The global war on terror is testing the resolve of democracy in the United States and the West and the faith of the developing world, especially Muslim countries, in the viability of the system.

Public opinion is rising against the lingering war, which will force the US administration to further circumvent the will of the people by pushing them further into ‘engineered ignorance’ and expanding the scope of the war. As the objectives and achievements of the war get blurred by the day, Europe is distancing itself from America which, left to its own, is heavily leaning towards unilateralism in international affairs.

Celebrated black American writer Cornel West, in his post-9/11 book Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, says: ‘… free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism are snuffing out the democratic impulses that are so vital for the deepening and spread of democracy in the world. In short, we are experiencing the sad American imperial devouring of American democracy’.

But this war is not a threat only to US democracy, which does not have high credibility because of low public participation and high corporate influence in decision-making; established democracies in the West are also feeling the strain of the terror war. As people in Europe — thanks to a robust, pluralistic media — have been disillusioned by the way the war is being fought, their governments are under tremendous public pressure to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

If western countries, especially Germany, France and Italy, decide to part ways with the US, America will lose the weight of the international community to continue with the war. However, if the West decides to stay in the game, it will do so against the will of its people.

When on 9/11 the world was shocked by the terrorist attacks inside the US, the Bush administration embarked on an ambitious but dangerous course of taking out Al Qaeda and imposing democracy in countries deemed sympathetic to ‘Islamic terrorism’. The war was initially focused on Afghanistan and then Iraq. But since then the war, instead of receding, has been expanding both in terms of violence and area. Now Pakistan’s northwest, especially its tribal areas, has also become part of the war.

Saddam Hussein was toppled, ‘tried’ and executed to be replaced by a government that still grapples with the vagaries of the ‘liberation.’ Earlier, it had taken not much longer to drive the Taliban from power in Kabul and into the treacherous mountains and ravines of Afghanistan. It is widely believed that the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Hamid Karzai was installed as interim ruler who then won the elections in Afghanistan, a country that is marked more by tribalism than federalism. It is said the ‘inept, corrupt, dysfunctional Karzai administration — monopolised by warlords and bandits’ paved the way for a resurgent Taliban. Not surprisingly, Mr Karzai won a second term in a fraud-tainted election.

These seemed to be the easy achievements of a war that keeps expanding. With ‘elected’ governments put in place in Baghdad and Kabul, there should have been reduced American presence both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contrary to that a third ‘surge’ is being sought by the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, and a policy shift from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency. Alongside democratising Iraq and Afghanistan, the theatre of war is being expanded and the plans stretched further.

According to Tom Hayden, a former California state senator, the Pentagon has a 50-year-long counter-insurgency war plan spanning besides Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond. Wars are being launched by big powers with a limited objective, that too to be achieved with minimum cost, damage, casualties and within a limited time-frame. But history is witness to the fact that once started, wars have their own momentum while the aggressors keep changing the goalposts to adjust to bitter new realities. In short, instead of directing the war, the latter itself marshals the policies of the aggressors.

Thus started in the name of spreading democracy, the global war on terror is nibbling at democracies at home, much to the delight of Al Qaeda, which dislikes western-style democracy. Difficult to sell to the people, the war has put many governments in a fix: siding with the US alienates their own electorates (as is the case in Pakistan), while opposing the war exposes weak countries to American arm-twisting (again, as is the case in Pakistan).

A joint sitting of parliament passed a unanimous resolution against drone attacks inside Pakistan. But the pilot-less American aircraft continue to attack targets. When parliament’s decision is flouted, democracy loses its value for the people who long for a new system that can empower them. The fledgling democracy in Pakistan is trying to adjust itself every day to accommodate American demands that fly in the face of all democratic norms.

Thus the war on terror, instead of securing established democracies and supporting new ones, poses a direct threat to democracy, per se playing directly into Al Qaeda’s strategy.

Tom Hayden says that the Pentagon’s ‘long war’ ‘assumes either perpetual democratic approval by many voters not yet alive or that democracy will simply be circumvented by national security’.

As the war on terror continues and expands, western governments are faced with increasingly questioning citizens. Governments may have iron-clad stomachs for such foreign adventures, but the public always demands quick and tangible results, which are nowhere in sight.