Michael Ledeen noted at his AEI panel on the democratic revolutionary movement last week that Richard Perle assigned those present to readNathan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror in order to understand what President George W. Bush is up to.
Well, I read it, and I see why Perle likes it, because the core argument of the book is that the Jackson-Vanik amendment was responsible for the collapse of the USSR as well as the release of dissidents and refuseniks like Sharansky. Since Perle was an aide to the late Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, and was involved with the issue, it must be nice to read such a grateful testimonial.
Obviously, Sharansky's account of his suffering and the importance of the Helsinki accords and Jackson-Vanik amendment are compelling.
The problem comes in applying the lessons to the current situation. Because Sharansky notes that his mentor, Andrei Sakharov, called for changing the fear society of the USSR to a freedom society (Sharansky's terms) in order to compete with the West in a comptetitive race to the future. That is, the USSR and the USA shared the same Western enlightenment goals of human progress, scientific and technological development, and education. The prestige enjoyed by scientists and academicians in the former USSR gave Sakharov the status to make his views widely known -- Sharansky had also studied physics. Thus, the USSR and USA were ostensibly headed towards the same end, just by different means. In the case of the USA the means required freedom, in the case of the USSR the means required fear. Dissidents in the USSR shared the same goals as their American adversaries.
This is not true of some anti-American dissidents in unfree societies today.
Sharanky describes his prison life with harrowing accuracy, and what really sticks out is that Sharansky describes his fellow inmates, whether Russian Orthodox, nationalists, democrats, or Jewish refuseniks as committed to non-violence, tolerance, and other values even Voltaire would understand and support. That is, supporting Russian dissidents meant supporting allies of freedom and democracy.
When it comes to Israel, Sharansky does an excellent job of describing the hostility of the "Human Rights" NGOs to the Jewish state. And he talks at length about the importance of ending the fear societies in the Arab world, for the sake of their Arab populations. He says the West should champion oppressed Arab advocates of freedom societies. No argument there.
But there is something important missing from the book--and from Perle, Ledeen, et al. when they talk about supporting democracy.
What is to be done with those opponents of the fear societies who don't want freedom societies, who don't want progress, who don't value science, who don't believe in tolerance? What is to be done with those, who under the cover of "democracy" are actually advocating tyranny--who want to turn back the clock to the Middle Ages? That is, Islamist extremists who are poised to exploit "democracy-building" projects through the practice of "taqqiyeh"?
For example, what should Russia do about Chechnya? Sharansky does not discuss this. Yet is was the Chechen crisis that caused the collapse of the liberal democratic consensus in Russian politics. Given a choice between security and democracy, the population chose security--because "democracy" led to an Islamist extremist rogue state, governed by Sha'aria, tield to the Taliban and Bin Laden, that practiced kidnapping, drug-dealing, and oppression--and then launched attacks on neighboring Russian lands.
If an independent Chechnya turned into a disaster, eventually leading to the Second Chechen War, what might prevent a new state of Palestine from following that dismal path?
So, while convinced in principle that America should support democracy, helping those who seek to build a freedom society rather than a fear society, I think Sharansky and his advocates need to better work out some distinctions between those who are truly commited to democracy -- including the protection of minorities -- and those who might use it as a tactic toward seizing power, making matters worse than they are today.
Sharansky is well worth reading, and I'm glad Perle mentioned it. The book is well-written and thought-provoking. But it marks the beginning of a discussion, not the end.
