Democracy and Moral Obligation: Is the West above Self-Interest?

Consistently, international relations literature will refer to the "incompetence" of the West's response to crisis situations around the world. Gerard Prunier, in an overwhelmingly masterful study of the 1990s Congolese war, refers to the UN's "toothlessness" and the international community's "stilted humanitarian style" which he attributes to outdated cognitive frameworks, a lack of interest, and a low pain threshold on the part of Western states. He goes so far as to describe the West's typical plight as being "caught between a Shakespearean tragedy and a hiccuping computer."

By contrast, Prunier describes the African elites themselves, who are the actual physical catalysts in the conflict, as being perfectly competent. Little engines of rational theories of gain maximization, they use the ignorance of the West as part of their "basic tactical kit."

Now, Prunier is also quick to denounce the actions of many of these elites as monstrous, hideous blights on humanity. There is no nostalgic paternalistic panache for the innocence of all Africans present in the work. What is worthy of note, however, is the inference behind this highly rational choice scholar's work: while it is not incompetent for African leaders and states to act self-interestedly and with little to no regard for human life within their own borders, something in this equation changes when we turn to the West.

As democratic states and defenders of self-evident truth, somehow the rational choice model only partially applies to the West. There is an assumtion that the West ought to be above the kind of self-interest that is expected elsewhere, and when it fails to fulfill that role, even the most rational amongst us assume that this isn't just the way all states naturally operate, but that actual incompetence has crept in to separate us from what ought to be our natural goal. For example, Al-Bashir's recent hoop-la in Sudan is despicable but expected, while a misdemeanor on the part of a UN Secretary General is despicable and unexpected.

Odd, isn't it, that we have a framework through which we can account for why people act the way they do, but which can't tell us why we always want, even expect, them to act better? And especially why, in a world where we are told that humanity is set apart by its rational powers, at the end of the day we find gross calculations of our own self-interest so dehumanizing?