Are There Limits to Dictatorial Power?

by Herbert I. London
March 23, 2011 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1985/dictatorial-power-limits

Yemen's security forces killed more than three dozen protestors in the last few days. In Libya, Qaddafi has announced that Allied efforts to destroy his anti-missile defenses are a form of terrorism and as a consequence, he is prepared to decimate the rebels. It seems it is time to ask: Are there limits to dictatorial power?

Although since the Holocaust, the international community has given lip-service to the idea that mass murder by dictatorial leaders should never be tolerated, remarkably there are instances in Africa and Asia where this is a common practice while everyone else looks the other way. In the Arab world, much of which lives under religious Muslim Shari'a Law, the killing of apostates, for example, is routine.

Based on recent events, it would appear that conditions across the globe are sliding back to a barbaric period in which murder of one's own people to retain power is permitted or at least ignored. The argument goes: We cannot possibly intervene whenever atrocities occur. Or perhaps more logically, sovereignty trumps atrocity.

The U.S. State Department officials chose sovereignty over atrocities for a time, suggesting that we should not insinuate ourselves into a Libyan civil war. Promising attacks may have been, and may continue to be, a successful deterrent from the view of human rights, but many say that there is still no justifiable role for the US -- although that position has been modified by our stance on the "no fly zone."

The basic Obama foreign policy thrust seems based on an incremental U.S. withdrawal from all regional influence. This withdrawal is both emotional, combining an unwillingness to defend both our interests and those of our allies; and physical, a drawdown of troops based on the belief we cannot afford these foreign ventures.

This strategic vision, or lack of one, has created a situation in which our enemies believe we are ineffectual and our allies believe we are untrustworthy. Instead of hastening to carve out a defensive stance for the U.S,. one that recognizes our foreign interests, the administration has decided to channel our foreign policy through the United Nations. In doing so, the leverage in the past from the assertion of national power is lost. We are at sea as one nation in an international armada that has lost its way.

The new concept of America opting out of unilateral action has implications for nations with imperial goals: Iran became the "strong horse" in the Middle East by default. Our emerging position encouraged its evolution. Ortega y Gasset once noted, "To create a concept is to leave reality behind." Our concept of multilateralism is a chimera surrounded by a fantasy.

Winston Churchill warned that when democracies triumphed in World War II they "were able to resume the follies which has so nearly cost them their life." It seems we are at it yet again.

We watch with horror as power hungry barbarians kill their own people. But we generally tolerate these acts. We are overcome by the magnitude of evil and the inversion of certitudes, but are helpless in their wake. We seek fresh creeds, but do not know how to deal with the revulsion -- and all the while, our leaders tell us this will pass and, after all, there is nothing we can do.

Is the world turning to savagery? Is the 1930s being reborn in the twenty-first century? Are we to allow shamefacedly the death and horror we can prevent? Thumbing our noses at death lurks in our imagination, and the will to change it has not emerged. America cannot police the world, but the U.S. is still the only anchor that can assure international stability. This role should be recognized and given the attention history owes it.

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