Future of Arab democracy hangs in the balance

Despite what appears to be a genuine democratic movement in the Arab world, the fear of instability persists in various parts of the Middle East. This gives champions of the status quo a chance to advance their argument that favours stability over democracy.

Scholars and analysts, who have never believed that the Arab world can develop any form of representative government, are exploiting the difficult transition to democracy in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and particularly Syria, to make their voice heard in US academic and political circles.

Through lobbing, publicity and media coverage, they have been trying to influence US policy in the Middle East at a time when the Obama administration is preoccupied with re-election and anxious of having to deal with unexpected or dramatic developments in the Arab region.

“The fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget,” Robert Kaplan, a distinguished US writer, argued in an article published in the Washington Post.

A decade ago, such argument could have never been made. Following the shock of 9/11, the real threat for America seemed to be coming from undemocratic regimes and ‘failed states’ in the Middle East. The rationale was that there are ‘failed’, ‘rogue’ and ‘weak’ states in the world that are, in varying ways, brutalising and killing their own people, disrupting regional stability, developing weapons of mass destruction, engaging in acts of terror or are linked with violent anti-western terrorist organisations.

In such cases, it is the moral duty of democratic states to intervene in a variety of ways, including militarily, and even pre-emptively, to ensure that humanitarian crises are brought to an end, that good government is restored or implanted, and that order reigns.

Strategy

In the post 9/11 period, democratic imperialists gained the upper hand, wherein their ideas served as the guiding principle for the US global strategy. “In a world where evil is still very real, democratic principles must be backed with power in all its forms: political and economic, cultural and moral, and yes, sometimes military,” former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice suggested once. Iraq was the first step in a long process to implement this strategy: overthrow autocrats and replace them with democratically elected governments.

This optimism, which accompanied the drive for democracy in the Arab world, did not last long, however. The failure to establish full-fledged democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise to power of Islamist movements in some places such as the Occupied Territories through the ballot box undercut the influence of this school, giving way for a rival argument to emerge.

So-called traditional realist argued that pressure for democracy will present the US with a number of immediate dangers and few clear advantages. The likelihood of the Arab Middle East to produce fully democratic regimes in the foreseeable future is remote indeed; it enjoys none of the recognised prerequisites for sustaining democracy: its elite are not committed to democracy, its population is not homogeneous, its national institutions are extremely weak and its per capita GDP is lower than the level commonly viewed as the democratic tipping point.

Furthermore, the transition to democracy would almost certainly lead to the disintegration of state institutions, such as the army and police. They may be chaos and violence. Worse still for this school was that the likely alternative to the existing Arab regimes are Islamic governments run by the Muslim Brotherhood.

When the Obama administration came to power in 2009, developments on the grounds in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to be approving the argument of this school. He therefore dumped the democracy promotion thesis and decided to focus instead on stability through strengthening relations with the autocrats of the Arab and Islamic world. The belief that America must support dictators or else face a chaotic situation gained momentum in Washington. The relatively smooth transition in Egypt and Tunisia last year must have disappointed traditional realists.

Given post-revolution setbacks in various parts of the Arab world, it might be too early though to suggest that the pro-stability school in Washington has completely lost the ground. What is clear; however, is that a fierce intellectual conflict over the direction of US foreign policy and the future of the Arab world is taking place in Washington.

Alas, this is happening when the Arab world needs assistance to go from autocracy to democracy. Worse, this is happening when the focus in the US is inward — the presidential elections — rather than outward — supporting democratic transition in the Arab world.

Dr Marwan Kabalan is the Dean of the Faculty of International Relations and Diplomacy at the University of Kalamoon, Damascus.