THERE ARE ALWAYS BARBARIANS AT THE GATES 

 

12/13/05  - WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

            Two seemingly unrelated events this week in fact have a certain kinship. In Hong Kong, trade ministers will make a last-ditch effort to save the Doha round of negotiations to further liberalize world trade. And "two days from now, Iraqis will vote to elect a legislature, capping efforts by the U.S.-led coalition to establish a democracy on rocky Arab soil.

            These two events are connected because both are designed to bring greater economic opportunities to dark corners of the world so that the people who inhabit those places won't try to kill us. That's putting the matter in stark, selfish terms, but sometimes it's a good idea to remind the smug and comfortable burghers of rich nations where their self-interest lies. Striving for a world in which every individual can find fulfillment and "dignity in peaceful pursuits is not only morally just but highly practical as well”.

            But traveling that road needs more than good intentions. In the case of the Doha round, it will require more political courage than has yet been displayed in the rich countries, where wealthy farmers enjoy protection and public funding from the ruling elites. In Iraq and Afghanistan it required war. Osama bin Laden set up his base with a cruel and backward Taliban regime for a direct attack on the U.S. Saddam Hussein pounced first on Iran and then on Kuwait to plunder their oil riches; after failing both times he corrupted the United Nations and countless individuals around the world with oil-for-food bribes.

            These two villains, Osama and Saddam, were modern-day practitioners of something as old as recorded history and no doubt even more prevalent before the beginning of civilization. Predation is an unpleasant impulse in humans as in other animal species Have-nots for centuries have assaulted the haves. The Assyrians conquered Israel; Alexander Persia', the barbarian Visigoths, Rome, etc. At a basic level, most military aggression has been organized theft.

            Leaders of such adventures, particularly in the last century, have employed populism as a tool to mobilize the masses. Lenin and Stalin drew on the, Marxist theology of class struggle. Hitler exploited popular resentment of the reparations demanded of Germans by the World War I victors. Today's leaders of the assault on the Western democracies proclaim a war between two religions, Islam and Christianity, calling up the ancient memory of the Crusader military excursions into the Arab homelands of the Middle East

            The U.S. response has been to crush Saddam and the Taliban militarily and to try to build friendlier, more democratic and thus more politically liberal edifices to replace them. Hence the elections in Iraq and hence the Doha round with its central objective of giving poor countries better access to world markets, with the hope that their peoples might become less susceptible to class-struggle demagoguery.

            This wise and constructive U.S. foreign policy predates the Bush administration by many decades. Its modern application dates back to the end of World War II when the U.S. led creation of the U.N. and organized and helped finance the reconstruction of two former deadly, enemies, Japan and Germany. Freer trade has been an objective through a series of nine international negotiations, starting with the Geneva Round of 1947 and continuing through the more recent Kennedy, Tokyo and Uruguay rounds and the beginning of the Doha round in 2002. These successive liberalizations have helped pullout of poverty millions of people who might otherwise have been receptive to class-warfare incitement.

            One of the most. successful creations of this broad trend toward liberalization was the European Union, encouraged from its infancy by the U.S. Europe saw bloodshed in tyranny throughout the Soviet empire in the last half of the 20th century but nothing compared to the horrors it experienced in two world wars and in the many conflicts that went before. Remarkably, Europe seems to have not learned fully the lessons of its own success, otherwise why would the French have tried to obstruct the subduing of Saddam and why are they now one of the main opponents of European farm policy reforms, needed for a Doha-round success?

            Yet the achievements of Europe.should not be taken lightly, given that continent's history of strife. Indeed, the welfare-state policies that make the European economies so sluggish today derived from the challenges the West European nations faced in the postwar period from the Marxist doctrine of class struggle promulgated by Moscow and the West European Communist Parties. "Old Europe" may be burdened with bureaucracy and paternalism today, but it is in far better shape than it would have been had the Communists succeeded in crushing political and economic freedom there.

            "Thee is so much work left to do. The U.S. effort to convert Afghanistan and Iraq from failed, tyrannies into thriving democracies needs an ingredient not always understood by bureaucrats and politicians, including some, Americans. Energizing a society requires economic as well 'as political freedom. That means property rights, minimum bureaucratic obstacles to business formation and a legal system that can enforce laws and contracts. Iraq's leaders say they understand this, but one wonders if that understanding will overcome the usual temptations of power.

            There is also the question of whether the U.S. left and its organs of opinion not to mention some who would normally be regarded as holding right-wing views-understand America's post-World War II history. The cries for disengagement from Iraq, and even from world politics, are dispiriting in light of what American engagement has accomplished in the last 65 years. They reflect not only a failure to understand U.S. history but a broader failure to understand the entirety of world history.

            That history tells us that rich nations will always be envied by the political leaders of have-not states. Rather than try to learn how America became rich and free up their own societies to follow the same road to riches, too many will do the opposite and plot to get those riches through theft. There's always a barbarian out there somewhere.