Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Many of the European “new democracies” strangely appear closer to Medieval Principalities (in terms of size and influence), than to the countries they would rightfully become. True most of them were born out of Mother Russia’s demise, so they do have that slight leaning (at best). Now, many of those “new” countries have been in existence for centuries and just reclaimed their rights to their own language, schools, religions, etc.

More importantly many of them are racing to become members of the European Union. I have seen (first hand) how several of these new states are now competing to become members of the EU or join the NATO’s partnership for peace. To some of these new states it’s a question “either-or”, while others try to join both.

Here, at home, in the United States, we’d better walk cautiously since many of these newly created democracies may lack some of the common thread that we “only assume” they have, ever since they toppled some Milosevic, Lukashenko, Cheverdnadze, Chaushesku or whomever was their most recent despotic tyrant.

Yes that was a good first step for many of these “new democracies”, but their follow up is somewhat weak. Often times the element lacking in most of those countries is LIBERTY.

Our mistake here in the United States, is that we take LIBERTY for granted since it was a basis on which the entire country (the Constitution) and all it’s working principles were founded. There is such an abundance of liberty that we don’t even think how some other countries may even struggle with the definition, let alone implementing it.

Not every alliance is good for all participants, only because they may have some common democratic principles.

Other than some absurd issues that resulted from this “new democratic” leaning we don’t know if these new found allies will stand the test of time, the test of truth and the test of allegiance. Not too far back, there was this Russian ballerina (undoubtedly very gifted) who launched a complaint that she was dismissed from the Bolshoy Ballet on account of being “too heavy for male dancers to lift”. She was about 175cm (about 5’7” if I am correct) and weighed about 120lbs. Sounds like a proportionate person to me. Apparently in ballet most females are about 5’1’ to 5’3” and commonly under 90lbs. She did win her bid for being reinstated. This might have been a trivial matter but it illustrates that the view on Democracy can easily be trivialized and perverted into some self-serving goals, without the bedrock foundations of Liberty.

Chronologically speaking: During our most recent engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq, we actually saw – at least, I remember well that Gloria Marcapal the president of the Philippines had a meeting with G. W. Bush and expressed her “wholehearted support in the war on terror”. A short while later while hastily composing our troops to enter the Gulf states, we were “joined” by symbolical and barely present military units from Poland, Albania, Spain, the Philippines and several other countries.

None of that would have deserved any attention unless those same several countries were hastily withdrawing their few soldiers and their support (The Philippines withdrew completely on account of one captured truck driver having been threatened with beheading – The Spaniards withdrew after their train station in Atocha, Madrid was bombed, which in turn brought a new pro-Socialist government which issued orders to withdraw Spanish contingents from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. The Albanians were almost gifted the entire province of Kosovo, rightfully a Serbian province with a large Albanian population and in turn they started burning Serbian churches and expelling the Serbian minority – contributing to even worse abuses then those that preceded them. Croatia which already has one foot in the door at EU has an atroucious human rights record in regards to the expelled 300,000 Serbians. Are these really the new democracies we want to be associated with? With friends like that – who needs enemies?

I would rather wait to see if these “new democracies” are worth their salt in their own backyards and countries (some semblance of civil rights, freedoms of speech and press, multiethnic societies, and similar), and only then accept their “gifts of support”. There is invariably some naiveté on our part, in our readiness to accept “support” from all these sources that are not necessarily having our best interests at heart. It is my view that our President was partly “forced” into some of these unproductive alliances by a strong liberal (primarily Democrats) pressures and the liberals who kept insisting that:
1. Glass is half empty;
2. We ought to give the UN inspectors even more time;
3. That we first find and isolate the WMD.

The appearance of democratic processes in these newer countries is not necessarily the testament to their better, or higher level of common principles that we only think they share with us because they now appear to be a great deal more democratic than before. In my view, none of these new democracies has passed the test of valor in order to be allowed to join any US lead military operation anywhere in the world. I would rather refuse some of these gifts.

Iliya Pavlovich, PhD