Out of the Ashes of Tyranny

Written by Brett Daniel Shehadey, Guest Contributor | 31 July 2012

The world changed in the past decade of counter terrorism and international security operations. During that time, wide-spread threats of failing democracies and state oppression have effectively gone ignored and unchallenged. What used to be called tyranny during the early years of the American Revolution has evolved into “authoritarianism.”

Tyranny was the first ideological threat to the American Republic. Bloodline thrones and chiefs ruled the world with absolute or near absolute powers. Fascism was second--ethno-national imperialism mixed mass murder with cultural supremacy. All were directly antagonistic to the liberal American model.

Communism was the last major ideological threat to the US. A command market national economy forced production and de facto industrial slavery like conditions. The lack of private property, collectivization of farms and the starvation, heinous to freedom, killed millions.

Presently, authoritarianism directly, not terrorism, is the immediate and long-term ideological threat. This same demon of oppression and violence has changed since the times of monarchy, fascism, and coercive communism, but its character remains the antithesis of the expansive pure Americanism and the power of the people.

Monarchism went out of style and the people became greatly empowered first across Europe and then the globe. They renamed their governments “republics” and they formed democratic systems similar to the U.S. and France. Unfortunately, there were no powers strong enough to support these noble institutions or their efforts at these early stages. Without a benign superpower, such states had to wrestle with external and internal political instability.

In the mid-20th century, most countries fell prey to the shadow of the Soviet Union. This was all after many attempts, as in Latin America and other parts, in which one failed regime would be replaced by another. The U.S. itself was also affected by the methods of the Soviets. It did horrible things that contradicted its pure vision of itself and of what it aspired to be. U.S. brutalities to its own people and other nations were tailored in the 1990s only by the avarice eyes of economic exploitation through partner organizations, like: the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank.

Unfortunately, the U.S. became a mistress to profits at the expense of being a herald of pure liberal democratic reform. Dictators, despots, and demagogues seized or rose to power. Without a guide or patron national actors gave sway to heap of temptations and troubles. Meanwhile the U.S. went about backing greater globalization and market stability in ignorance to the rise of political instability.

There are many types of oppressive forms of government but the biggest concern is that they continue to assume greater influence on the international stage. As these states grow more powerful using the artistry of capitalism that the Western world has taught them, they maintain their deceptive forms of democracy, increase their wealth and they abuse and slowly encroach upon any power still held by their people. Such perverse states are the enemy of their citizens and the enemy of a liberal world.

A strident call to arms through clever statecraft can alter the present global political demise. Millions of Americans must suddenly become the emissaries of pure Americanism and engage in an unprecedented diplomacy war. Without the builders of liberty, democracy is simply worn as a mask for tyranny.

If a population of a failing democracy favors principles of freedom, representation, and human rights, they will always be preconditioned by another form of “native” ideology that is more pressing. So unless more actors are “converted” to alter their current frames of mind, they will never build any lasting foundations of peace or justice. They will continue to degrade and menace the globe.

The real struggle is not "promoting" democratic institutions but about transplanting the pure American idea to people that have not fully realized it. If America is willing to put as much time and money into the ideological war front as it does on military operations, then they are ready to build a truly lasting peace among peoples and states.

So America must become a true political missionary, both for the benefit of its own soul, as well as the benefit of another; liberating the world out of the ashes of tyranny.

Brett Daniel Shehadey is the author of The Pacific ‘Pivot’ Gamble in the Asia Times and Egypt, Democracy, and a Lesson In Sharia in the Eurasia Review.