It is with a good bit of sorrow that I feel the need to criticize Shadi Hamid’s essay, The Wisdom of Exporting Democracy. Hamid begins with an argument that I have been making for months. It’s not our lifestyles and freedoms that are angering Muslims, it’s our policies.
It’s not so much that people are angry at us, but rather that people have no political outlet with which to express their anger in a peaceful, legitimate manner.
Even if the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict was to be solved through hands-on American diplomacy, it would be shortsighted to think that this would be the victory that some imagine it will be. For if the conflict is resolved, it does not change the fact that millions of Arabs live in humiliation, treated as little more than petty subjects, to be manipulated, controlled and repressed at will. The greatest indignities Arabs and Muslims face—the ones that, for them, are most immediate and tangible—come from their own authoritarian governments. And of course, we, in our continued support for unrepentant autocrats, are complicit.
Hamid goes on to argue that the solution to this problem is democracy. I agree with him. But not now. Not yet. Hamid makes a compelling case against my position (really, positions that are close to mine).
Critics of democracy promotion sometimes accuse its supporters of thinly-veiled imperialism. But it is unclear how the approach of neo-realists such as Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman—soon to publish a treatise on what they curiously call “ethical realism”—is any less “imperial.” In their recent, rather ponderous essay here on TomPaine, they employ the tiresome platitude that before democracy, there must first be “legal and civil institutions” and “middle classes with a real commitment to democracy,” as if they themselves have the right to determine when Arabs might finally deserve democracy. Of course, Lieven and Hulsman forget that it is the autocracies themselves that actively prevent the growth of civil institutions and squeeze an already small middle class with their disastrous economic policies.
Ideally, rooted institutions and an ascendant middle class would be nice to have, but to wait for them might mean to wait 50 years, or perhaps a hundred. Some Americans, in the throes of dispassionate analysis, might possess such patience. Arabs and Muslims themselves, the ones who must suffer daily under the scourge of autocracy, would likely find it more difficult to muster the same degree of patience. Moreover, from the standpoint of U.S. national security interests, it would be foolish to think that the existing regimes—lacking much, if any, real popular support—will be able to last well into this century. It is more likely that Arabs and Muslims would take matters into their own hands and, then, we might have to deal with another Iran. As John F. Kennedy once warned, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
In the final analysis, the arguments of democracy promotion opponents can be stripped down to something quite simple—that we shouldn’t rush democracy because “radicals” will come to power in free elections. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the same thing Arab autocrats say to the Bush administration to scare it into supporting them. To say we shouldn’t support democracy in the Middle East because we won’t like the outcomes strikes me as a rather amoral (or immoral) position to take.
It’s hard to take issue with any of this. It closely aligns with my own analysis. But Hamid’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his premises. You cannot boil down my position to a fear of ‘radicals’ coming to power. That is not what I fear. I fear that the Arab states are autocracies because they would fly apart and descend into civil war if the autocracies were removed.
Let us ask ourselves what would have happened if we had cut a deal with Saddam Hussein. He would progressively allow more freedoms (of the press, of assembly, of political opposition) in return for a lifting of the sanctions and eventually even aid packages. Assuming that Saddam was willing to try this, how long would it have been before the demographic logic of the country (majority Shi’ite) would have expressed itself in civil war or a coup d’etat? Saddam ruled Iraq with an iron fist for a good reason. The same is true in Syria, where the country is ruled by a schismatic Shi’a sect, but the population is 74% Sunni. Saudi Arabia has a Shi’a minority of approximately 15%. They also have many rival tribal and merchant families. Any true liberalization of the country would be likely to result in a protracted struggle for control of the vast riches under the sand.
Jordan and Egypt might have a better chance of holding together with true democracy, but the short-term consequences of free elections would probably be extremely unpleasant for both the United States and Israel.
In Egypt and Saudi Arabia the segments feeling positively toward the United States has receded and now stands at 14 and 9 percent, respectively…
In Lebanon, support for the GWOT has declined modestly from 38 to 31 percent. Interestingly, support for the US effort has risen somewhat in Indonesia (from 31 to 39 percent), Jordan (13 to 16 percent), and Pakistan (20 to 30 percent), while remaining a minority position. The results in Indonesia and Pakistan may partially reflect the effects of US humanitarian aid to those countries in response to natural disasters. The Jordanian case may reflect a reaction to the November 2005 terrorist bombing there, which killed 57 people.
Sixteen percent of Jordanians support the GWOT and fourteen percent of Egyptians have a favorable impression of the United States. A true expression of the will of the people would probably involve tearing up the Camp David Accords and the 1994 treaty of peace between Jordan and Israel.
For an indication of what we might expect in the short-term, look at this:
Parallel with America’s post-9/11 wars and counter-terror efforts, radical Islamic parties have increased their political influence substantially in more than a dozen nations, often campaigning explicitly against what they describe as a “war against Islam”. Winning more votes during the past five years than ever before, such parties have advanced their positions in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
In Turkey and the Palestinian territories they now lead governments and probably could win power in Egypt, too, should fully free elections be conducted there. In Iraq, fundamentalist parties dominate government; in Iran, the conservative former mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rose to presidential office in a campaign explicitly challenging US policy. In Lebanon, the influence and popularity of Hizbullah grew substantially during the post-9/11 period. Even its miscalculation in raiding Israel in July 2006 has not dented its support, with one poll showing more than 80 percent of Lebanese backing its confrontational stance.15
In Bangladesh, Islamic parties have consolidated their position in the post-9/11 period, after winning a major role in government in October 2001. And, in Somalia, the Supreme Islamic Courts Council has become the predominant force in the country, although not by electoral means. US support for the opposing Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism and likely US support for the Ethiopian incursion into Somalia have only rebounded to the Courts’ favor, which is attracting increasing support from warlord groups on the basis of nationalist appeals.
Hamid makes two points that are relevant here. He says, “To say we shouldn’t support democracy in the Middle East because we won’t like the outcomes strikes me as a rather amoral (or immoral) position to take.” He also says, about realists, “they employ the tiresome platitude that before democracy, there must first be “legal and civil institutions” and “middle classes with a real commitment to democracy,” as if they themselves have the right to determine when Arabs might finally deserve democracy.”
I can make a very compelling case that the people of Iraq ‘deserve[d] democracy”. But I can’t make any case that they are better off now that they have it. They aren’t. They are immeasurably worse off. I don’t believe they are worse off because they didn’t have middle classes committed to democracy or because they didn’t have developed legal and civil institutions. The lack of those things have not been helpful, but they do not explain the violence in Iraq. The violence is explained by the ethnic, tribal, and sectarian divisions within the country, as well as the inevitable battle over who will control literally trillions of dollars of wealth. Rather than giving these countries freedom, we may just give them instability and a modern version of hell.
The difficulty in liberalizing the region is exacerbated by the international communities’ absolute reliance on a stable and reliable supply of energy supplies from the region. A major disruption of energy supplies could cost millions of jobs around the world and crippling inflation. It isn’t just America that has an interest in stability in the region, it is the whole developed world.
The problem seems intractable. And perhaps it is. Yet, the status quo is not really static. It is degenerating. As Hamid says, “As John F. Kennedy once warned, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable,””, and “it would be foolish to think that the existing regimes—lacking much, if any, real popular support—will be able to last well into this century.”
Democratization is probably the answer. But it must be preceded by a final settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the removal of American troops from Iraq, and, quite possibly, by new maps that create more ethnically and sectarian and tribally logical nation states.
The Middle East will not avoid a tragic period of turmoil and war. That is true whether or not we stay or leave, or promote autocracy and stability, or roll the dice on democracy.
