THE DEMOCRATIC ILLUSION

By Johan Galtung and - - Reprint | | Print |

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.

WASHINGTON, May 8 2008 (IPS) - Democracy is about people choosing leaders who are accountable to the people. So, what kind of leaders do we choose? In the Western democracies, they are not too impressive, writes Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies and founder of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network. Each country has a \”deep culture and deep structure\” that guides it, sedimented in the collective mind and history. The USA, doomed to lead the Good against the Evil, stopped the time machine at the end of World War II with US hegemony at a peak, intent on eliminating all challengers of the status quo. Take China, a subtle deep culture of good in evil and evil in good, but which stopped the time machine millennia ago with China as the Middle Kingdom surrounded by Barbarians. Add Russia\’s deep culture of the sleeping giant with periodic bursts of energy, or India\’s, the cradle and crossroad of civilisations, and we have four pathologies more dangerous than any individual president. Better a crazy head of state of a country that finds its equitable place in the world as one among others than the normal leader of a crazy nation.

George W. Bush obviously suffers from some kind of autism, living in his own bubble and repeating the same message of freedom – even saying that his criterion for success is success, a clear tautology, with little or no reference to the empirical world. Yet he was reelected.

Gordon Brown, the Tony Blair without the flare and now without the votes, is normal and has nothing to say, as opposed to Silvio Berlusconi, who has built a little pyramid in his garden with a sarcophagus modelled after Napoleon’s, ready for his demise. His is a clear case of megalomania, with a pronounced sense of style, which appeals to the aesthetic Italians. France’s Sarkozy shares this megalomania but lacks style, and so has not fared well.

So much for the three Bs. Enter F, Japanese prime minister Fukuda, a bureaucrat, the son of his father and little else, is like the others highly forgettable. Then comes M, Germany’s Merkel, an improvement. Deft, clever, but lost in her love for the anti-Soviet USA and her shame for anti-Jewish Germany. Enter Z, Zapatero, prime minister of Spain. Normal, clever, at ease, tackling the terrorist attack in Madrid 2004 brilliantly where Bush and Blair (another B) failed so miserably after 9/11 and London’s 07/07.

The US presidency is up for grabs. Bush is forgotten and the focus is now on his possible successors: an Old Man -John McCain- who is Bush Heavy, his ”League of Democracies” ready to kill the UN for US; a Woman – Hillary Clinton – who is Bush Lite; and a Black Man – Barack Obama – who is, exactly what? He voices the mantra of CHANGE over the reassuring rumbling that there will be none; just look at his foreign policy advisors and the occasional glimpses of his positions, like his US-Israel policy: business as usual, only more so.

These three are pitted against giant non-western leaders – Putin, Singh, and Hu Jintao – who may be less democratically chosen. China today produces 50 percent of the world’s clothes and soon 50 percent of all electronics; a very powerful text. Russia’s text is, “Our gas and oil are ours”. India’s is steel and computer software. Their joint text is clear: “We are outcompeting you. Your time is up.”

And the text of the US? Not the freedom-babble from a bubble. It is written in blood: Death. US senator Jay Rockefeller said the obvious the other day, “McCain was a fighter pilot who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they got to the ground? He doesn’t know”. Rockefeller had to apologise for “blotting McCain’s war record” (Japan Times, 10 April 2008). He must have forgotten that the USA kills Evil for the triumph of Good.

Brown’s text is the UK’s “special relation” to the USA, which is shared by Berlusconi-Fukuda-Merkel-Sarkozy. The only nuance comes at the end: Zapatero’s dream of Spain as a community of nations.

So much for the texts. Then there are the subtexts, hidden to conceal their lies, like the US myths about Munich, Pearl Harbour, World War II, the Cold War, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam – read John Swomley’s “American Empire” from 1970 for a skilful unveiling.

Then come the deeper texts that affect each country: deep culture and deep structure, sedimented in the collective mind and history. The USA, doomed to lead the Good against the Evil, stopped the time machine at the end of World War II with US hegemony at a peak, intent on eliminating all challengers of the status quo. Take China, a subtle deep culture of good in evil and evil in good, but which stopped the time machine millennia ago with China as the Middle Kingdom surrounded by Barbarians. The USA can only join the world at the top, China only for itself.

Add Russia’s deep culture of the sleeping giant with periodic bursts of energy, or India’s, the cradle and crossroad of civilisations, and we have four pathologies more dangerous than any individual president. Better a crazy head of state of a country that finds its equitable place in the world as one among others than the normal leader of a crazy nation.

Look at those Western countries orbiting like moons around a US sun, late in realising that the sun is cooling, dying like everything else in the universe. So they cling to certain layers in the archaeology of history with French and Italian grandeur, electing mini-Napoleons. Why Napoleon, who lost so many battles, Moscow, Waterloo, and Egypt-Switzerland-Spain? Because his project was France as the universal nation with a universal language. They still hang on to that. Talk against it and your electoral chances are slim.

The more democracy, the more deep texts. Roosevelt scripted a Pearl Harbor provoked by himself as an unprovoked attack of Evil against Good, won three terms in office, and US leadership of a UN as the status quo. And Obama? Deep culture directs him towards the bigger Evil in a War on Terrorism and away from the lesser ones in Iraq, surfing on a wave called Change. Deep culture does not direct him to dialogue in a world of equal partners whose Truths are born equal even if the means, like US state terrorism, may be atrocious. He lives a few deep text layers behind whereas, George W., like Reagan, got lost with the Founding Fathers.

Watch Hu Jintao. He lives at a layer that even antedates Bush. Introduce multi-party electoral democracy and his successors will be even more so, because the deep texts ultimately matter. That is where the real battle is. Unveil them, challenge them. The texts may seal more than they reveal. And yet it is better if we can recall their elected authors – in a democracy. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)