I’ve been reading a bit about the UAE, and specifically Dubai, and talking to a number of people who live there, a consequence of working on a rewrite job for a company there. It’s made me think a bit. This is a country that should be our worst nightmare. It’s an Islamic State with a thoroughly medieval political structure, ruled continuously by Sheiks since its inception in 1971, without the slightest hint of democratization.
It’s also a place where the ruling sheik regularly boasts of presiding over a “free, tolerant, and multicultural” society, and has practically made a mantra of the proposition that “what’s good for business is good for Dubai”.
Of course there are things they don’t have. For example, they don’t have corporate taxes, income taxes, foreign exchange controls, trade barriers, quotas, or restrictions on repatriating profit or capital. Not surprisingly, the place is a huge regional center for trade, manufacturing, finance, etc. The economy hums along quite nicely, and would probably continue to do so if the oil and gas ran out tomorrow. Also not surprisingly, very few people seem to care whether they have elections or not.
I’m not going to suggest that we try to turn Iraq into Dubai. As a general rule, though, I wonder if we put too much emphasis on the idea of promoting the idea of secular democratic states. More specifically, I wonder if we’d be better off putting less stress on the need for democracy and secularism, which are difficult to define or measure, and more on the need for specific, measurable, individual rights and economic freedoms.
This is not a statement of conclusions, just a matter I’ve been rolling around in the brain, and I’m wondering what others think of it…. |
