day that Malik resigned, Assad was at an outdoors rally in Damascus, telling the cheering crowd that he had come to draw energy from it. “I belong to this street,” he said before promising to end the “conspiracy” then underway—as if blatant protests in the cities of Syria were somehow secret and hidden from view.[5] In reaction to how Assad depicted the protests and the extent to which he claimed that the evidence against his government’s atrocities simply did not exist even though it did, we might want to worry a bit more about how much validity we give to the microphone in defining social reality. An official says X, and society takes X as valid, more often than not wholly uncritically as if little fish with mouths wide open, mindlessly swimming in a school without a hint of education.

Given Assad’s rock-hard intransigence, going the route of monitors being led around by his government officials can be reckoned as tantamount to admitting impotence. The response by the League was a marked departure from when the League asked the U.N. Security Council to impose a No Fly Zone over Libya. To be sure, even if the Arab League were to make the request in the case of Syria, the existence of the veto in the Council would likely merely confirm the impotence of the “regional diplomatic playmaker.” So what can be done?

Although not sufficient as a remedy, strengthening the Arab League from being a confederal alliance of largely empty threats to a federal system with teeth on par with the E.U. and U.S. might be good a start. The Journal reports that the failure of the monitors was opening new rifts within the league. The president of the Arab Parliament, a mere advisory body of Arab League diplomats whose decisions are non-binding, recommended that Arabi withdraw the observers. Even though they may have been providing Assad with cover and a tool of delay, Arabi was free to disregard the “parliament’s” advice. Conversely, if the E.U. Parliament, which is composed of elected representatives of the E.U. citizens, passes the law (i.e., not just advisory), the president of the E.U. Commission cannot simply ignore it. As the Arab league stood at the beginning of 2012, relying on the alliance to stop Assad was more than a bit naïve. The Arab League “diplomats” might examine the E.U. in particular for ideas on how the league could become something more than a league, adding the checks and balances that dual sovereignty enables. Were Syria a state in such a union, its basic law could allow a supermajority of elected representatives and state officials in Arab Union bodies to impose a No Fly Zone or do even more militarily.

Of course, the U.S. and the state of Israel would doubtless object to an Arab federal union, but such an entity could in principle be drawn up without the permission of the outside parties. My basic point over all here is that the Arab Spring in 2011 could serve as a springboard for Arab leaders to think about systemic changes that go beyond incremental fixes that don’t really fix anything. According to Salman Shaikh at the Brookings Institution, Arab leaders are “feeling the wishes of their street much more. Whereas perhaps they could have ignored them before, they are hearing now that 85% to 90% of the people are with the protesters.” So, he added, the leaders are “being compelled to act.” The question is perhaps whether their institutions can afford them the ability to do so, or whether the “actions” will continue to be “monitors” and diplomats’ statements.

1.  Matt Bradley and Nour Malas, “Arab World Diplomacy Fails to Stop Syria Clash,” The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2011. 
2. Ibid.
3. Kareem Fahim, “Hundreds Tortured in Syria, Human Rights Group Says,” The New York Times, January 6, 2012. 
4. Nada Bakri, “Syria’s President Is Defiant in Rare Public Appearance,” The New York Times, January 12, 2012. 
5. Ibid.