The strong horse

Why haven't we condemned Pervez Musharraf's brutal destruction of Pakistani democracy and civil society? Conventional wisdom is that it's because we need Musharraf to help us fight al-Qaeda. But this article interestingly posits an alternative explanation - basically, China has so much more influence over Pakistan than does the U.S., it's close to impossible for us to substantially impact Pakistani politics.

Two of this decade's biggest trends in world affairs have been rising anti-Americanism and a rollback of democracy around the world. We usually think of these as direct results of the Iraq war, and I think that this is basically correct - when America comes in and conquers territory in the phony name of "democracy", it obviously tends to sour people on the whole thing.

But I have a nagging suspicion that this decade's fourth big trend - the spectacular rise of China - has more to do with the others than people realize.

It's well-known that many of the world's most spectacularly non-democratic regimes (North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan) are either client states of China, or at least heavily dependent on Chinese aid and trade. But even in marginal cases like Thailand or Mali or Venezuela, the mere fact that engagement with the West is no longer economically necessary for regime survival makes rulers less urgent about implementing rule by the people, Western-style civil liberties, etc. What's more, China's authoritarian-capitalist growth model has severed the traditional link between democracy and prosperity. And of course, China's huge oil demand (itself a result of massive energy inefficiency and subsidies in the Chinese economy) keeps the price of oil, and thus the power of petro-dictatorships, sky-high.

As for anti-Americanism, it's much harder to tie that to China. After all, world opinion of China has deteriorated a bit too in the last few years. But I also get the unmistakable impression that the foreign press believes America to be on the downslide and China to be about to replace the U.S. as the dominant global power. Is it possible that people in places like Russia, Korea, Argentina, and Germany have trended so strongly anti-American in part because they believe a new "strong horse" has arrived on the scene to replace us? This seems especially likely given our spectacular failure to pacify Iraq.

If Bush hadn't gone into Iraq - or even if he had gone in but somehow managed to succeed - I doubt we'd see nearly the levels of anti-Americanism and suspicion about democracy that we now see in the developing world. But will these attitudes disappear if a Democrat takes the presidency in 2008, withdraws from Iraq, and restores our traditional commitment to multilateralism?

Somehow I have a feeling that not until China's red-hot growth slows considerably will we even be able to repair our image and the image of democracy.