Democracy, Autocracy, and Blindness of Intellectuals

I was listening to an analysis on a regional TV channel about where the world is heading today. The guest was a colleague I once considered a moral pillar – an “ideal” worth following.

I hadn’t listened to or read him in a long time, and now I can’t believe my ears. From a leftist, he has turned into a liberal – with a dose of critical thinking, yes, but also a convenient relativizing of reality. In the context of recent events, he divides countries into democracies and autocracies, even placing Israel in the first group, although he admits that in the last two or three years Netanyahu has compromised its “surplus of democracy” (!).

Naturally, for him Iran is a vile regime that massively violates human rights, and China is no better.

My first feeling was sheer disappointment: how could I ever have seen him as an example or a brilliant mind? My second disappointment was seeing a man – now older – who has never really stepped outside the West (where he lives), who certainly does not have a rich academic opus (despite his fame), yet who freely passes judgments on matters he clearly does not understand. Furthermore, he is still a public option maker.

To claim that China is an autocratic regime is a sign of geopolitical illiteracy and blindness. To claim that Israel is a democracy is an equally nonsensical thesis.

But my point lies elsewhere.

International law and the UN Charter were never designed to differentiate between “good” and “bad” regimes.

Their central idea is not about selectively prohibiting the use of force only against democracies, while allowing attacks on autocracies. It is about an absolute prohibition of the use of force, irrespective of a state’s internal political system.

Whether a country is democratic or autocratic is completely irrelevant when it comes to the fundamental principle of sovereign equality and non-intervention. Regime change is an internal matter, to be decided by its own citizens – not by external military force.

This brings us to a deeper, more uncomfortable question: what exactly is democracy? Are elections alone a sufficient criterion to define its inner essence? Is the Western model universally applicable? After all, does Western democracy exist at all?

By the way, Israel could never have been a democratic state. It was established with an imperial seal, on foundations of mass atrocities, plunder, and the exodus of the local population. Today, it is openly committing genocide. And is supported by the West!

If educated and intelligent people have allowed Western propaganda to seep under their skin so deeply, what can we say about everyone else?