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Steyn says nation-building is the only answer
Mark Steyn addresses the question whether democratic nation-building is a viable policy. While he seems to agree with George Will’s anti-neoconservative argument that all nations are not necessarily ready for democracy, he also rejects the option, which I have sometimes favorably discussed here, of attacking terror-supporting countries and overthrowing their rulers when they they pose a danger to us, but not otherwise getting involved in their internal affairs or trying to re-make their politics. America tried the “attack, don’t nation-build” approach with Mexico, Steyn says, and the result is a failed state that threatens to destabilize America. But India works, he continues, because it has British-style political institutions. While admitting that the success of nation-building can’t be guaranteed, he insists that we (or rather the United States, since Steyn is a Canadian) have no choice but to try:
My bottom line is this: the Middle East has to become something other. If it becomes New Hampshire, great. If it becomes Malaysia or Slovenia or Botswana or Chile or Western Samoa, that’ll do. It’s the particular nature of its dysfunction that threatens western interests. I don’t like to talk about “democratizing” the region …The problem with the India model, as Stanley Kurtz pointed out in an article I discussed in early 2003, was that it required a century of British colonial rule to bring it about. For reasons that are even more obvious now than when Kurtz wrote his article, we don’t have that option with Moslem countries. Steyn sounds more modest in his aims than other neoconservatives when he says that he doesn’t insist that the Moslem world become democratic, but only that it become other than what it is. But even that more constrained goal assumes that we have the power to transform fundamentally an entire civilization that happens to be radically different from own and largely incomprehensible to us. If we make the impossible the indispensable condition of our politics (as we do when we say, “We can’t do anything about Iraq or about terrorism until we solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”), then we have doomed ourselves to keep chasing chimeras. I don’t entirely dismiss the possibility that we could move the politics and culture of the Arab and Moslem world in a less harmful direction, but before I sign on, I want to know that there is a comprehensive plan (and a leadership that seems at least potentially capable of carrying it out) that treats the problem seriously in all its aspects, not some vague notion that we must engage in “nation-building” or “spreading democracy” because “we have no choice.” That’s why I am drawn, not to the near-utopian goal (because it depends on the Moslems) of reforming the Moslem world, but to the more-doable strategy (because it depends on ourselves) of isolating the Moslem world, plus installing a permanent base somewhere in the Mideast (and far from any population center) from which we could threaten to strike down any regime that became dangerous to us.
While it’s good that Steyn is finally starting to grapple with these problems, his argument for nation-building doesn’t go beyond things that have already been said. As for his criticism of the “punish, don’t nation-build” approach, he may be right that it will not work in the case of a country like Mexico that is right on our border. However, with regard to Moslem countries that are situated in their own part of the world,—or, at least, in the case of North Africa, that do not directly share a border with Europe—it may still be the best option. Email entry |