The Case for Democracy:
The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer
(Public Affairs, 303 pages, $26.95)
THESE DAYS, ONE SEEKS IN vain for voices who contend that the Cold
War was a lost cause. The reason, quite obviously, is that the
West’s triumph over the forces of communist totalitarianism makes
this a decidedly difficult notion to sustain.
So why such heated resistance to idea, which finds its most
prominent expression in the Bush administration’s calls for
democracy in the Middle East, that Arab and Muslim tyrannies should
share a similar fate? After all, next to the fearsome
intercontinental influence once wielded by the Evil Empire, the
modest mandates of Middle Eastern potentates qualify them as little
more than oil-pumping pygmies.
In his new book, The Case for Democracy, Natan
Sharansky gives us the answer. At bottom, he writes, it has to do
with moral clarity: there simply isn’t enough of it.
For instance, it is this lack of moral clarity that informs
leftist critics’ resentment of the Bush administration’s admirably
hard-line approach to Middle Eastern tyranny. Incapable of drawing
distinctions between a democratic West and an autocratic Middle
East, leftist activists reach for spurious analogies: President
Bush becomes Hitler incarnate; America and Israel become the latter
day versions of Nazi Germany; Islamist terrorists out to trip-up a
democracy-bound Iraq become freedom fighters on par with the heroes
of the American Revolution. And those are the flattering
comparisons.
Nor is the dearth of moral clarity limited to the
America-bashing Left. Sharansky notes that some within the
mainstream of American political discourse suffer from a similar
affliction. Even as they hold dear the values of American
democracy, Sharansky argues, these “freedom’s skeptics” — among
them the “realist” tacticians who counsel “engagement” with the
worst the Middle East has to offer — deny the power of freedom to
transform undemocratic societies. Reluctant to insist on the
superiority of democratic virtues, these critics carp that America
has “no right to impose its values.” Unwilling to place their faith
in the transformative power of democratic freedoms, they instead
urge America to make common cause with regimes that survive by
denying those freedoms to their native populations. Thus do these
skeptics make the case for dictatorship.
AS A FORMER DISSIDENT in the Soviet Union, Sharansky knows
something about dictators. In mounting his central argument that
the West should actively promote democracy in places that lack it,
Sharansky, enlists his own struggles in the front lines of the
Jewish dissident movement — a career that earned him imprisonment
in KGB-run prisons. With impressive thoroughness, limpid clarity,
and the singular conviction who a man who has seen freedom slay one
of history’s most formidable tyrannies, Sharansky persuasively
contends that the dictatorships that seem so formidable to Western
eyes are, like the former Soviet Union, inherently unstable. His
case for democracy comes down to this: All that’s needed for
tyranny to crumble is for freedom to be introduced.
How well this line of theorizing goes down in today’s
all-splenetic-all-the-time political climate is evidenced by the
hostile reactions provoked by The Case for Democracy. For
sensibly insisting that free societies must be the precondition to
any lasting peace with the Middle East, Sharansky has come in for
pointed rebuke from both the left and the right, which execrate
him, respectively, as either a right-wing ideologue not above
suspicion of neo-conservatism, or otherwise, a hopeless dreamer
divorced from the real-life difficulties of fostering democracy in
autocracy-plagued Middle East.
The Case for Democracy testifies that he is neither.
Rather than merely willing democracy to take root in the Middle
East, as he is frequently caricatured to do, Sharansky lays out
policies to encourage the opening of Middle Eastern “fear
societies.” Recalling his own fight for freedom, Sharansky explains
how farsighted Cold War-era policies like the Jackson Amendment and
the Helsinki Agreements, which introduced human rights measures
behind the Iron Curtain, fatally undermined the power of the
Communist diehards. Noting that many of the Middle East’s most
anti-American countries are wholly dependent on Western, and
specifically American aid, Sharansky urges policymakers to adopt
similar policies, linking financial succor to the Middle East to
the protection of human rights and the loosening of authoritarian
controls.
ALREADY, HIS CRITICS HAVE thumbed their noses at Sharansky’s
proposals, sneering that they smack of foreign policy as “social
work.” As Sharansky convincingly demonstrates, however, the
struggle against Arab and Islamic tyranny is not merely a
humanitarian endeavor. Indeed, arguably the most important aspect
of this book is Sharansky’s treatment of the oft-dismissed
connection between tyranny and terrorism. Considered at length,
this connection is as obvious as it is dangerous: Because all
dictatorial regimes survive by crushing internal dissent, they must
consistently evoke the threat of external enemies, which supposedly
necessitate oppressive measures.
The result, as September 11 tragically showed, is that the West,
particularly America and Israel, become the bull’s-eyes of choice.
Fears of external enemies silence the democratic opposition while
empowering the most violently radical elements Arab and Muslim
society. Small wonder, as Sharansky points out, that studies show
countries with the least amount of civic freedom are also the most
anti-American and anti-Semitic. Put bluntly: by consenting to let
Middle Eastern dictators literally get away with murder, the
democratic West makes itself the next victim.
Paradoxically, the book is on weakest intellectual ground when
it retreats from its own forceful thesis. At several junctures, for
instance, Sharansky comes down against holding elections in Iraq
and the Palestinian territories, arguing that societies with no
tradition of freedom will produce leaders who will violate it at
home and abroad. Yet Sharansky does not allow for another, equally
plausible, possibility: That democratic elections may serve, as
they did in Indonesia, to co-opt or marginalize the more fanatical
elements of society, forcing extremists to moderate their views or
risk political excommunication.
As we forge ahead in the War on Terror, the lessons of The
Case for Democracy serve as a powerful guide, confirming that
the promotion of free societies and representative government is
not only “universally desired, it is universally desirable.”
Perhaps more importantly, at a time when the wisdom of exporting
democracy is under assault, Sharansky reminds us that those who
cheer the demise of tyranny have history on their side.
