Democracy is more colorful than imagined
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The worldwide shift toward democracy is unstoppable. However, with globalization, democracy has become more like a Russian doll: you always see the one on top, but not those hidden inside.
From the perspective of history, the global wave of democratization will remove a Western-focused center of interest.
The beginning of the Egyptian revolution is like a constitutional revolution. There seems to be a wide gulf between Egypt and Western cultures, with some external influences blocked out and some allowed in.
In the future, the US-backed Egyptian military and democrats will compete with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is still too early to assert that Egypt and the Middle East will embark on an anti-American road.
But it is even more foolhardy to conclude that the Egyptian revolution was a victory for the West. The current world order is unfair, just as a nation's richest city is filled with affluent Western influences while many live on in poverty. They will ask: Why?
The late American scholar Samuel P. Huntington wrote in The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century that elections in non-Western countries often induce politicians to come up with the claims that can win the most votes. These often have racist, religious and nationalist hues and will aggravate divisions, leading to more support for anti-Western rhetoric and policies.
For some Muslim countries, Huntington's conclusion is that people there can only choose between anti-democratic secularism and anti-Western democracy.
Huntington's judgments will undergo testing in decades to come. In the past few years, a sweep of left-wing governments have been elected in Latin America, in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and more. They are more anti-American and anti-Western than previous military governments.
Many pro-Western regimes brought by democratization occurred in former Soviet Union countries, such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic countries, which were under Russian influence in the last century. Democracy in East Asia did not bring anti-American regimes and the rise of China and India seems to ease the pressure on the West.
The more globalized democracy is, the more complex its performance will be and the more difficult to distinguish its benefits and drawbacks. But one point is certain: democratization will not lead to global "Westernization."
The attractiveness of Western countries is not their political program, but their lifestyle, partially obtained on global resources.
However, the dream of imitating emulating Western countries will shatter for many. The ballot box must reflect the characteristics of different countries, lands, regions and nationalities.
After the Egyptian revolution, the West joined in cheers with Iran and Hamas, an all too rare phenomenon. But history will prove that some of them were laughing bitterly.
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