Building a Better Afghanistan.

In an editorial in this morning's Dallas Morning News, Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, writes that the U.S. is wrong to put so much pressure on Hamid Karzai to reform the government in Afghanistan. There is tension between the U.S. and Karzai. The Obama administration is frustrated with Karzai's efforts to fight the insurgency in Afghanistan as well as his lethargic pace of reforming the government. The reason for the most recent flap is what the administration sees as Karzai's efforts to bolster his control in Afghanistan through electoral fraud and his attempts pack the Afghan Electoral Commission with loyal supporters. (Somewhat ironic given the current efforts to replace Supreme Court Justice Stevens.) The problem as Biddle sees it is larger than Karzai. The problem is the Afghanistan government itself.

Biddle is a critic of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Like others, Biddle asserts that the U.S. is ignoring the elephant in the room. The problem as they see it is not so much who the leader of Afghanistan is, but the political culture there. Biddle is among the league of political leaders, intellectuals, and scholars who insist on giving advice to other nations on how to better run their countries. Biddle, like so many others, has his own ideas on how to make a modern, democratic, Afghanistan. Biddle's advice is more "carrots and sticks." More carrots to entice corrupt Afghan officials into reform, and, where carrots fail, more sticks. A better Afghanistan requires better government. Better government requires better laws. Better leaders enact better laws.

The fundamental difficulty with this approach is that it leaves people of the equation. It puts the cart before the horse as it were. Advocates of progress through better government frequently see society as the product of government, not the source. Government, as they understand, it is the product of laws. Good leaders will create good laws. Once the right leaders have been found and the right laws have been passed, democracy can be established. After that, it is only a matter of time before the people embrace it. Once the the people have been accustomed to the new laws, the new government will become part of the national fabric. According to this idea, if you want a democratic government, you need to find democratic leaders and pass democratic laws. The better the leaders, the better the laws. The better the laws, the better the government. Once a democratic government is in place, a democratic people will emerge. Once a democratic people have been established, an open culture will result, further bolstering the new democratic regime. Naturally there will be turbulence as people adjust to the new system and "hard line" elements fight against it. But, if the government perseveres, democracy will triumph.

Like so many other policies and programs, both domestic and foreign, people are treated as a constant. People are people according to this theory. All people have the same fundamental motivations and respond similarly the same to stimuli. All people want wealth and all people want freedom. Moreover, all people understand wealth and freedom in the same way. Wealth is always money, and freedom is always personal. Because of this, it is clear that capitalism is the best way to organize the economy of a nation because it is the best way to produce wealth. Democracy is the best way to politically organize society because it produces the most personal freedom. Everything else in society is subordinated to these ends. Culture, religion, and tradition will be tolerated where suitable but they must not be allowed to interfere with the goals of creating wealth and protecting personal freedom.

The problem is that people do not understand wealth and freedom the same way. Nor do they place the same emphasis on them. Some people have other things they value above wealth and liberty. Most often, those things consist of customs, traditions, and religious beliefs. If the accumulation of wealth is not a priority, capitalism has little appeal. A culture that values tradition and custom will be reluctant to embrace individual liberty. Where liberty is not embraced, democracy has little appeal. Indeed, where liberty is viewed as undermining the culture and traditions of a people, it is greeted with hostility.

Introducing positive law into cultures that have long relied on tradition and custom for political and social organization will often cause resentment and turmoil. Those with vested interest in maintaining traditional order will resist change. Those who embrace culture and tradition will see no reason to change. Those long comfortable with the social order will be cool to change because they dislike uncertainty and fear the unknown. Those who chafe under the traditional order might be likely to embrace change, but for the wrong reasons. Those with the most to gain from the promise of democracy, the neglected and the marginalized, most often see in it the promise for power. They do not embrace democracy because they find democratic principals appealing, but because they see in it an opportunity achieve their ambitions and redress the injustices they have had to endure. They have little interest in democracy other than as a way to obtain power. Commonly, where there is no democratic tradition in a culture, once power is obtained, democracy is soon found to be an inconvenience and jettisoned.

Changing the government in Afghanistan will not change Afghanistan. It will only change to government. What the United States is really after is changing the people of Afghanistan. Changing the government and building "democratic" institutions is simply a means to that end. It is not a very good means. The United States is trying to create the Afghanistan we want, not the Afghanistan the Afghans want. Therein lies the problem.