One world, one prosperity or one poverty. That is the lesson
of the migrant crisis now in Europe. In a globally integrated world, we all
have a shared destiny on the long run. Syria looked so far from Europe but now
it is now so close. Europe, the US and the OECD must do more to support
democracy and good governance in developing countries, support the building of
strong institutions but not by being confused and indecisive as we have seen in
Syria. From Iraq to Libya to Syria, Europe and the U.S must learn the lesson of
how not to intervene in a country to entrench democracy, whatsoever is the objective
of their Syrian or Libyan adventures. The West’s intervention in Syria and
Libya has been disasters leading to even more fragile and collapsed societies
than the ones they sought to replace. Libya has virtually become a failed state
like Somalia, after Gadhafi was removed. Syria is nearly a failed state due to
the Western sponsored proxy war against Assad.
The near failed nature of the Syria state is what has made it easier for
an ISIS to over-run parts of Syria and create along with the Assad regime, the
human catastrophe and genocide in their part of Syria. Meanwhile, the jury is
still out whether life is better in Iraq today than before Western
intervention.
The events in Syria and Libya begs the question if it was not
right for Army to intervene in Egypt and Abachalized
the Egyptian revolution and truncate its emerging democracy. Western confusion
and indecisiveness in Syria and the mess in Libya will make the Egyptian
Generals tell the Egyptian people that they are better off under their jag-boot
government because they could perhaps hold the state together and prevent it from
falling apart. Would Egypt have gone the way of Libya if its strong national
army had not intervened in its politics? This is an interesting debate. It is a
dialectical contradiction of history that dictatorial regimes had sometimes
held the fragmented, fragile and weak societies together better than democratic
governments. This is a worrisome pattern for democratic political science as
events in Libya, Syria and the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia seem to
suggest. The consolation in all these events is however in the progress of
democracy in Tunisia where the Arab Spring and Middle East democratic
revolution was sparked. Tunisia’s democracy is marching forward with two democratic
elections since the Arab Spring. The Tunisian society and its governance have
become more inclusive with even, a very high level of women participation in
government. Tunisia holds the beacon and the hope that the Arab societies even
in Saudi Arabia shall yet be democratic one day. On the long run, even in weak,
fragmented and ethnically diverse societies, only a true plural and federal
democracy holds the enduring key to stabilizing society as we see even in
complex states like the Democratic Republic of Congo.
One of the lessons the West must learn from the failure of
its Syrian policy and the success of democracy in Tunisia is that nothing
ultimately substitutes for will of the people, finding a way to organize
themselves in true mass movements to change their society. The true mass
movement of the people for democracy is stronger than arming thousands of
guerillas by proxy to fight dictatorial and genocidal regimes, the type that we
have seen in Syria. The second lesson is the need for a truly moral high ground
beyond economic interests, in supporting democratic resistance in developing
countries. Whether the West likes it or not, it lost a significant moral high
ground when it could not find nuclear weapons in Iraq, the basis of its
intervention to remove Sadam Hussein. American intervention, losing a moral
high ground, in its Iraqi intervention created a new wave of anti-west and
anti-imperialist sentiment in the youths of Islamic countries which terrorist
organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS harnessed to establish their franchise
across the Islamic world. Was the war in Iraq really about protecting oil and
American interests but presented to the world as war against the dictatorial
and genocidal regime of Sadam Hussein?
The imbroglio surrounding post American Iraqi intervention,
the fact that the Iraqi state seemed weaker than it was even before its initial
intervention and the political backlash against American politicians at home
made it dither, unclear and confused about how to approach Syria. It was not clear
what American policy was concerning Syria. Whichever way, President Barack
Obama must take responsibility as the leader of the Western world for the human
catastrophe and migrant crisis going on in Syria and across Europe. A Yoruba
proverb says that “Orisa bi o ba le gba
mi, se mi bi o se ba mi”. It means” if you cannot deliver me from my
trouble, at least leave me the way I was, don’t leave me worse than you met me”.
This is what the West, led by the US have done in Syria. Its intervention by
proxy through the Syrian armed resistance has made the people of Syria worse
than before. No-one could have imagined that hundreds of thousands of people
facing war and deprivation at home will be determined to march across seas,
continents and countries from the Middle East to Europe to survive. The mass
migration across Europe that we see on television can only be likened to a
second Exodus of a deprived people marching to Germany that now carries the
aura of a new Canaan. The sad picture of the dead body of a three year old
Syrian boy, lying face-down, swept ashore, in an attempt to cross the sea from
Turkey to Greece, has become the most touching symbol of the human desperation
and the failure of Western policy in Syria.
There is a third and bigger lesson. It is that the world is
ultimately one village on the long run. The West cannot insulate its prosperity
from poverty of the rest of the world. Somehow, one way or the other, either
through a migrant crisis, piracy or terrorism, poverty and human deprivation in
other parts of the world will impact Europe, America, Japan and Australia. The
leaders of Europe especially Angela Merkel and David Cameron must accept this
reality. It therefore beholds on the leaders of the Western World to
re-strategize on policies on how to spread prosperity and good governance
across the world, support investments to alleviate poverty, invest and support
the education of people of developing countries, support the strengthening of
governance and market institutions in those countries to promote prosperity,
forgive debts where they are unreasonable as in Greece and achieve a world
where prosperity is shared across nations and continents.
Olu Akanmu (@Olu Akanmu) publishes a blog on “Strategy and
Public Policy” on http://olusfile.blogspot.com
