The West Is Not Necessarily ‘Democratic’—In Fact, It Never Was

 'Historical facts are often presented in a way that suits the prevailing narrative of the struggle of the free and Western liberal-democracies against autocracies.'

From The EuropeConservative

By Tomislav Kardum

Historical facts are often presented in a way that suits the prevailing narrative of the struggle of the free and Western liberal-democracies against autocracies.

That the West is synonymous with the idea of liberal democracy is common thinking nowadays. That sentiment is amplified and strengthened with the pretty unanimous backing of Ukraine against Russian aggression by the countries considered to be part of the West.

Such thinking is well conveyed in the last interview of the famous American historian Stephen Kotkin, conducted by Peter Robinson. For Kotkin, the West is characterized by strong independent institutions, a free judiciary, the rule of law, etc. Or more broadly speaking, by liberal democracy. Thus, it is quite logical that he included “North America, Europe, the first island chain in Asia, and many other partners, Israel, in the Middle East” in the West. He added that the West “needs to be expanded and needs to be cultivated like a garden.” This is different from the “civilizational” definition of the West in Samuel Huntington’s famous book The Clash of Civilizations, according to which the Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe, along with the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, constitute Western civilization. 

Does Kotkin’s trans-geographical and transcultural understanding of the West imply that the U.S., Great Britain, or France cease to be part of the West if they become autocratic? Given that Kotkin defined “Western” countries as liberal democratic ones, it is interesting that India is not included in the West, although it has never ceased to be a democracy since its independence from the British Empire in late 1940s. The exclusion of India makes sense when we consider the rest of Kotkin’s narrative in which the democratic West is fighting autocratic Russia. 

However, even in that regard, the situation is far from a black-and-white narrative. Let’s just mention that the West (especially the European Union and Israel) is tacitly siding with autocratic Azerbaijan, while democratic Armenia is still Russia’s formal military ally. Although Azerbaijan is 154 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders media freedom index, right between Belarus and Russia, President Von der Leyen especially thanked Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev for his help in a “critical moment.” Azerbaijani gas via a new pipeline saved (in terms of energy) the southeastern part of the European Union by replacing Russian gas, especially in Bulgaria which was previously heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels.

In spite of that, in the annual “state of the union address,” Von der Leyen proclaimed: 

This is not only a war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine. This is a war on our energy, a war on our economy, a war on our values, and a war on our future. This is about autocracy against democracy.

On the other hand, Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was more honest: “We cannot say ‘we are the democracies,’ and the ones which follow us are also democracies—that is not true. That is not true.” 

Many scientists define Russian aggression in Ukraine in similar terms. Historian and expert on Ukrainian history Timothy Snyder states: 

Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. 

“For the sake of global democracy,” writes political sociologist Larry Diamond, “failure is not an option in Ukraine.” He continues:

The autocracies of the world—China, Egypt, Iran, and Russia, not to mention Venezuela and Zimbabwe and their unfolding calamities—face severe challenges precisely because of their lack of accountability and open debate. All this suggests that the Zeitgeist can shift back in favor of democracy. But it won’t do so on its own. It requires American power, and a renewal of America’s democratic purpose at home and abroad. 

Interesting in this regard is the cherry-picking of some autocratic states, although there are many of these (such as Saudi Arabia), more or less friendly to the democratic West.

Democracies and Autocracies

At the same time, of course, one should not lose sight of the fact that on the one side, there are mostly democracies, while on the other there are mostly autocracies. Mostly is the keyword. Both the predominantly democratic camp and the predominantly autocratic camp would have nothing against winning other countries over to their side. After all, the much-hyped BRICS consists of three democracies (South Africa, India, and Brazil) and two autocracies (Russia and China). As Henry Kissinger writes in his magisterial book Diplomacy: “If ideology necessarily determined foreign policy, Hitler and Stalin would never have joined hands any more than Richelieu and the Sultan of Turkey would have three centuries earlier.” After all, the Ukrainian struggle would be noble and just even if theoretically Ukraine was autocratic and Russia was democratic, because it would be defending itself against foreign aggression. 

Tacitly defining the West as countries that accept American leadership of the “free world” and ignoring factors that do not fit in that narrative is quite common. In accordance with the prevailing narrative about the struggle of the free liberal-democratic world against autocracies in various forms, historical facts are also presented in a way that suits the narrative. As a professor of historical theory, Keith Jenkins stated in the book: “History is never for itself; it is always for someone.” 

Because of that, it is quite logical that the history of the 20th century is presented largely as a struggle of the democratic West against autocracies in the form of Nazism/fascism (in World War II) and communism (in the Cold War).

World War II—even until 1941, when the Third Reich attacked the Soviet Union, which consequently allied itself with the British Empire—cannot be considered only as a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. Of course, the Western bloc was led by democratic France or Great Britain, but the situation with their allies is much more complicated. The first victim that opposed Hitler militarily, Poland, was a semi-dictatorship, at times of greater or lesser intensity. According to historian Stanley Payne, Poland in the 1930s should be understood in the following way: 

[A] moderate military regime that did not seek to introduce a one-party state or to eliminate parliamentary elections altogether. It should be classified as a moderate pluralist authoritarian regime that remained in power because of the prestige and charisma of Pilsudski, the strength of the military, and the force of nationalism, as well as an interventionist economic policy. Pilsudski was normally not president or prime minister but minister of defense in charge of the army. His government did organize a state political front, the BBWR (Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government), which won a moderate majority in the 1928 elections. During the difficult years of the depression it became increasingly restrictive and, just before Pilsudski’s death in 1935, introduced a more authoritarian constitution. Even so, opposition forces were never entirely banned.

In Greece, which Fascist Italy attacked in October 1940, military dictator Ioannis Metaxas and his so-called “4th of August regime,” were in power. The British Empire provided him with air defense and material support. Metaxas drew inspiration precisely from fascism, and some political scientists consider him a outright fascist. “Although far less ideologically ‘revolutionary’ compared to Italian Fascism or German National Socialism,” writes historian Aristotle Kallas, “the 4th of August regime’s radicalisation between 1936 and 1941 marked a fundamental departure from conventional conservative-authoritarian politics in a direction charted by the broader fascist experience in Europe.”

There is also one exception in the camp otherwise ideologically aligned with nazi Germany. Finland, one of the rare European democracies, participated in the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1938, only eleven countries in Europe were democratic. These were Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Of the mentioned countries, seven were victims of Third Reich’s aggression, namely Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, France, and Great Britain. Three democratic countries were neutral throughout the war (Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland), while one (Finland) was on the side of Nazi Germany.

That is far from an unambiguous ideological alignment. Authoritarian Spain and Portugal under Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar, whom some political scientists consider fascists (and in any case they were right-wing dictators), were neutral in World War II, with the exception that Spain sent volunteers to Operation Barbarossa (the so-called Blue Division).

These two countries are a good introduction to the Cold War part of my thesis. Among the founders of NATO, supposedly the guardian of the free liberal world, was precisely Salazar’s Portugal, despite the North Atlantic Treaty‘s statement that signatories “are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.”

Franco, on the other hand, especially during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, developed a strong relationship on an anti-communist basis with the U.S., but without joining NATO. Tom Gallagher, in his recently published biography of Salazar, writes:

Through the 1950s Spain also quickly emerged from the diplomatic isolation it had endured in the late 1940s. In 1949 Churchill had swum against the West European tide by stating in the House of Commons that excluding Spain from NATO left “a serious gap in the strategic arrangements for Western Europe.” Unlike Salazar, Franco, having begun by sharing the same deeply sceptical views of the United States, decided to focus on building up strong bilateral ties with Washington. Senior American generals such as General Omar Bradley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed the view in 1948 that the Iberian peninsula could well be ‘the last foothold in continental Europe’ that might be held if the Soviet Union mounted an invasion. A geostrategic partnership gathered pace in the 1950s, leading to Franco ceding the Americans the right to establish three airbases and a submarine base on Spanish soil (a concession unacceptable to Salazar in terms of his own relations with the U.S.).

Are Spain and Portugal under Franco and Salazar part of the West, or do they become so only after the establishment of democracy in the 1970s? 

With the examples from the present, the Cold War, and World War II, I do not deny that the aforementioned conflicts were mostly between democratic states and autocratic ones. Mostly, but not exclusively. In the narrative that I am criticizing, the West as a positive signifier takes on the characteristics of a chimera that, depending on a relatively short period of time, changes its parts in order to keep the democratic ideal intact. The West is not necessarily democratic, nor has it ever been so.