We in the West have a propensity noted by the rest of the world, to be rather self-congratulatory about our political and economic systems and our accompanying wish to pressure the rest of the world to try to be more like us.
US efforts in that regard have been carefully noted in the multitude of revelations revealed by Wikileaks amongst other brave whistleblowers, and which resulted in the attempts by the US to permanently silence Julian Assange for doing so. After the Second World War the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) began a campaign of regime change in countries around the world designed to force recalcitrant countries who failed to respond in the obsequious manner the US saw as appropriate. The CIA when it was formed to replace the OSS, refined and developed that program and also included assassinations and toppling of leaders of countries that were often democratic but not subservient. As has been openly noted by the original head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) it then took over from the CIA the job of overturning disobedient governments after the savage indictment of what the CIA had been doing by the Church Committee of the US Senate in 1975.
The proposed function of the NED was to spread democracy around the world. That is to spread the US idea of democracy around the world, which was a cover for the US taking over the Empire functions being lost by the UK as its Empire disintegrated. In practice that has meant the organising of coups and colour revolutions against governments around the world many of whom were democratic, and often replacing them with either military dictatorships or autocratic regimes enforced by violence against the citizens.
Indeed, those efforts have in recent times extended to selecting a relatively political unknown in Venezuela and crowning him with the title of President of the country, without even the pretence of an election by the people, on the alleged basis that the previous elections for President had been fraudulent. This was despite the fact that Jimmy Carter said in 2012 that the Venezuelan election system was the best in the world and far outstripped the US system for reflecting the views of its people.
The same tactic was recently adopted by the NED to select another political unknown in Russia and to spread around the world the mendacious claim that he was the leader of the Opposition, when he had never been elected to the national Parliament and of whose existence less than 9% of Russians were even aware. Both efforts failed dismally This at the same time as the successful overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine by the expenditure, according to Victoria Newland (the Under Secretary of State for political Affairs in the US State Department), of $5 billion US in creating a colour revolution led largely by self-proclaimed Neo-Nazis. She even selected the new Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk. It appears that democracy is fine for the US but is not appropriate for US satellites and proxies.
These processes they inherited from the then dying British Empire which had employed similar strategies for the previous hundred years or more. That these strategies did the opposite of spreading the Anglo model of democracy is simply historical fact. The US invasions or occupations of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, China, Haiti, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yugoslavia (as NATO) Somalia, Yemen, Libya have rarely if ever resulted in an improvement of democratic processes. Indeed many were aimed at preventing the emergence of such processes or removing ones that were already in place. They have mainly been about political and economic advantage and overturning governments that did not demonstrate the appropriate subservience to Washington.
The lesson that should have been learned from all this warmongering is that democracy flowers from within and cannot be imposed externally by force or arms. Another and more profound lesson is that democracy as promoted by the West, is only one form of political organisation and the one that the West promotes reflects the values and history of those countries. Others have different histories and traditions, and these have dictated other forms of political organisation, some of which have far outstripped the West in recent times in providing vast improvements in the living standards of the bulk of their people. The belief in the West that our system is “better” than all the others, makes the arrogant assumption that the values of other cultures and the systems they have built to reflect those values are in some way inferior to ours. That is not only arrogant, but profoundly mistaken and is preventing the West from understanding the new multi-polar world that is emerging.
Les MacDonald
Les MacDonald is the CEO of NSW Meals on Wheels. Prior to this, he held executive positions in both the Commonwealth and NSW governments. He was previously Executive Director Uniting Care Ageing. Les has an extensive leadership history including board positions in public hospitals, health insurance, the maritime industry, public transport, cancer medicine and the Council for the Arts amongst others.
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