PEOPLES GAZETTE
Democracy is a very evocative notion. In the name of restoring or defending it, presidents have wielded bayonets, levied war, and executed coups. On August 10, 2023, a summit of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) rose from its convening in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, with an explicit order for “the deployment of the ECOWAS Standby Force to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger.”
The following day, the headline was “West African nations order troops to restore democracy in Niger after military coup.” But, if the idea of “ordering troops” to “restore democracy” sounds like an oxymoron, it’s because it actually is.
In the aftermath of the chaos left after armed interventions led by the United States of America in Iraq in 2003 and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Libya in 2011, however, the idea of bayonets for democracy has lost currency. A military invasion, in any case, requires more than the orders of presidents. Military planners have to design a concept of operations (CONOPS), and these days, military lawyers, too, have to weigh in. The former is not negotiable, but the lack of the latter has never stopped politicians from going ahead.
Thwarted by France and Russia in its desire for a UN Security Council authorisation of use of force against Iraq in March 2003, the USA decided to proceed nevertheless with its own coalition of the willing. Having talked up its causus belli as Saddam Hussein’s ultimately non-existent weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush had to find another reason for his regime change project in Iraq.
Addressing his country and the world at the beginning of the invasion on March 19, 2003, President Bush claimed that his mission was to “disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger” so as “to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” In other words, he was a warrior for democracy (in Iraq).
President Bush was not the first US leader to order or tolerate military action against another territory, nor was he a pioneer in the business of doing that in the name of democracy. One hundred and ten years before the invasion of Iraq, during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, armed activity by U.S. military assets toppled Queen Liluokalani of Hawaii in 1893, ultimately leading to its annexation.
When in December 1909, President Howard Taft’s administration masterminded the overthrow of Nicaragua’s José Manuel Zelaya, it was because, as stated by then Secretary of State Philander Knox, “under the regime of President Zelaya, republican institutions have ceased in Nicaragua except in name.” The excuse was the defence of democracy.
Twenty years before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, President Ronald Reagan had also invaded Grenada, a small island in the eastern Caribbean, in the name of democracy. In March 1979, the Marxist New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard had overthrown Grenada’s first prime minister, Eric Gairy, in a populist coup that initially promised “all democratic freedoms, including freedom of elections, religion, and political opinion.” Instead, on taking power, Prime Minister Bishop retrenched the constitution and parliament, preferring instead to rule by populist decrees.
In October 1983, a long-running rivalry between Maurice Bishop and his deputy, Bernard Coard, over the ideological purity of the New Jewel Movement ended with the army commander, General Hudson Austin, throwing his weight behind Coard. Bishop was placed under house arrest and, following an effort by his supporters to free him, a confrontation ensued in which he and his leading supporters were massacred on 16 October 1983, leaving the Movement in the control of Marxist purists whom the United States could not tolerate.
