Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Is foreign policy an important part of democracy?

An interesting question I was thinking about the other day while doing our classification system was how much a state's foreign policy should come into account when discussing how democratic they are. If a state shows a lack of consideration for another state's human rights I think this is important when judging their level of democracy. I recently saw a documentary called 'Dirty Wars' about a journalist looking at some of the USA's covert actions dealing with terrorism (I would highly recommend watching it if you get the chance).

The doco talks about one case where the USA carried out a drone attack in Yemen which killed many innocent children and women. The interesting part though was a Yemeni journalist tried to cover this story but was arrested by the Yemen government, he was later pardoned by their president but due to a phone call from Obama was held longer. The American government says they did not want him released because they believed he was a supporter of Al-Qaeda but most people believe it was because he was trying to speak out about this incident that the American government wanted to keep hushed up (You can read about this incident here: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68525/norman-h-davis/american-foreign-policy-a-democratic-view ) If this is the truth and they did want to keep him locked up because he spoke out about what had happened, this is a complete violation of a persons freedom of expression. If this happened to an American journalist the situation would be completely different but as he is a foreigner the American government seem to deem it acceptable.
The accepted attitude towards the democratic idea of freedom of speech is that this is a freedom for the state's own people but I think this attitude should change as democracy is about equality. A foreigner may not have the right to vote in other countries but they should have the right to speak out against democratic states.
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4 comments:

  1. Xavier Marquez22 August 2013 at 06:00

    Interesting question, Amy. How much should this count compared to other factors?

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    1. Amy22 August 2013 at 11:31

      I think it should count a lot. The only reason it does not seem to matter is because in democratic states because of parties wanting votes they concentrate on what the people want which is to fix local problems. People are much more worried about making changes to problems that effect themselves over things that will affect people in other countries. I think though when we are judging a state from an outside view such as we do when classifying a state as democratic or authoritarian it should come into account as this should be taking everything into account that effects its democracy.

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  2. Nic Turner22 August 2013 at 15:50

    Generic views of America are that equality is important, but not as important as patriotism, and when the government is going to potentially look bad, things become a matter of 'national security'. One of the perks of being a super power eh... As Thucydides said… “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
    Not that i'm saying I entirely agree with these views =] but I do think that there is a lot of covering up that goes on in a lot of country's and that they do tend to favour their own countrymen.

    Trailer looks interesting though, I will try to remember to watch the full version during mid-term break.

    P.s. 6am reply Xavier????

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