U.S. - China Relations. Normalization, Not Democratization.

I wrote this post back in September, 2008, but forgot to put it up. I rediscovered it today and though it is definitely dated (it was written by Kissinger with an eye towards the US Presidential elections) the core of it still very much holds true and still merits a post, I think.

I love it when someone can take my meandering, somewhat inchoate thoughts on a subject and concisely sum them up with a pithy line. Henry Kissinger did that for me today on what the role of the United States should be with respect to democratization in China.

Kissinger did that in the context of a excellent New York Times article, entitled, "Foreign Policy Factions Unsure Who Will Prevail,." The article discusses how the United States does not have unlimited international power so it must ration that power wisely. Then comes Kissinger's money quote -- and like him or not, this is a guy who knows foreign policy:

"Our major effort with the Soviets,” he [Kissinger] said, recalling his time as President Richard M. Nixon’s secretary of state, “was not to democratize them, but to normalize them.” It was a lesson worth thinking about, he suggested, as the next administration considers how to deal with China.

Eureka!

The United States has tremendous power and influence and it should use that power and influence to make the world a better place. But, that power and influence is limited and thus it must be rationed and used wisely. Seeking to democratize other countries is usually not going to be a good use, and I say this even though I am as strong a believer in democracy as one can be. It is just that democratizing another country is rarely if ever possible. To really work, democracy must come internally. Though it is true that freeing one country (like maybe the Czech Republic) from the yoke of another country (like maybe the Soviet Union) can lead to rapid democratization, that is not at all the situation in China. And that was not at all the situation in Iraq either.

In Iraq, one had a brutal dictator who had been neutralized in terms of his impact outside Iraq. Or, to use Kissinger's words, he had been at least somewhat normalized. We also had a country and a culture with absolutely no history of democracy (please don't anyone leave a comment saying that 2,000 years ago.....), no real push for democracy, and no real reason to think democracy could take hold there. Iraq is so bad on this score that for at least a year, I truly believed President Bush was kidding when he would talk about democratizing Iraq. I just assumed he was using this as a justification to the American people. I now realize he actually thought it would be possible. Even if we did believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, there was no need to attack when we did.

On to China. China is normalizing. Though I believe economic growth eventually leads to democratization and though I believe that is already happening in China and will continue there, I also know that the verdict on this cause and effect is not yet clear, either worldwide or in China. But the correlation between economic entanglement and "normalization" is pretty clear. Countries that become part of the global economic system are less likely to cause trauma to that system. This is not a hard and fast rule and one need only look at Russia's actions in Georgia as a refutation. But all and all, stakeholders in a system are less likely to rock it. One only need look at China's refusal to condone Russia's actions in Georgia for that.

What do you think?