Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution is not unduly worried that America seems deeply divided over moral and political values. Party polarization, Rauch surmises, may have been caused by mainstream political parties having been taken over by polarized political activists but party polarization helps domesticate fanatics on the left and the right. Though more than one third of the Americans live in the so-called "lopsided counties"(defined as those counties which vote for one party or the other by lopsided margin) such voting pattern reflects the historical range for Presidential elections since 1840. After all, argues Rauch, America is no stranger to cultural fission if one considers Jeffersonian versus Hamiltonians, Jacobeans vs. the Establishment, the Civil War, the Civil Rights, and the Vietnam upheavals.

During last year's Presidential elections many analysts found the loyalty of American voters almost perfectly divided between the Democrats and the Republicans; red America and blue America: "red America is godly, moralistic, patriotic, predominantly white, masculine, less educated, heavily rural and suburban; blue America is secular, relativistic, internationalist, multi-cultural, feminine, college educated, heavily urban and cosmopolitan". People like Virginia University ProfessorÊJames Hunter and political scientist John White see culture divide among Americans, one culture being "orthodox" and the other being "progressive". But in sociologist Alan Wolfe's eye Americans are moderate, reluctant to pass judgment, and "tolerant to a fault". Equally others find both conservative and progressive Americans sharing shocking level of agreement on many issues. Both red and blue state residents agree that religion is an important part of their life and favor stricter gun control placing them as centrists instead of being poles apart.

Many agree that the problem lies not with the voters but with the political parties and politicians. Yesterdays' political parties which used to be loose coalition of interests and regions have now become ideological clubs. If Northeastern Republicans of the past were more liberal than Southern Democrats, today most Republicans are conservatives and Democrats are liberals. The ideological divide is sharper among politicians than among voters.

If this is the condition of the political system of the Zeus of the democratic world, why then are we so depressed about the "confrontational" politics in Bangladesh? Many would argue that in the US , indeed in the developed world, one does not see the kind of political terrorism perpetrated unabated by the party in power victimizing the opposition parties of the moment, contagion of corruption pushing the body politic of the country to terminal condition, distorting the market mechanism through political intervention inevitably leading to inefficiency in the economy, using money and muscle power affecting the entire political process, human security becoming not only elusive but mythical. But then one should not disregard the historical changes brought about through peoples' power in the Philippines, velvet revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, changes forced by the people on corrupt and despotic rulers in Georgia, Ukraine,Kyrghystan, Ecuador and the current popular discontent over the election in Togo allegedly manipulated by the state machinery.

One could take the essence of George Keenan's 1947 article on "The sources of Soviet conduct" as a prescription for containing and then destroying "democratic despotism" (albeit oxymoronic in phraseology) through implacable opposition to its continuance.

Keenan spoke of Stalin's retention of the "organs of suppression" on the ground of capitalist encirclement resulting in "all internal opposition forces in Russia consistently (being) portrayed as agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic to Soviet power". The brilliance of George Keenan lay in his prescient understanding of the fact that the excesses of police apparatus had "fanned the potential opposition to the regime into something far greater and more dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began". Since the US could not expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime, George Keenan argued, it must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival in the political arena and adopt "a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter force at every point". One could reasonably translate the cold war prescription from international to domestic politics in order to fight a democratically elected government which turns itself into a despotic one in order to remain perpetually in power. As German philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas observes the state's raison d'etre does not lie primarily in the protection of equal individual rights but in the guarantee of an inclusive process of opinion-and-will-formation in which free and equal citizens reach an understanding on which goals and norms lie in the equal interest of all. He, therefore, puts emphasis on freedom of assembly and freedom of choice. If the political community is fragmented into opposed religious, ethnic, racial, and ideological groups, more familiarly known as "identity politics", then democratic structure is threatened.

While ethnic and racial tension in Bangladesh is minimal, religious and ideological divides remain. One is, therefore, alarmed at the revelation by an eminent Bangladeshi economist that corporations run by religious fundamentalists make an annual net profit of twelve billion taka of which ten percent is used by fundamentalists for organizational purposes like carrying out regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres and running armed training camps. He observes that while the number of primary schools since liberation has doubled that of Dakhil madrasas has increased eight fold. In this context the remarks of CINPAC Admiral William Fallon during his recent visit to Bangladesh gain relevance. Referring to radicals who look for areas of unrest and areas of weakness Admiral Fallon reportedly expressed concern "that there may be some movements that might try to take advantage of Bangladesh".

Our authorities by and large have been dismissive of Indian allegations leveled against Bangladesh. But Euro-American warnings relating to increased religious extremism in Bangladesh can only be disregarded at our own peril. A recent manifestation of religious intolerance has been the persecution of the Ahmadiyya sect by religious bigots. Analyzing the state of sectarianism in Pakistan Brussels based International Crisis Group has remarked that sectarian conflict in Pakistan is the direct consequence of state policies of Islamisation and marginalisation of secular democratic forces. Cooption and patronage of religious parties by successive military governments have brought Pakistan to a point where religious extremism threatens to erode the foundation of the state and society. The choice that Pakistan faces, the crisis group warns, is not between the military and the mullahs, as is generally believed in the West, it is between genuine democracy and a military-mullah alliance that is responsible for producing and sustaining religious extremism. Bangladesh historically endowed with secular and liberal traits should take lessons from history and contemporaneous experiences of others.

Questions may be asked as to why the international community should be interested as to how different state institutions function in a juridically defined territory. Thomas Hobbes thought that sovereign statehood was a necessary political arrangement for ensuring social peace. If a government can not ensure peace and deliver political goods to which it is committed then, Hobbes argues, there is no point in having a state. But since states do not dissolve by themselves many despotic rulers continued to exercise control over captive population often supported and assisted by the erstwhile super powers due to the logic dictated by the cold war. Consequently at various stages of the cold war, as theorized by George Keenan, the US sometimes by assisting despots presiding over failed states countered Soviet moves taking a long term, patient but firm and vigilant policy to contain Russia's expansive tendencies. The end of the cold war occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet empire has brought about a fundamental change in the western attitude towards the rest of the world.

The West is no longer willing to overlook "democracy deficit" for its strategic interests. Source of threat to global stability has moved from nuclear war to regional rogue states to transnational or non-state actors. Effectively American definition of the threat has de-escalated from "evil empire" to "axis of evil" to "evil actors". The international community, therefore, demands that democracy should be not only an international norm but a domestic norm as well. If a state were to disenfranchise entire or part of its population then democratic states may justify foreign intervention to enfranchise the people of the non-democratic states; they may intervene to install a democratic government through internationally supervised elections.

Such interventions are justifiable, says Tony Blair, referring to NATO's actions in Kosovo advocating his Doctrine of International Community containing explicit recognition that states now a days are mutually dependent and that national interest of states is "to a significant extent governed by international collaboration". Connectivity associated with globalization's progressive advance or denial of such connectivity has assumed great importance for Western assessment about a country's fulfillment of its international obligations to remain a member of the society of states. It has been argued that since civility can not be apportioned according to race, religion or color the comparatively less developed economies can not be allowed to remain disconnected from the international community on the pretext of their poverty or on grounds of so-called Asian values which is mistakenly defined as putting greater emphasis on collective welfare at the cost of individual liberty. On the contrary promotion of individual liberty ultimately contributes to peace and development by eliminating intra and inter group friction.

For countries like Bangladesh transiting through perilous phase of political development, growth of her democratic personality stunted on several occasions by extra-constitutional forces, the authorities would be well advised to avoid Machiavelli's advice that it is better to be feared than loved. Authoritarian obstinacy, portrayed by courtiers as akin to leaders' refusal to compromise on matters of principles, to address reasonable concerns of the oppositional and neutral forces' demand for fine tuning the administrative and electoral process may result in massive politico-economic regression. It is not important who scores points over whom.

It is far more important if the changes sought would guarantee emergence of a system for true reflection of people's will. One hopes good sense will prevail upon our leaders to provide the people with an opportunity to acquire a better quality of life than the one they are living at present.

The author is a former Secretary and ambassador.