Three out of every four Third World countries are governed by authoritarian regimes of one sort or another. Not surprisingly, this fact leads Jeane Kirkpatrick to conclude that “no problem of American foreign policy is more urgent than that of formulating a morally and strategically acceptable, and politically realistic program for dealing with nondemocratic governments who are threatened by Soviet sponsored insurrection.” For this possibility affects a wide range of countries from El Salvador to Mexico through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Korea, to name but a few. Yet this pressing issue continues to be inadequately or inconsistently faced, and grossly so. For the policy of recent years has been characterized by pendular swings, from one simple extreme to the other (“hawk to dove”), resulting in equally inappropriate, short run responses, doomed to failure.
Up to Viet Nam, the prevailing view was that of the hawks. In case of a crunch, a dictator might be an S.O.B., but he was our S.O.B., not theirs. Hence, he was to be preferred. This catchy formulation did grasp one important truth — that non-communist authoritarian regimes1 are not irreversible, whereas communist ones have proved to be virtually irreversible. Hence, however cruel our S.O.B., his rule is a purgatory compared to the communists’ eternal authoritarianism. The problem with this view is that our long run interest in a pluralistic democratic order of nations is sacrificed to the simpler, but more realizable minimum goal of preventing a communist ‘takeover: at least that of preventing it in the short run.
Small wonder that we are so fearful of movements towards social change that are not well under the control of the ruling autocrat. These movements entail risk, whereas the autocrats’s permanence promises stability. Hence, we tend to become supporters of the regime, while our long run commitment to pluralist democracy becomes mere rhetoric. Since non-communist regimes are indeed reversible — for they lack the ideological and institutional cohesion which make up a totalitarian regime — when the blow-up comes, we are on the wrong side. Worse yet, the chances are that the winning side be the communist left. For since the autocrat closed off institutional forms of change (the ones in which pluralist social reformers flourish), only violent and non-institutional forms of change are available (the ones in which radical revolutionaries flourish). In short, by our unabashed support of an autocratic ruler, we weaken the chances of democratic reformers, and so tend to make more likely violent upheavals of a Marxist orientation. The sole pursuit of a short run goal (preventing a communist takeover) now makes ever more likely that we will eventually be forced to choose between our S.O.B. and theirs. For we ourselves have worked to exclude the Third Way — that of pluralist reform. This is not an unfair reading of much of our experience in Third World countries.
A new tendency seems to have set in after Viet Nam: to try siding with the forces of change. We suppose or hope (often against the evidence) that all such insurrectional groups are, in fact, largely made up of pluralist reformers; that if they are marxists, that they ought to be given a chance, in order to be co-opted later; and that even if they can’t be co-opted, that “we” deserve this as “punishment” for our support of the previous autocrat (whether the country in question deserves this is another question rarely discussed). In case of a crunch, US action in such circumstances is either to force liberalization on the autocratic regime, or let the guerrillas win.
The merit of this latter view is, indeed, in recognizing that not all social reform movements are marxist controlled; that the varieties of social movements in a pluralist world are not always best defined in communist — anticommunist terms. Non-intervention may at times be the better policy rather than visceral suspicion if not opposition to all social movements, true enough. Yet this position relapses into wishful thinking in its unwillingness to recognize that often times social movements are, in fact, largely marxist dominated and/or that strategic considerations may be seriously impaired by the advent of even some noncommunist but radical reform groups. To push for liberalization and an immediate democratic alternative in circumstances where the society has been polarized and is on the verge of civil war may not only be naive, but it may simply be a way of going through the motions further to weaken the regime and justify our abandonment of it. Iran, Nicaragua, and certain phases of our Viet Nam policy might fit this later description.
The fact is that both of these policies have generally been inappropriate: the “hawkish” variant for altogether ignoring our long run interest; the “dovish” one for trying to impose a long run solution in the short run. Both fail in not enacting a long run policy for the long run.
To be sure, blocking a communist takeover (as in Portugal in the mid ’70’s) or support of an autocratic regime may well be a necessary short run goal, given our strategic interests (e.g. imagine a marxist controlled revolution in Saudi Arabia). And so too, non intervention and, indeed, cooperation in the hope of co-opting or at least dissuading a country from becoming a Soviet satellite ‘a la Cuba’ may also be an appropriate policy in the short run in other circumstances (e.g. possibly in today’s Nicaragua). Yet neither of these approaches separately or together is INVARIABLY THE APPROPRIATE POLICY IN THE SHORT RUN, and NEITHER is ever an appropriate long run policy.
The basic thrust of our policy towards non-communist authoritarian regimes should, therefore, balance both our short run and long run interests. Up until now, our problem has been that we’ve either neglected the long run or tried mistakenly to impose it on the short run.
How then give the long run appropriate expression without subordinating our short run needs or neglecting them altogether? Our long role goal of promoting and helping form prosperous and stable pluralist democracies is not one that can be achieved overnight nor by simple decree. For such systems are the outgrowths of multiple forces. Among these are the following: (1) consensus as to the legitimacy and fairness of the basic system. This is likely to require time, fair play, and a not terribly concentrated initial distribution of wealth; (2) a vigorous and multifaceted organizational and institutional life, which incorporates the bulk of the population in one or more roles (religious, commercial, sectoral, class… interests), none of these institutions or organizations enjoying exclusive or overwhelming dominance in the society; and (3) a reasonably high and sustained rate of economic growth.
The focus of attention has tended to be on this third dimension. And indeed growth is what most countries have been successful in achieving. But much less has been done in laying the foundations for legitimacy via asset redistribution, and organizational and institutional vitality has been treated as secondary, and in any case as something that comes after, not concomitantly with, economic growth.
Therefore, a permanent commitment to support the creation of a prosperous and stable bloc of pluralist democracies on the Third World would entail:
1. Centering aid on programs of asset redistribution (e.g. land reform) which would widen the power base of the society and increase the sense of legitimacy.
2. Strengthening intermediate organizations — unions, political parties, the press, interest groups — and foment their free play. US government foundations along the lines of the German government foundations, as well as interest- group organizations in the US and Europe could serve in this task of political/development.
3. Finally, as a further inducement to initiate this transition to democracy, a US policy of unilateral free trade could be offered to all such freely elected governments, or better yet free trade under some sort of associate membership in an enlarged OECD of democratic nations. The idea would be to give this long term support automatically to all countries with freely elected governments, so that a country would know that democratic behavior had its benefits (membership in the family of democratic nations) and coups had their costs (automatic exclusion from such associate membership) though other forms of unilateral aid might persist for strategic reasons.
To be sure, this policy does not guarantee success, but the enacting of a long term policy with automatic benefits and costs might finally free us from the recurring dilemma in short run policy — their S.O.B. or ours. For we would be helping promote the long run alternative of democratic reform.