James Antle and John Tabin both make important points
about democratization in Egypt and the Middle East. Antle rightly
notes that “creating democracy where it has never existed
before is extremely difficult and requires a great deal more than
just free elections.”
That, in fact, is precisely the point I made in an
AmSpec blog
entry on Saturday. Democratization, I wrote, is a long and
developing process which includes an entire “infrastructure of
institutions, customs, laws and societal arrangements that allow
democracy to work and to flourish.”
But as Tabin rightly
points out, ever since Ronald Reagan was elected president, the
world has changed dramatically and generally in a more democratic
direction. This is in large measure attributable to a concerted
change in U.S. foreign policy, initiated by Reagan and championed
(with varying degrees of effectiveness and vigor) by George W.
Bush.
The policy change initiated by Reagan involved putting the
United States squarely on the side of freedom and democracy
worldwide. And the result, as Tabin, observes, has been a dramatic
sea change in governance, with 59 percent of countries now at least
somewhat democratic, according to Freedom House.
In 1979, by contrast, as Jeanne Kirpatrick observed, “most
governments in the world [were], as they [had] always been,
autocracies of one kind or another.”
Now, Antle is right to note that the liberal democratic
wave has yet to really hit the Middle East and sub-Saharan
North Africa. That’s true, though we shouldn’t give short shrift to
the Iraqi people. The Iraqis, after all, have repeatedly and
heroically demonstrated their commitment to democracy, even in the
face of vicious and intimidating violence by a relative handful of
Islamists.
In any case, the lack of a democratic tradition in
the Middle East is precisely what makes the uprising in
Egypt so remarkable and so promising — and, therefore, so worthy
of active and vigorous American support.
Here you have a widespread national rebellion against
Mubarak’s 30-year autocracy. And this in a place, Egypt, where none
of the so-called experts seem ever to have envisioned liberal
democracy taking hold.
And the protesters are not Islamists, radicals or
pan-Arabists; they are Egyptians, many of them young people, who
want nothing more than a better life and a more responsive
government. The fact is that Egyptian civil society is a lot more
advanced than Antle and other so-called foreign policy realists
seem to realize or wish to acknowledge.
Caution and skepticism, of course, are always warranted.
Revolutions are inherently risky. But that is
precisely why it is incumbent upon the United States to
exercise leadership: to help avert a nightmare scenario. Yet
the man who campaigned on “hope and change” has said very little
about promoting real hope and change where it is most urgently
needed: in the heart of the Middle East.
The point is not to “pick winners and losers,” as Antle
suggests; it is to help create a political environment within Egypt
in which the Egyptian people themselves can pick winners and
losers.
And the point is not to have free and fair elections once;
it is to create a dynamic within Egypt that will leader to greater
democratization and development over time.
It is true that, in the short run, democratization in the
Middle East might empower radical elements who threaten Israel and
the United States. This is a real risk, but one that we must accept
and sanction — just as we did in Italy and France after World War
II.
In the mid-to-late 1940s, you will recall, the communist
parties in Italy and France commanded significant popular support
and thus were allowed to compete in free and fair elections.
Electoral competition served to expose and isolate the communists
as the extremists that they were. And so, democratization in both
Italy and France continued apace in spite of the
communists.
In the same way, radical elements might attract popular
support in Egypt and the Middle East. But the way to minimize their
influence is twofold: First, ensure that the democratic political
infrastructure is in place to hold rulers and legislators
accountable to the people whom they govern.
The radicals espouse political and economic policies that
cannot work. So long as they are held accountable (in free and fair
elections) for their policy failures, we can be sure that their
influence will wane over time.
Second, the United States and Israel must remain strong
and assertive, both militarily and diplomatically. There’s a
reason, after all, that Egypt hasn’t gone to war against Israel
since 1973; and that reason ain’t the Camp David Peace Accords. It
is, instead, that Egypt recognizes that a war against Israel would
be suicidal.
Israel, aided and abetted by the United States, must
continue to make the cost of war prohibitive to any and all
aggressors. And the United States must work to isolate the radicals
— politically, diplomatically and economically — so that their
attraction and allure to people throughout the Middle East steadily
wanes over time.
Indeed, as the late great Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis explained, “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” Force the
radicals to espouse workable public policies, and even to govern,
and watch them fade into the ash heap of history. Or side with the
autocrats and watch the radicals grow in unwarranted stature and
influence throughout Egypt and the Middle East. That’s the choice
that now confronts us.
Still, we shouldn’t overstate the Islamist threat in
Egypt, as many American conservatives have done and, regrettably,
continue to do. Everything that we’ve seen thus far demonstrates
conclusively that the protesters are ordinary Egyptians with
legitimate and democratic aspirations.
And the United States of America — a country founded on
the proposition that “all men are created equal; [and] that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…
among [which] are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” —
cannot and must not remain neutral in the great and eternal
struggle between liberty and tyranny.
We must choose sides; and we must choose liberty: because
liberty is precisely what America and Americans are all
about.
