Why the Civilians?

The contagiousness of democracy, the solidarity among regimes of the same type facing the same dangers, should certainly not be underestimated. However, we must look elsewhere for the genuine lessons to be drawn from a phenomenon of a duration that seems unprecedented since World War II. It has often been said that the military was not unhappy to no longer be obliged to direct countries that they had led to bankruptcy. The extent of the economic disaster is supposed to have been the essential element that dictated their actions. In the past, economic crises were fatal to democracy and favored dictatorship. The extent of the challenges that the countries in which democracy has been reestablished must face (external debt, a drop in prices of raw materials among others) does not seem to argue for the longevity or the stability of those regimes. We have shown that those deterministic explanations are debatable because they are so unpredictably reversible.

If we look more closely at the political processes involved in the transitions to democracy now under way, we can only note, first of all, the defeat of the attempts at institutionalization of military power, whatever their form. Panama remains an exception that should be discussed separately, for the simple reason that in the present situation liberalization cannot be carried out only halfway. You cannot stop democracy in its tracks in a continent in which the liberal ideology is, and remains, dominant. The transition appears to possess an internal dynamic that is self-sustained, if not irresistible, except at an excessive social cost. That dynamic means discord and division in the ranks of the military, but it can only arise in specific conditions. In fact its emergence presupposes a rather large consensus in favor of democratic values among the dominant sectors and organized forces. If a decisive social sector refuses to accept

pluralism, the fragile balance of the edifice of representative government will be shattered to the benefit of civilians and military men who prefer to fish in troubled waters.

But what are we seeing in a great number of the recently "democratized" countries? First of all, the discovery by the immense majority of the dominant classes, and very often by the middle classes as well, that the worst democracy is less damaging to their interests, properly understood, than the best dictatorship. Whether it is in Argentina, Brazil, or Uruguay, those who yesterday flattered the military and saw salvation for the country and for themselves in the abolition of the "anarchy" of representative government and the establishment of a strong and undiluted authoritarianism have abandoned those views or have become converted to the openness and liberty of a democratic order. However, they are not alone. On the left a parallel process of conversion has often taken place. The defeat of the strategy of armed struggle, and the responsibility of the guerrillas for the emergence of the terrorist state, have produced a change in their partisan outlook. The contempt for "formal" liberties and the confusion between a metaphorical "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" and the realities of military dictatorship have been abandoned. Unions and parties of the left have understood that they cannot develop outside the liberal system, and that the politics of negation is the most negative of policies. It is true that there are hard cores here and there of those who have not given up their old belief systems, but they no longer produce a response among the young and the intellectuals, much less among the workers. Also, as in Venezuela in the past, former guerrillas are preparing to enter into the legislatures that they had once spurned. Thus it may be that the implacable ferocity of the recent periods of the military rule has increased the chances of democracy. The demand for democracy extends to all social classes.^[11]

The argument to the contrary in these developments is the difficult situation in certain countries in Central America where a conversion to democracy has not taken place. This is the case in El Salvador where after fifty years of military rule a process of democratization is being carried out in the context of a civil war. It is a democratization that is both suspect and unfortunate. In

effect, it is supported by all those who have never believed in the virtues of democracy, and combated, even with arms, by those who should have an interest in supporting it. The right supports it for tactical reasons—to win the war and regain its privileges—and the left combats it in the name of its Leninist ideology without taking into account the changes that it has already brought about in national life. Of course it is a transitional phase, but it situates the country apart in the community of nations moving toward demilitarization. We can ask if Guatemala is not in a middle position between the restored democracies of the Southern Cone, and its southern neighbor. At least the democratic left is not totally behind the guerrillas, and they themselves, it is true, no longer appear to be a credible alternative.

If it is true that the dictatorships are dying, it is no less true that their parallel final agonies and deaths are not unrelated to the economic situation. The effects of the economic crisis and foreign debt on their social bases certainly should not be neglected. The erosion of support is also reflected in the sudden increase in the "demand for democracy" that affects all sectors, even those that are not demanding in the area of civic partidpation. However, the policy of the United States with regard to authoritarian governments no doubt also plays a determining role, less because certain sectors of the apparatus of the American government have ceased to favor antidemocratic intrigues than because the official policy of Washington seems to consist in resolute support for democracy while cutting the ground from under the feet of would-be dictators—as long as American interests are not at stake.

The human rights policy of President Carter, despite its maladroit moralism and interventionism, helped to launch the movement. It even succeeded in aborting successful coups d'état, as in the case of Bolivia: where Colonel Natusch Busch seized power in October 1979 but could only retain control for seventeen days because of the ostracism of Washington, which was reinforced by its regional allies. However, one of the characteristics of this wave of demilitarization is that the arrival in the White House of a Republican administration that was determined to reinforce American power did not produce a turnabout

in this area. The hardline policy of President Reagan in Central America and the Caribbean in order to "contain" Communism was not translated elsewhere in the continent into support for counterrevolution on the part of a usurping military. Ten years of recent Latin American history without a successful coup d'état, as well as a number of timely and efficient actions by Washington, are sufficient to discourage military adventurism.

Different reasons could be given for this apparent paradox. The first is the democratic excuse sought by the Reagan administration to gain acceptance by its allies to the south for the military policy that it is pursuing against Sandinista Nicaragua. A more profound and lasting reason could be that the American "decision makers" have understood after Cuba and Nicaragua that support for unpopular dictators (even if they are the moderate autocracies that are dear to Jeane Kirkpatrick), merely because they are strongly pro-American, is the best way to promote Communism. Finally, the democratic crusade of President Reagan does not seem to be simply a tactic or to be limited to the problems of the American Central American "backyard." The role of the United States in the eviction of Baby Doc, president-for-life of Haiti, and in the fall of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines at the beginning of 1986, attests to the global and worldwide character of the antiauthoritarian policy of Washington. However, that new and subtle form of "containment" will not succeed unless it takes into account the economic impotence of the civilian and military dictators, and the mortal danger to the West that their unpopularity represents. The recent hardening of U.S. policy toward General Pinochet is part of that overall context. As is evident, the phenomenon is related to a complex and unique alliance of internal factors and international variables.