Yet the real motives were to maintain transnational ascendance, circumvent rising rivals, protect long-enjoyed economic advantages, and ensure the flow and control of overseas resources.
Source :www-jimbovardcom
The moral pattern of politics has degenerated many times over the past six decades or so. Then, politicians and people’s representatives were primarily picked out for their governance skills, civil commitment, moral principles and human values before other qualities. In earlier times, the cost for election pledge-breaking, ill-advised lawmaking and political falsehood were a package of degradation and rejection. Likewise, impeachment and exclusion were the penalty for political wrongdoing and leadership incompetency. However, these days, same political misdeeds are considered minor slip-ups and thus pardoned and sidelined or justified with false excuses—let alone being falsified and praised in several cases.
Since the late sixties as yet, influential heads of state, political leaders as well as most politicians play tricks to manipulate and marginalize the ethical principles of right and wrong, all of which are made to serve their will to power, political party, regime or clan. Nowadays, political morality is seen as a matter of personal opinion, rather than being an issue of ethics and human conscience. Humanistic consideration in the political judgment process is now envisioned as an attribute for political impracticality and churchliness. While realpolitik (a German term first used in 1914 for practical politics, which is based solely on material factors and interest considerations rather than on ethical objectives and human ideals) is welcomed as a paradigm of pragmatism and prudence.
In today’s world of realpolitik, waging of ruinous punitive wars, military incursions, annexation of neighboring territories and other belligerencies are excusable to most politicians and analysts as long as they are executed in the name of fighting foreign evil forces, or to extirpate fore-token WMD, or to ensure ethnic privileges for compatriots. While the fact is that none of these crushing aggressions and hostilities was meant to free a nation from totalitarianism, or to put an end to genocide or ethnic cleansing—like in WWII, or to promote democracy and human development thereof. Calling to mind that, most of those warfare activities were camouflaged with one democratic label or another political excuse. Yet the real motives were to maintain transnational ascendance, circumvent rising rivals, protect long-enjoyed economic advantages, and ensure the flow and control of overseas resources.
In today’s world of realpolitik, assassination of political rivals, usage of chemical weapons on civilians, bombarding of residential areas and slaughtering of tens of thousands of innocent people by the Syrian regime and its paramilitary Shiite radical groups (like Hezbollah, Iraqi Abu al-Fadhal al-Abbas brigades and Iranian Revolutionary Guard) are bearable so long as they serve one national security concern or another. Likewise, conducting of terror waves, abduction of women and nuns, kidnapping and extortion of girls or killing of unlike clerics by extremist militant groups (like Boko Haram, ISIS, and other radical Sunni militants) are just news headlines and materials for mere condemnation as long as they come to pass far-off from the first world—since suchlike terror do not fall under the Terrorism Act.
On top of that, combating poverty and illiteracy, providing affordable healthcare and education to the underprivileged are now re-conceptualized to enter as a national shortcoming issue and communal responsibility. Since, in realpolitik, rich economies (like the G20, at least) have other national advancement priorities and different sociopolitical agendas.
Given that pitiless passivity, it is naïve to name clean-living political leaders when more than one hundred forty chief of states ignore that around eighty percent of their country’s citizens work and live to serve the wealthy twenty percent, at best. It is reasonless to suppose that there are leading international personages and global leaders, who still hold global humanistic dimensions in their decision-making process, while they overlook that one-third of the world population (2.4 billions) live under 2.40$ a day.
Like or not, the general impression among the masses and nonpartisan analysts across this global village is that our present-day world leaders are incompetent to maintain peace, provide development or honor human values—not to speak about taking the world to a better place. They see Obama as a blabby hesitant U.S. president, Putin as an outlaw opportunist communist tsar, Cameron an inexperienced British PM, Mr. Holland a soft and confused French president, Xi Jinping an exploitative Chinese trader and Ban Ki Moon a folkloric head of international press corps—let alone other pathetic G-20 heavyweights.
This worldwide decline in competency and political morality of most (not to say all) governing politicians stem from several irregular
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governmental settings. The first commonly shared weighty factor in all political malpractices is the ongoing manipulation of right and wrong. In large part, it arises from the non-existence of predominant moral concept and worldly authority to judge what is right or wrong—at least, on the sociopolitical level. To put differently, the issue is about the basis in which right and wrong is assessed, and by which norms wrongfulness is adjudged. In theory, there is a general concord that the U.N.’s Human Rights Charter is the supposed reference which defines the general code of ethics and human values of our modern times. Yet, in real terms, morality and ethical codes have dissimilar descriptions and different comprehension among most nations.
It is surrealistic to deny that what is wrong to some is not right to others, and vice versa. Likewise, what civil liberty and human rights symbolize in some parts of the world, could signify insubordination and vice in other parts. What terrorism and suicidal attacks mean to most nations, could mean jihad and martyrdom to the other some, and so forth. Under the current world settings, it is realistic to say that this unfortunate root problem seems far from being fully resolved in the near future. Nevertheless, it certainly needs to be contained. Besides making peace and bringing in development, our future needs persistent worldwide educative initiatives and foresighted civil cooperation processes that can bring these societal and cultural gaps closer to the natural virtues of mankind.
The second critical reason revolves around the judicial process, judiciary’s role and prerogatives. With the exception of few legal and justice systems, there is a widespread practice and common acceptance that it is up to the state’s leadership and governing bodies to appoint judges, chief justices and attorney generals. Despite all claims that suchlike political appointments are carried out by means of some designed system of confirmation, the fact remains that higher judiciary councils have no say in the nomination or confirmation of the selected top judges of their countries. This political appointment of the judgeship, however, often entails on most judges and attorney generals a sort of lenity toward the misdoings of those who appointed them. As a result, most influential politicos are somewhat protected from being held accountable for their mischief-makings and political transgression.
The third element that contributes much to this political decadency is the long absence of real fair chances for self-directed nonpartisan candidates to win an election, parliamentary and presidential alike, at which independent candidates are now scarce. By and large, this electoral shortcoming is mostly due to the adoption of two-party system or two politically aligned wide fronts instead of open electoral system. This uneven democratic arrangement creates unequal campaigning chances thus and so low probabilities of winning for free candidates in which they are forced to either don’t enter the race or withdraw in due course. And, the end result is that electorates are cornered to vote as per the nomination of one political party, front or another, which drive most winning candidates to be more loyal to their political party than to whom they should represent: their fellow citizens.
Unfortunately, this chronic political twisting of the election process has overridden the rationale behind carrying out democratic elections: to speak for the wants and values of the people. Ironically, all of that is done in the name of democracy and realpolitik.
Nonetheless, many people might conclude that this odd case is an exclusive resemblance of the judiciary systems and political settings of third-world countries. In fact, it is not. It is a broad ill practice that affects most governing systems in the third world as well as in advanced countries. The only difference, however, is the level of severity and quality of the mask of this reality.
In all likelihood, people now tend not to believe the empty speeches and false promises of most heads of state and politicians. To outfox that, most leading political figures hire highly-paid spin doctors and political propagandists to polish their images, mainly by promoting a new brand of political practice: realpolitik. Yet, thankfully, similar tactics have lost its impact on the general public, since the majority of people are more well-informed, up to date and shrewd political readers.
This continuous climb in the political awareness among individuals and communities has intensified the call for political honesty and moralistic politics throughout the world. On that, the questionable political integrity of many nation-leaders, who play crucial roles in leading the world, has become a universal concern rather than a mere national issue.
It is very reasonable to see more calls for change here and there, especially when we remember that citizens are the rightful authority to judge the moral values and actions of their official representatives. The first step toward the required change is to reconsider our mode of choosing the people we should trust to manage our present and build the future of our children.
In all doctrines, real citizenship implies that people select their representatives according to their clearheaded moralistic qualities and transparent leadership, first of all. Recalling that, it also entails a moral obligation on people to denounce politicians’ amoral decisions and cunning political practices on the international front and the national one alike.
Otherwise, passive citizens should not wonder why economic recessions, wars and massacres, extremism and terror supplanted their peaceful life, civil norms and ethics; since unsound politicos will continue to “realpolitik” our lives forever.
An enlightened American politician once said:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thomas Jefferson
Author’s Note: This article is also published at Arabian Gazette
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