U.S. must recognize the role dignity plays in all foreign affairs
"We talk about democracy and human rights. Iraqis talk about justice and honor." That comment from Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, made at a seminar last month on counterinsurgency, is the beginning of wisdom for an America that is trying to repair the damage of recent years. It applies not simply to Iraq but the range of problems in a world tired of listening to an American megaphone.
Dignity is the issue that vexes billions of people around the world, not democracy. Indeed, when people hear President Bush preaching democratic values, it often comes across as a veiled assertion of U.S. power. The implicit message is that other countries should be more like us -- replacing their institutions and values with ours. We mean well, but people feel disrespected. The bromides and exhortations are a further assault on their dignity.
That's the difficulty when the U.S. House of Representatives pressures Turkey to admit that it committed genocide against the Armenians 92 years ago. It's not that this demand is wrong. I'm an Armenian-American, and some of my relatives perished in that genocidal slaughter. I agree with the congressional resolution, but I know that this is a problem that Turks must resolve. They are imprisoned in a past they have not yet been able to accept. Our hectoring makes it easier for them to retreat deeper into denial.
The most articulate champion of what the administration likes to call the "democracy agenda" has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When she talks about the universality of American values, she carries the special resonance of an African-American girl from Birmingham, Ala., who witnessed the struggle for democracy in a segregated America. But she also conveys an American arrogance, a message that when it comes to good governance, it's "our way or the highway."
That's why it's encouraging to hear that Rice is taking policy advice from Kilcullen, a brilliant Australian military officer who helped reshape U.S. strategy in Iraq toward the bottom-up precepts of counterinsurgency.
As we think about a "dignity agenda," there are some other useful readings. A starting point is Zbigniew Brzezinski's new book, "Second Chance," which argues that America's best hope is to align itself with what he calls a "global political awakening." The former national security adviser explains: "In today's restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity."
After I mentioned Brzezinski's ideas about dignity in a previous column, a reader sent me a 1961 essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which made the same point. A deeply skeptical man who resisted the "isms" of partisan thought, Berlin was trying to understand the surge of nationalism despite two world wars. "Nationalism springs, as often as not, from a wounded or outraged sense of human dignity, the desire for recognition," he wrote.
A final item on my dignity reading list is "Violent Politics," a new book by historian William R. Polk. He examines 10 insurgencies through history -- from the American revolution to Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation -- to make a simple point, which we managed to forget in Iraq: People don't like to be told what to do by outsiders. Foreign intervention offends people's dignity, Polk reminds us. That's why insurgencies are so hard to defeat.
People will fight to protect their honor even -- perhaps, especially -- when they have nothing else left. It's excruciating now for Armenian-Americans like me, when we see Turkey refusing to make a rational accounting of its history. But if foreign governments try to make people do the right thing, it won't work. They have to do it for themselves.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group