Democracy in the Middle East may be messy but let's have more

A little democracy is a dangerous thing - so let's have more of it

The next US president may give up on Middle East democratisation, but
we shouldn't. It's still our best hope

Timothy Garton Ash in Stanford
Thursday August 3, 2006
The Guardian


A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the
spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism. So
what do you do when you get a democratically elected terrorist
organisation? Ignore the contradiction. Pretend it doesn't exist.
In the past few weeks there has been something utterly surreal about
the US continuing to allow the Israeli military to pummel Hizbullah,
and kill women and children along the way, while insisting that
Washington's purpose is to strengthen the legitimate, democratic
government of Lebanon. Meanwhile, the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad
Siniora, has been calling desperately for the one thing that the US and
Israel have refused: an immediate ceasefire. And Hizbullah, which the
US and Britain characterise as a terrorist organisation, is itself an
important part of that democratically elected government.


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So we must do everything for that democratically elected government
except what it asks. We know best what is good for them. Whoever said
democracy meant letting the people themselves decide? As Lebanon's
special envoy, Tarek Mitri, told PBS, America's publicly funded
broadcaster, on Tuesday: "You can't support a government while you're
allowing its country to be ruined." Meanwhile, Hamas is not allowed to
operate as the democratically elected government of the Palestinians.
The Palestinian people spoke. But they got it wrong. They must have
been misinformed. They must think again.
Of course there's a real dilemma here. Just because Hamas and Hizbullah
competed and did well in elections, that doesn't mean you must accept
everything they stand for. Both are Janus-faced movements, as was
IRA/Sinn Féin. Engaging with Hizbullah-as-Sinn Féin or Hamas-as-Sinn
Féin doesn't mean tolerating the terrorist activities of
Hizbullah-as-IRA or Hamas-as-IRA. Up to a point, you can fight the
terrorist side while encouraging the political side. In fact, the name
of the game is precisely to shift their calculus of self-interest
towards peaceful politics, by increasing both the costs of violence and
the benefits of participation.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise
are always messy. They involve negotiating with terrorists, letting
some past wrongs go unpunished and accepting that a movement's militant
rhetoric may lag behind the more pragmatic reality of its position.
Everything, in fact, that the US practised in its relations with the
Kosovo Liberation Army, which it initially characterised - with reason
- as "without any questions, a terrorist group".

Two diametrically opposite conclusions may be drawn from these first
strange fruits of democratisation in the Middle East. One is to say
that the whole Bush agenda of supporting democratisation in the Arab
and Islamic world was misguided from the start - the product of a
naive, missionary-cowboy approach to international politics. It
destabilises. It brings terrorists and extremists to power. The cure is
worse than the disease. So let's get back to seasoned old "realism".
Let's not try to transform these countries or expect them to be more
like us, but take them as they are. Let's pursue our national interests
- security, trade, energy - with whatever allies we can find. Stability
comes first. Your friendly local despot may be a sonofabitch, but at
least he'll be our sonofabitch. Or so we fondly imagine.

This is the default position of much European diplomacy. It's the
wisdom of Jacques Chirac. Curiously enough, it's also where some of the
European left ends up - taken there by its opposition to "war for
democracy" à la Bush and Blair, or simply by the kneejerk "If Bush is
for it, we must be against it". But following the American debate
closely over the past weeks, I find that opposition to the
democratisation agenda is also growing inside the US.

There has always been a Republican "realist" position, associated with
figures such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the national
security adviser to Bush Sr. After Iraq, and this latest imbroglio, it
could regain the upper hand in the run-up to the 2008 presidential
election. It could win out on the other side of American politics too.
If one looks at the foreign-policy debate among Democrats, one finds a
strong strain of such "realism" - though tagged with "progressive". The
argument that the US should pull back from this poisonous world, look
to its own economic interests and find allies wherever it can appeals
to a significant part of the Democratic electorate. For many Democrats,
the fact that the current president has identified himself so strongly
with the promotion of democracy is another reason for being sceptical
about the promotion of democracy. If democratising the Middle East
means Iraq, Hizbullah and Hamas, better not try it.

I believe this is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw. In the long
run, the growth of liberal democracies is the best hope for the wider
Middle East. It's the best hope of modernisation, which the Arab world
desperately needs; of addressing the root causes of Islamist terrorism,
inasmuch as they lie in those countries rather than among Muslims
living in the west; and of enabling Arabs, Israelis, Iranians, Kurds
and Turks to live side by side without war. But it will be a long
march.

We know from elsewhere that the intermediate period of transition to
democracy can be a dangerous time, that it can actually increase the
danger of violence, especially in countries divided along ethnic and
religious lines, and where you rush to the party-political competition
for power without first having a functioning state with well-defined
borders, a near-monopoly of force, the rule of law, independent media
and a strong civil society. That's what happened in the former
Yugoslavia. That's what's been happening, in different ways, in
Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq. Full, liberal democracy contributes
to peace; partial, half-baked democratisation can increase the danger
of war.

What we in the community of established liberal democracies should do
is not abandon the pursuit of democratisation but refine it. Recognise
that only in exceptional circumstances (such as postwar Germany and
Japan) do democracies grow from under military occupation, and that the
purpose of building democracy does not justify military intervention.
Accept that, as the Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji wrote in the New York
Times, it's better for people to find their own paths to freedom, and
our job is to support them. Learn from experience that well-defined
borders, the rule of law and independent media are as important as an
election - and may need to precede it. That along the way you have to
negotiate with nasty people and regimes, such as Syria and Iran. And
that, in this dirty, complicated world, advocates of armed struggle -
terrorists, if you will - can become democratic leaders. Like Menachem
Begin. Like Gerry Adams. Like Nelson Mandela.

So let's not throw out the democratisation baby with the Bush
bathwater. There's a seriously good idea there. It just needs to be a
lot better executed, and with patience for the long haul. The right
conclusion is strange but true: a little democracy is a dangerous thing
- so let's have more of it.

www.timothygartonash.com