US Hypocrisy, and Worse, on Pakistan Democracy
Sometimes you get the real news only by reading between the headlines. Consider the New York Times front page, November 5. Top story: “Pakistan Rounds Up Musharraf’s Political Foes.” Below it: “U.S. Is Likely To Continue Aid to Pakistan.”
The headline that told the most important news jumped out from between those two printed headlines. Although it remained unwritten, you could see it in bold letters: “Bush Administration Supports Dictator, Betrays Commitment to Democracy.” In case you missed the point, between the two headlines the Times put a haunting photo of two Musharraf foes caged behind bars.
Remember the president’s stirring inaugural address of 2005: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. … All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”
Nice words. But go tell it to the Pakistanis, whose democracy movement will now be suppressed with weapons sent and paid for by us, the American taxpayers. While you’re at it, go tell it to the Egyptians, or the Uzbeks, or the Palestinians, or the Nigerians, or the Saudis, or the inhabitants of all the other countries where the administration has betrayed its promise to promote democracy.
To be fair, we were warned. The day after inauguration day, 2005, administration officials called journalists in to assure them that Bush’s words should not be taken literally. There would be no rush to support democracy when a “realistic” need to protect U.S. interests was at stake. The president was talking about a long-range goal, they said, not an actual policy we should expect him to follow.
Now the White House doesn’t have to call in the press. They got the message. So the mainstream media don’t ask the president or his aides to justify a policy diametrically opposed to the one he promised less than three years ago. Journalists and pundits take it as a given that we have no choice. We “must” support Musharraf because he is a “necessary(or loyal, or indispensable, or whatever adjective you like) ally in the war on terrorism.”
These journalists and pundits are not all Republicans. The message is bipartisan. Democratic candidates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all denounce the Bush administration (quite rightly) for handling Pakistan ineptly. But all have named Pakistan as a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. None are calling for a cut-off of U.S. military aid.
In this regard the Democratic candidates are following their party’s tradition. Franklin D. Roosevelt justified a U.S. alliance with Stalin by citing a favorite saying: “You can cross a bridge with the devil-until you reach the other side.” When the Democrats turned Stalin into the enemy, they followed FDR’s dictum, except that they made right-wing rather than communist totalitarians the devils they would walk with hand in hand. Republicans merely followed the path the Democrats had laid out.
Now “terrorists” have replaced “communists.” But the principle remains the same. Democracy is the American ideal. Yet when America’s enemies threaten, democracy goes onto the back burner. Sorry, all you judges, lawyers, journalists, and other middle-class professionals who are being bloodied by Musharraf’s thug police. You’ll just have to wait. America’s “national security” comes first — yes, “national security,” that favorite catch-all codeword for the interests of the American empire. And if you are being tortured — well, the pain probably doesn’t reach the threshold of organ failure or impending death, so legally speaking the U.S. does not call it torture.
Before we denounce the obvious hypocrisy, though, let’s get some historical context. Why does the praise of democracy spring so readily and constantly to our leaders’ lips? Why did Jefferson and Madison praise it even more eloquently? Historically, democracy was born as the Siamese twin of capitalism. The idea of democracy allowed the newly emerging capitalist bourgeoisie to seize power from the kings and landed aristocracy.
The ascendant bourgeoisie soon discovered that extending basic democratic rights to the masses made a lot of sense. Democracy gave those masses a stake in the stability of the state and its capitalist economy. People who can vote, speak freely, and have basic rights guaranteed are far less likely to revolt. And they are more likely to work hard within the prevailing system. As long as the moneyed interests still held most of the levers of power, what harm could democracy do? In a simple cost-benefit analysis, representative republican democracy was clearly the political system that worked best for capitalism.
It still is. So the U.S. political elite, the guardians of the global corporate capitalist system, can be quite sincere when they promise their fidelity to the ideal of democracy. Eventually they probably would like to see democracy prevail everywhere — as long as it is American-style democracy, where the victor in every election is the best candidate money can buy.
Now, in places that harbor no real threat to the reign of corporate capitalism, democracy is a useful tool to advance its global march. So the elite seriously promote it. And they use the word democracy as a convenient shorthand for whatever government they want to support, for any reason. That’s why Republicans and Democrats alike tell us that Musharraf really intends to move Pakistan toward democracy, even if there is now a slight delay in the proceedings.
But wherever there is a significant threat to the forces of globalization, they tell us democracy is a luxury that we just can’t afford right now. I mean, let’s be “realistic.”
The greatest outrage here is not the hypocrisy of the administration, though hypocrisy aplenty there is. The greatest outrage is the way the bipartisan elite treat democracy as merely a useful weapon in the long-term battle to perpetuate the pax Americana. When democracy works to that end, fine. When it doesn’t, we’ll turn to dictatorship and send more guns to batter democracy down. Democracy and dictatorship become just two different kinds of weapons in the battle to suppress the genuine will and needs of the people.
A commitment to democracy binds the elite to nothing in particular. The freedom they seem to prize above all is the freedom to promote virtually any policy in the name of democracy. Whenever the banner of democracy is unfurled, only one thing is for certain. There will always be a dangerous “enemy” in sight, a threat to our “national security.” Then the “realistic” concern for our national interest takes precedence, and democracy will just have to wait.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin.
Nonsense. The US political elite have no interest in promoting democracy globally. The policy is and has always been to promote corporate interests while providing a thin veneer of democracy where feasible (where not, the imagined threats of communism and terrorism had to do) as justification to minimize resistance from the US public and the international community. In this country, the US political elite, under orders from their corporate masters, are rolling back democracy as much as possible.
Read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” and Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival” for a more accurate view of past and present US foreign policy goals.
Hypocrisy is America’s first, middle and last name. We were conceived by hypocrites. Our roots also include genocide and racism. Is there any wonder the world is afraid and distrustful of us?
Hoa binh
Kivals - “Nonsense. The US political elite have no interest in promoting democracy globally.”
Where in the hell did you learn how to read.
Chermus is making the same point you are, albiet more eloquently. “So the U.S. political elite, the guardians of the global corporate capitalist system, can be quite sincere when they promise their fidelity to the ideal of democracy.”
What do you think “guardians of the corporate capitalist system” means?, or “can be quite sincere when they promise their fidelity to the ideal of democracy.”
It all depends on your definition of ‘democracy’. If, like Lincoln, you think it has something to do with ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’, you’re sadly out of date. That quaint notion, where it exists at all on the American continent, is now known as ‘radical populism’.
“Pakistani police beat and arrested lawyers protesting for a second day against President Pervez Musharraf’s emergency rule.”
Starve a child - feed a dictator
jpbreeze,
Where did you learn how to think? Chernus claims that there is a fidelity to developing abroad US-style democracy, where one gets the best candidates money can buy, implying that the local corporations, playing ball within the global order maintained by US corporations, have control. That is not the point that Chomsky or Klein makes, or what the evidence points to. The US political elites, and their corporate masters, prefer either the absence of democracy, or a much more superficial form, abroad, not US-style democracy, as flawed as it is. They prefer political systems abroad that can be manipulated by Wall Street and Washington, not by the local elites, with local strongmen who only need a small cut of the entire pie.
I would think one could make that distinction with a minimum of acumen.
addendum to last comment (3:07 p.m.),
The US foreign policy approach Chernus described (fostering U.S. style democracy) has been applied to European nations and Japan, nations with some leverage, but has not been applied to weak third world nations such as Pakistan.
Last night after hearing Condi say that “US aid was supporting the people of Pakistan, not the Pakistani government”, I bought a family sized container of Maalox and ate it all. Half of what she says is lies and the other half isn’t true.
Just as in the case of ‘democracy’, it’s all a matter of definitions. When politicians talk about ‘the people’, they actually talking about the only ‘people’ that actually matter to them — i.e., corporate persons.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Mumbai - Why America Looks The Other Way
On Tuesday, as part of a post of my thoughts on the Mumbai bombings, I made a prediction.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has way too much political capital and way too much arms-trade loot invested in Pakistan to do any kind of about face on its relationship with that nation. Expect there to be no mention of the Indian allegations of Pakistani complicity - the possibility just doesn’t exist for the Bush White House. Yet again and as usual, foreign policy will be determined by the needs of domestic policy - and admitting such a close relationship with a state sponsor of Islamist terrorism would be a domestic poison pill.
I was mostly right and sort of wrong - the Bush administration itself has been careful not to mention Pakistan in any way whatsoever. However, rightwing pundits, commentators and opinion-makers have been almost zealous in their attempts to exonerate Pakistan of any blame whatsoever - to the extent of being blind to facts and to parallels with other situations in many cases. Amazingly, mainstream liberal comment has also been of the “sweep Pakistan’s involvement under the rug” kind. Like being for the invasion of Iraq before they were belatedly against it, establishment liberals are doing their best not to talk about an obvious longterm policy mistake for as long as possible in the hope that it will go away. In so doing they have formed yet another foreign policy ‘consensus of errors’ with the Bush administration.
That bipartisan establishment consensus has been best articulated by Xenia Dormandy in the Washington Post. Dormandy was director for South Asia at the National Security Council where her main responsibility was the India/Oakistan peace process. She is now an executive director of a broadly liberal think-tank, the Belfer Center, which is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The conclusion of her op-ed runs as follows:
Now is a moment when Pakistan really needs to respond. It wants to be taken seriously as an important player on the international scene. It has repeatedly asked the United States for a nuclear energy deal similar to the one we are working on with India. But until Pakistan — and this means not only President Pervez Musharraf but also the military, the people and the political parties, including the religious party, the MMA — gets serious about shutting down, arresting and otherwise dismantling the militant groups that operate from its territory, it cannot expect to be treated as a responsible player in the region. Pakistan is working on it, but it could do so much more.
A good — or at least stable — India-Pakistan relationship is one of the most important elements for long-term global stability. Given that both are nuclear powers, their region is one of the most dangerous in the world. And with attacks such as this, it is also one of the most volatile. India has taken great strides to tamp down this volatility. Pakistan needs to do more.
In return, India would need to step up in a real, substantive way on bilateral issues such as Kashmir. The third round of the high-level composite dialogue taking place next week, assuming it is still on, is the place to do it.
In a nutshell, India should offer concessions to a nation which has talked the talk far more often than it has walked the walk. There is no mention anywhere in the piece of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, and its alleged sponsoring of terror groups in Kashmir, Afghanistan and India.No mention of the tens of thousands of Taliban and Al Qaida trained militants in Pakistan (Jane’s estimated 20,000 such in Karachi alone). No mention of Pakistan’s inability (reluctance) to capture Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar - and other major terror/crime figures such as Dahwood Ibrahim - who are certainly hiding on their territory. The establishment simply does not want to talk about these things.
In a way that’s understandable, if reprehensible. For at least six years policymakers from both camps have touted Pakistan as an ally in the ‘war on terror’. Hundreds of statements have been made to that effect and have been backed by votes and decisions giving Pakistan billions in taxpayer’s funds as well as some of the most sophisticated weaponry on the planet. To do an about-face now and admit that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism - a rogue state which has duped those policymakers into thinking it was an ally with some token assistance on basing, some captures of lesser terror figures who are instantly replaceable and clever rhetoric concealing active backing of terror groups - would be a political disaster of monumental proportions for both parties.
To see how bad it could be, compare the establishment position on Pakistani supported terrorism in India with positions on Iran and Syria’s support for Hizboullah attacks on Israel. Or rhetoric over Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program. Very few in the political establishment have any problem in accepting Israel’s unsubstantiated allegations of Iranian/Syrian planning and personnel being behind Hizboullah or Hamas attacks - because it is clear both nations are funding said terror groups. (Ditto Shia militias in Iraq.) The American political establishment has broadly stepped back from condemning Israel’s unbalanced response - an overwhelming invasion of Palestine and Lebanon which has targeted infrastructure and used indiscriminate attacks which have led to many civilian deaths. In the main, both parties have even given Israel a pass to extend their belligerence to Syria and Iran should it wish to. “Intelligence” from the most unbelievable of sources - like the MeK and a discredited former Iranian spy - has been touted as proof positive of Iran’s weapons program and formed the basis for broadly bi-partisan policy. Denials are rejected with “well, they would say that, wouldn’t they” no matter what evidence points towrds the denials being genuine.Yet when the Indian or Afghani governments categorically state that Pakistani intelligence is providing funding, weaponry and planning to various Islamist terror groups their assertions are rejected out of hand (when such statements are considered at all) even though the Pakistani Ministry of Defense admits the ISI is a law unto itself. There aren’t even calls for the evidence to be made available for scrutiny. India is told that it cannot use Cheney’s One Per cent Doctrine or Bush’s Doctrine of Pre-emption at all - instead it should make concessions and accept Pakistan’s doubtful word on non-involvement. Indian politicians no doubt see the double standard - it is no wonder they have postponed peace talks indefinitely. One can only wish that Israel would be held to such a high standard of behaviour.
Were America’s politicians to publicly accept that Pakistan is indeed a state sponsor of terrorism, much of the “narrative” for policies on Israel, Iran, Syria, Iraq and counter-terrorism would disappear overnight and disappear in an embarassingly obvious way. Domestic trust in the competence of those politicians would be badly hurt - but on the international stage any such admission and the knock-on effect into parallel issues would be a blow from which American prestige and authority might never recover. No matter which party was in charge.Unfortunately few American politicians, who have backed Pakistan for six years, are going to do the “right thing” when political expediency beckons. It is just so not going to happen.
Then there is the chattering class of think-tankers, op-ed writers and political bloggers. The main thrust of pundits’ writings on Pakistan’s support for terrorism, especially from the cheerleading political Right, seems to be outright disbelief. Why, they ask, would Pakistan do such a thing? What’s in it for them? By asking this, they reveal an ignorance of the history and motivations of the Pakistani ruling elite - the military - of such a depth that one suspects it is a deliberate ignoring of facts rather than simply not knowing them. Yet again, the potential embarassment of admitting they were wrong outweighs the actuality and their minds refuse to contemplate it.
Throughout their histories - which have included more than war with their neighbour - India and Pakistan have been burdened by extremists who define themselves in terms of opposition to their neighbour and in supremacist religious rhetoric. Both have always had to cope with militant portions of their own military and political spectrums who define themselves in terms of a perceived military threat from the other nation. In India’s case, although offtimes these factions have gained ascendancy, the democratic process has kept their influence from being total. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been a military dictatorship more often than it has been even slightly democratic and even when a democracy was constantly threatened by coups from one of its two militant factions - the religious and military extremists. Accordingly, the military has made a de facto trade off with the Islamists. The military runs the nation and the Islamists use it as a safe base to preach, recruit and stage their worldwide Jihad. Neither rocks the other’s boat all that much and so a balance of power has evolved, teetering on a precipice of civil war which spills over locally from time to time or swings into temporary co-operation (e.g. the A.Q. Khan nuclear syndicate). Neither group has any incentive to change this equation.
The “war on terror” does not presently provide that incentive. Pakistan’s military rulers very swiftly discovered that no-one in power in the West is looking all that closely at them as long as basing is provided, a bunch of lesser figures is rounded up from time to time, they eagerly buy Western weaponry and generally keep up a pretense that they are doing everything they can to wage a war against those who could most easily topple them from power. In return for largely preserving the internal status quo, the Islamist militants receive covert aid - which is entirely deniable or can be attributed to “rogue elements” - in their operations in neighbouring countries. They also get largely left alone in the unseen hinterlands to set up training camps and staging areas. In India, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the aims of both factions work in harmony. Pakistan, because of the needs of those factions, is a state-sponsor of terrorism.
The Pakistani military has always had one primary mission - India. While India must worry about the other regional power, China, Pakistan has always co-operated with China both militarily and politically on the local stage - the two nations develop fighter jets together, exercize together, vote together in local forums. India was the only reason why Pakistan developed a nuclear arsenal (India worried about Pakistan and China) and you can be sure that every nuclear weapon in Pakistan’s inventory is assigned to an Indian target and to no other - something that it is doubtful is the case for India’s weapons. Recently, Pakistan arranged the purchase of advanced Harpoon maritime weapons from the U.S. - yet the only possible target for those missiles is the Indian Navy. No other potential foe has any kind of navy at all. The current $5 billion plan to sell Pakistan advanced F-16 fighters is, according to Pakistani public statements, entirely aimed at a possible conflict with the sophisticated Indian air force. The disputed region of Kashmir has always provided an excuse for belligerence rather than being a problem to be solved peaceably. It is noteworthy that in at least three out of the four major armed conflicts between the two nations (1947, 1965, 1971,1999) Pakistani regular forces have been the first State aggressors.
This isn’t to say that India is entirely innocent, mind you - nor are other nations who blithely contribute to the gunpowder pile that is the sub-continent. India has its fair share of Hindu supremacists and military hawks. The current U.S./India nuclear deal is the most dangerously destabilizing development in the region for years. It not only creates a nuclear arms race which even Japan may join but also makes a mockery of international non-proliferation efforts. Indian hawks are more than happy to push for even greater concessions from America as the deal is processed and have no intention of allowing their political leadership to give up a perceived advantage over Pakistan or China. The U.S. and others have been just as zealous in selling advanced weaponry to India as to Pakistan - and one must surely question the wisdom of any move that arms both sides of such a dangerous potential conflict.
Be it establishment politicians or supposed “watchdogs of democracy”, any ability for American opinion-drivers to admit Pakistan is a “rogue state” is terminally undermined by the political, financial and military capital that has been invested in that nation over the last six years and more - all the way back to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Further, admitting that status for Pakistan would make decades of Middle East policy seem a black joke at best. Indians wondering at American under-reaction to the Mumbai atrocity should realise that it isn’t the color of the victim’s skin that makes America uninterested. It is in the vested interests of those who could make America notice that it looks the other way.
And for more up to date info on the crisis in Pakistan, here’s to look:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/search/label/Pakistan
Mr. Chernus, the Founders were not exactly advocates of “democracy”. James Madison said the following: “A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Democratic Republic of the Congo
People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
All kinds of “democracy” out there…
This is where the wheels have come off of the Bush administration. If all hell breaks loose over there, maybe the opium flow will be slowed down a little and we can get back to South America for our dope.
The author apparently doesn’t think much of democracy- Useful boobs keeping the rich in power, ect. I wonder what other type of governmental system he would advocate instead.
Many moons ago, having been involuntarily exposed to the full spectrum of corporate-sector organizational concepts, training, buzzwords, logos, Power Point presentations, and similar weapons in the arsenal of employee programming, the light bulb went on.
All of these bullshit slogans and systems like “Total Quality Management” and “World-Class Service” were trumpeted from the top down, with no corresponding attempt to fund and organize operations sufficient to meet these exalted standards. The reality was more like Zero Quality Management and Third-World Class Service.
My insight was that this Rhetoric of Excellence was a ruse– a glittering golden shroud or a whitewashed sepulchre concealing a battered and bleeding corpse. The Rhetoric of Excellence, imbued with pious appeals to quality and motivational brio, is attractive and reassuring enough to the unwary and uncritical recipient. In short, it sounds good to the gullible.
If I understand Professor Chernus correctly, he’s noting that there is a Rhetoric of Democracy that seems to parallel the corporate Rhetoric of Excellence of which I write. That is, the US hegemony is not at all interested in spreading true, uncontrollable, vigorous democracy, but is employing a Rhetoric of Democracy to further its interests and cover a multitude of sins.
If democracy happens, fine– unless it interferes with the hegemony’s plans. In the latter case, the Rhetoric of Democracy works to distract the world from the ugly spectacle of the violent death of the inconvenient kind of democracy.
Notice the indirectness in the NYT’s headline: “Pakistan Rounds Up Musharraf’s Political Foes”. Why not “Musharraf Rounds Up His Political Foes”? Heckuva job, Pervey.
My favorite bit of Bush Hypocrisy from recent history is from early this month, when he called Cuba “a tropical gulag”, apparently forgetting that the world’s most famous gulag in Cuba is not run by Fidel Castro, but by George W. Bush.
Its gotten to the point now where he can’t engage in any lofty rhetoric or cite any humanitarian aspiration without committing the most egregious hypocrisy, whether its on torture, democracy, human rights, etc.
[quote]Little Brother November 6th, 2007 10:36 pm — If I understand Professor Chernus correctly, he’s noting that there is a Rhetoric of Democracy that seems to parallel the corporate Rhetoric of Excellence of which I write.[/quote]
Precisely correct as I see it. Corporate America has long been clear about its goal of making government “more businesslike”; which is to say more closely aligned to their own bottom line only motivators (greed), to their ethical standards and principles of accountability (none) and to their operating strategies and practices (unconstrained ruthlessness). They know from their own ‘marketeering’ experience (with a little help from Orwell) that the manipulation and distortion of the language of presentation and discussion is essential to the pursuit of that objective.
But it’s not just buzzwords and meaningless gibberish. If only for the sake of maintaining some measure of consistent usage, much of it is almost like a code if you can discern the true meanings. Terms like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, for example now relate to their unfettered ‘free market’ philosophy and no longer have anything to do with the ‘radical populist’ Lincolnesque notions that most of us think of when we hear them used to describe US governmental missions abroad and at home.
A sematicist like Noam Chomsky could probably write several more volumes at least trying to fully explain it all.
How long before what just happened in Pakistan will be used in America? Put the dissenters in jail, nullify the constitution, put off the election, etc, all for the good of the people. Would anyone have guessed, seven years ago, that we would have to witness our nation becoming the sad situation we now have?
what you people fail to understand is that the whole idea of democracy is an illusion here in America they say get out and vote make a difference its all lies we have this thing called the electoral college and the people chosen to to vote for each region are not bound by law to follow the consensus of the nation for example 2000 vote bush/gore im not saying gore would have handle it any better but the country overall vote theres nothing you can all the poltitions are corrupted sure we have freedoms some other countries dont but we cant really change anything inless we get rid of all of congress and senate it shouldn’t be a career its a civic duty and it should be chosen at random by your social security number and should last longer then two terms
that would get rid of some of the crazy people in D.C but inless some major changes happen to our goverment nothing will change they give you choices but the result is always going to be the same they all have hidden ajendas when there running they promise it will be different but as soon as they get elected more of the same how about for once you follow threw and actually fix the important things like health care and education social security nope instead you take money form thoes things to make your war
To Kernel
i will be dead before i stand here and let that happen i would take up arms and fight
It’s not Democracy.
It’s the Mockracy.
Bush is the worst hypocrite of the lot but US presidents have played this game for years. I mean, Lederer and Burdick’s ‘The Ugly American’ appeared in 1958. Carter at least tried to place human rights on a pedestal but even he wasn’t averse to undermining it when US interests were involved. The worrying thing is that when ‘Bush’-arraf goes, and he won’t be there for ever, Pakistan will cede power to the extremists. Bush and the Likudnik neo-con cabal have once again overplayed its hand. Another disaster is in the offing.
frank 1569 should add the United States to his bagful of democracies.
Chernus is right; democracy is a cynical means to the capitalist’s end. We feast on the ‘democratic’ cake while moneymen suck us dry.
What the United States now has in common with Pakistan, Iraq, Burma, North Korea and on and on and on is that we too are now a failed state. We have been in decline for several decades and keep voting to keep this decline in motion. We are a nation who needs Mozart and gets Lawrence Welk. No matter what Americans say in poll after poll . . . it’s the record that matters. We vote for failure and have gotten it in the persons of George Wanker Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
When Britain was the global hegemon during the 19th c., the English oligarchs promoted free trade and English-style democracy for the newly conquered colonial empire.
In fact, most of the great 19th c. English historians were Whig historians; the Whig historian assumed the rest of the world was evolving to evetually become like Britain.
However, a new European upstart was created and its elite wanted to gain more wealth and military power -Imperial Germany.
When the Germans were castigated by the hypocritical British -whom always applied double-standards- the Germans called such hypocrisy “cant.”
And when an UK Free Trade mission attempted to persuade Bismarck to open Germany’s infant industries to the owerwhelming power of England’s economy, he replied, “The Free Market is the weapon of the economically powerful.”
In fact, both Bismarck and Lenin saw England and the other Western powers through the same frame.
Democracy was something imposed by the British elite so as to better exploit a colony’s or tribe’s resources (except for those of settler colonies).