Intuitively, it rings true. If security services are allowed
more leeway to spy on citizens, to detain and torture terrorist suspects and to
impose more restrictions on movement, society as a whole should be much safer,
right? Actually, it is a false premise. Freedom and security are not mutually
exclusive; on the contrary, they are directly correlated. Moreover, there can
be no true security without freedom.
Invariably, in societies where the rule of law is respected,
where there exist a strong system of checks and balances and division of
powers, and where individual freedoms are upheld and rights of minorities are
protected – in other words, in liberal democracies – there is also more safety
and security for their citizens than in all kinds of autocracies, tyrannies,
theocracies, kleptocracies, people’s democracies, sovereign democracies and
other non-democratic forms of governments.
Democracies are better suited for raising families and planning
one’s future. This is why, ultimately, a wave of refugees from Africa and the
Middle East are washing up on Europe’s shores and few are eager to stay in
other countries in the region. True, Europe is more prosperous, but those
refugees know from experience that oppressive regimes may provide a kind of
stability for a period of time but in the end they tend to go the way of the
al-Assads’ Syria and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya.
Take Russia and Ukraine, for example. While both were saddled
with the bitter heritage of the Soviet regime, Ukraine, for a variety of
reasons which include culture, history, geography and demographics, has always
been more democratic than Russia – and it has been a far safer country for its
own citizens, based on a whole range of measures of safety and security.
Non-democratic regimes, by repressing the majority of their own
people, seek to provide security for the ruling elites. However, they fail to
do even that. Otherwise, how to explain the fact that the ruling classes in
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and a bunch of other undemocratic countries
keep their money in Zurich, buy properties in Miami and send their kids to
London?
Liberal democracies not only provide a safer domestic
environment for their citizens, they are also better equipped to meet external
challenges. Even putting aside the United States with its formidable military
might, Europe’s “weak-kneed” liberal governments, while keeping their generals
on a fiscal starvation diet, nonetheless retain more powerful armed forces than
most undemocratic regimes.
Israel, built on the principles of a liberal democracy, has a
vastly superior military force than its repressive neighbors, including Egypt
and Saudi Arabia. However, its security breaks down when it behaves more in
line with local Middle Eastern customs on the West Bank and in Gaza.
In 2001, after terrorists struck New York City and Washington,
George W. Bush said that their aim was to destroy America’s freedom. He was
exactly right: Radical Islamists want to get at our freedoms by attacking our
security – which confirms the direct correlation between the two.
However, after correctly identifying the problem, the American
government did exactly the opposite.
U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act,
greatly expanding the powers of security services, and Bush initiated the
Global War on Terror, upgrading their quest to the level of a conflict of
civilizations. This was exactly what the terrorist strove for – to make us more
like them.
Not only has radical Islam survived the War on Terror and other
military action, but it has spread and the threat of terrorism has become
greater and more insidious. Terrorists are striking with a depressing
regularity in London, Spain, Mumbai, Beirut and Paris, a Russian plane was
brought down over Sinai less than a month ago. The fact that the United States
has been kept safe for the last fifteen years doesn’t mean that tighter
security measures are winning over terror. The threat of an attack is always
present.
The real war on terror is a war of ideas. If Western
democracies hope to defeat it lastingly, they need to adhere to their values
rather than discard them in the name of greater security.
In 1973, writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote an essay titled
“Peace and Violence”, asserting that the traditional distinction of peace vs.
war is wrong. He proposed a different pair of opposites: peace vs. violence. In
other worlds, he asserted that, unless there is freedom, there can be no true
peace.
In the wake of Paris attacks, Russia’s propaganda machine
quickly went into action, suggesting that the West should join forces with
Russia, forgive and forget Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and
collectively defeat ISIS in a modern-day replay of the anti-Hitler coalition.
At this weekend’s gathering of the Group of 20 leaders in Turkey Putin has
received a far less frosty welcome from Western leaders than at the previous
one in Australia in 2014, shaking hands with Barack Obama and spending a few
minutes in private discussing Syria.
It would be a grave mistake for the West to go down this road.
True, working together with Putin ISIS might be more easily defeated on the
ground than with Moscow being obstructionist or on the sidelines. But in a broader
context, joining hands with Russia – especially if this would mean abandoning
the principles which prompted to West to come to Ukraine’s assistance – would
be a major blow to the fight against terror. And not only because radical Islam
will survive the defeat of ISIS and may become even more deadly in the
aftermath. More important, it should be recalled that West’s forced alliance
with Stalin in 1941 to defeat Nazi Germany cast a pall over Europe and kept
millions of European in captivity for the next half-century.
