Democracy, Human Rights and Erosion of Western Hegemony

The West has undoubtedly been the leading civilization for almost 400 years now and has been the sole policy maker of the world. Within West, the core shifted from Europe to the United states after the Second World War. But that doesn’t bother Europe or west as whole because all these nations have always been in sync about every major global policy and ideas.

During the 1970s and 1980s over thirty countries shifted from authoritarian to democratic political systems. Along with economic development, the policies and actions of the western powers and international institutions helped to bring democracy to Spain, Portugal, Latin America, Philippines, South Korea and Eastern Europe. Democratization was most successful in countries where Christian or Western influences were strong. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communism completely lost its charm and by the 1990s, except for Cuba, democratic transitions had occured in most of the countries whose peoples espoused Western Christianity. This led to a strong belief within West that a global democratic revolution was underway and that soon Western concepts of human rights and Western forms of political democracy would prevail throughout the world. Promoting the spread of these ideas hence became a high priority goal for Western nations. In April 1990, U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker said ‘Beyond containment lies democracy’. Even during 1992 U.S. Presidential campaign, Bill Clinton repeatedly said that promotion of democracy would be top priority of Clinton administration. No stones were left unturned.

But the Post Cold-war world has been very different from post World-war world. This was demonstrated by the resistance to the American and European efforts by non-western civilizations, mainly Islamic and East-Asian civilizations. The failures of the West with respect to Asia stemmed primarily from the increasing economic wealth and self-confidence of Asian countries. Old age of dependence and subordination was past and western leverage over East and Southeast Asia was greatly reduced.

Western Ideas and Non-western responses

At the 1997 G-7 summit in Denver, President Clinton boasted about the success of the American economy as a model for others. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has called the United States "the indispensable nation" and said that "we stand tall and hence see further than other nations". This statement is true in the narrow sense that the United States is an indispensable participant in any effort to tackle major global problems. It is false in also implying that other nations are dispensable. The United States needs the cooperation of some major countries in handling any issue and that American indispensability is the source of wisdom. In the unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was often able to impose its will on other countries. That moment has passed. The two principal tools of coercion that the United States now attempts to use are economic sanctions and military intervention. Sanctions work, however, only when other countries also support them, and that is decreasingly the case. Hence, the United States either applies them unilaterally to the detriment of its economic interests and its relations with its allies, or it does not enforce them, in which case they become symbols of American weakness.

As argued by a Singaporean official ‘Efforts to promote human rights in Asia must also reckon with altered distribution of power in the post Cold war world’. This was unprecedented. The ability of Asian regimes to resist Western human rights pressure was reinforced by several factors. American and European businesses were desperately anxious to expand their trade and their investment in these rapidly growing countries and subjected their governments to intense pressure not to disrupt economic relations with them. Asian countries saw such pressure as infringement on their sovereignty and rushed to each other’s support whenever required. The growing economic strength of Asian countries render them increasingly immune to Western pressure concerning human rights and liberal democracy. As Richard Nixon observed in 1994, “Today China’s economic power makes U.S. lectures about human rights imprudent. Within a decade it will make them irrelevant. Within two decades it will make them laughable”. 15 years on, that’s exactly what we are seeing. Perhaps the biggest shock to U.S. came when the Japanese government distanced itself from American human rights policies not so long after the Tiananmen Square.

Several instances that followed proved the rejection of western ideas of democracy and human rights by Islamic and Asian countries. In 1990, Sweden submitted on behalf of 20 Western nations a resolution condemning the military regime in Myanmar, but opposition from Asian and other countries killed it. Resolutions condemning Iran for human rights abuses were voted down for 5 straight years. Same happened with China. One of the biggest surprises came when in 1994; Pakistan tabled a resolution in the U.N. condemning India for human rights abuses in Kashmir. Countries friendly to India rallied against it but so also did Pakistan’s closest friends China & Iran, who had been target of similar measures. The motive was not to help India or embarrass Pakistan but to defeat the Western policies.

End of Western hegemony ?

The differences over human rights between the West and the rest and decline of influence of western policies were clearly revealed at U.N. World Conferences on Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993. This was a clear clash between European and North American countries belonging to Western civilization and a bloc of 50 countries represented by Buddhist, Islamic, Latin American & Confucian civilizations. Major differences existed between Western and Asian-Islamic blocs. Unfortunately, Western nations were ill-prepared for Vienna conference and were outnumbered. During its proceedings they made more concessions than their opponents and hence the declaration approved by the conference was a minimal one. As observed by a human rights supporter it was a “flawed and contradictory” document, and clearly represented a victory for the Asian-Islamic bloc. This declaration was much weaker than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the U.N. had adopted in 1948. This transition clearly represented decline in Western hegemony.

The biggest winner at Vienna, of all nations, came out to be China. Beijing kept winning throughout by simply tossingits weight around. Infuriated by this, the West decided to avenge this insult by securing 2000 Summer Olympics for Sydney by outnumbering Beijing, which they knew was very important for the Chinese dignity. Lee Kuan Yew commented, “ America and Britain succeeded in cutting China down to size”. Little did they know that Beijing would go on to win the bid for 2008 Olympics and put every past Olympic host to shame by putting up a grand show. This came at a time when China is much more powerful economically, militarily and diplomatically than it was in 1994.

Recent invasion of Afghanistan followed by Iraq in the post 9/11 era has further demonstrated the U.S. desperation to remain on the top of the food chain. America can feel the difference because this time around they have been able to muster lesser support outside NATO as compared to last Gulf War. They are being openly condemned by Russia, Asian and Islamic countries. Also by invading Iraq on pretext of destroying WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), which were never found, United States has brought the credibility of the U.N. under question.

These untimely invasions triggered by a feeling of insecurity within the West & deeply affected their economies in a very negative manner. This in turn affected economy of every nation in the world and ultimately gave rise to an Economic Crisis. This crisis was predicted long before the Afghan war in 2001 but finally materialized towards the end of 2007. Major business giants went bankrupt and unemployment rose at an unprecedented rate. U.S. has been worst affected by the crisis and have perhaps realized that the strategy has probably backfired and recent reports have suggested that U.S. now is in a hurry to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Democracy or no Democracy, they want to be out of that part of the World.

The big winner in all this is again China. Though its economy did suffer because of the crisis but it is on a quick path to recovery by striking a decent balance between their imports and exports. Many predicted this crisis as the final blow to the U.S. (in particular) and Western (in general) hegemony and perhaps beginning of a Sinic dominated World. It happens or not, still remains to be seen but famous American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and MIT professor Avram Noam Chomsky disagrees. In an interview given in Oct 2008, he says “….but it's [U.S.] also a very rich country with plenty of resources and it is homogeneous unlike Europe. Europe is roughly on the same scale economically but it is not homogeneous. You could see that in the reactions to the financial crises, in the United States they're uniform taken by the federal government and in Europe they are national and not consistent”.

The changing balance of power among civilizations is apparent. It can’t be brought to a stop by conventional strategies of the Western nations. It is becoming more difficult for the West to achieve their goals and promote its ideas. If it wants to retain the hegemony it will have to carefully use its resources and learn to tackle the issues more diplomatically than militarily because a lot of damage has already been done and even the West cannot afford another crisis.