{"id":32421,"date":"2017-06-14T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T00:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=32421"},"modified":"2017-06-14T10:37:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T00:37:33","slug":"tolerance-intolerance-international-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/tolerance-intolerance-international-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolerance and intolerance in international affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tricky. On one hand, moral superiority can lead dangerously to intolerance. But too much tolerance can open up strategic problems. That seems to be the crux of Mark Thomson\u2019s proposition<\/a> in his recent piece for The Strategist<\/em> on the \u2018wickedness of China\u2019.<\/p>\n

Tolerance is a contextual quality. A theocracy allowing other some faiths, or an authoritarian state allowing some dissent, is simply giving what it can take back. A democratic state, with a culture deeply rooted in the mores and norms of a particular creed, regulating religious, cultural, or sexual diversity\u2014whether that be the right to proselytise, use native dress or language, or follow sexual preference\u2014embraces license, not liberty. No state has a claim to universally applicable institutions and values.<\/p>\n

Genuine constitutional tolerance is to be found only in a state founded on the idea of neutral liberalism<\/a>\u2014neutral on what values and behaviours constitute a good life for individual citizens. As Rawls and Kant<\/a> would have it, some basic individual rights override the government\u2019s authority to act in the interest of the common good. That\u2019s not the situation in Australia where the paucity of constitutional protection<\/a> is transparent when contrasted with the individual protections in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights<\/a> or the European Charter of Fundamental Rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

States have a sovereign Westphalian right to determine their own system of governance. Were an ideal neutral liberal state to attempt to impose its own particular constitutional and institutional arrangements on other states it would fall into both a contradiction<\/a> and an error. Liberal neutrality applied internationally should accept that the genuine and fundamental beliefs and cultural norms of many societies are resistant, if not antithetical or hostile, to the values that underpin neutral liberalism.<\/p>\n

The error is to claim, as Mark does in his piece, that \u2018there can be no legitimate rule without informed consent\u2019; that can only be<\/a> a subjective, value-laden moral opinion in the absence of an unchallengeable authority able to distinguish legitimacy from illegitimacy. The question of political legitimacy<\/a> is complex and morally fraught.<\/p>\n

Mark observes that Chinese citizens lack \u2018the same rights and privileges\u2019 available in the Australian political system. As these are relatively limited, presumably he means the values theoretically inherent in liberalism and democracy. Denial of those rights and privileges to its citizens by the illiberal and undemocratic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is said to make it \u2018wicked\u2019\u2014a moral term invoking something evil or morally wrong as opposed to something virtuous.<\/p>\n

Apparently, acting in \u2018economic self-interest\u2019 is to be condemned as demonstrating that \u2018our values have a price\u2019. The obverse would be that Australian political values are somehow priceless, universal, unimpeachable and immutable. The argument I read in Mark\u2019s piece is that the political constitution and the governmental institutions of Australia (and by implication those of other Westminster based or liberal democratic nations) are irrefutably superior because of their moral standing, and that any compromise on those values is therefore wrong.<\/p>\n

Those institutions have \u2018legitimacy\u2019 because of those values whereas those of the CCP don\u2019t. It\u2019s an argument that the CCP can (and does) apply in reverse<\/a>. And although liberalism and democracy are often linked, they aren\u2019t the same thing. Many democracies\u2014in Europe<\/a>, and Russia<\/a>, Turkey<\/a>, and Iran<\/a>\u2014are more or less illiberal. Illiberal tendencies<\/a> are on the rise in the US as well.<\/p>\n

Apart from the paternalism and conceit of judging others by Australian values, there\u2019s a far stronger strategic reason for exercising caution when criticising China\u2019s domestic governance at present. That bigger issue is the abandonment of democracy promotion by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

The wisdom of American democracy promotion<\/a> has been hotly contested since George W. Bush\u2019s \u2018Freedom Agenda\u2019 in the wake of 9\/11, under which the base causes of the terrorist attacks were assessed as the failures of the \u2018political and economic doctrines\u2019 tolerated in the Middle East and North Africa in the interests of national security.<\/p>\n

By 2006<\/a>, the best response to terrorism was seen as \u2018the freedom and dignity that comes when human liberty is protected by effective democratic institutions\u2019. That justification of democracy promotion found legislative backing<\/a> in the ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2007, which declared democracy promotion \u2018a fundamental component of United States foreign policy\u2019. More recently, H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn have explained that<\/a>, in their view \u2018the world is not a \u201cglobal community\u201d but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage\u2019 and in which America First will be pursued with the US\u2019s \u2018unmatched military, political, economic, cultural, and moral strength\u2019.<\/p>\n

Tillerson<\/a>, McMaster and Cohn<\/a> have outlined a Trump revolution in US foreign policy as radical as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan which led to NATO, a united Europe and containment of the Soviet Union, and laid the foundations for the liberal international order<\/a>; the post-World War II consensus on security, trade, and international political norms and the institutions underpinning that order.<\/p>\n

The Trump foreign policy is actually hostile to the most recognisable symbols of the liberal international world order\u2014multilateral free trade, mutual defence and security agreements, and multinational institutions, including the supranational European Union. Tillerson has said that values have a minor place in this revolution; demonstrated by the administration\u2019s praise for autocrats<\/a> like Putin, Erdogan, al Sisi, Duterte, King Salman\u2014and Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

Mark is right in noting that Australia is prudent, reticent and selective in criticising China and other nations for their failure to live up to Western standards. But describing that prudence as some kind of moral or strategic failing is neither good moral philosophy nor good strategic policy.<\/p>\n

The naivety of offering a form of liberal moral universalism to guide strategic policy is problematic when all customary political and moral moorings are loosening\u2014not just because of China, but because of the US, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tricky. On one hand, moral superiority can lead dangerously to intolerance. But too much tolerance can open up strategic problems. That seems to be the crux of Mark Thomson\u2019s proposition in his recent piece …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":32422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1383,52,1428],"class_list":["post-32421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-donald-trump"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTolerance and intolerance in international affairs | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/tolerance-intolerance-international-affairs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tolerance and intolerance in international affairs | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s tricky. 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