Monday, June 19, 2006
Condi's "different course" speech
Today is the first anniversary of Condoleezza Rice's "different course" speech in Cairo. It was a tremendous speech that generated a rather dramatic reaction at the time:
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.
This was, and remains, an astonishing policy reversal, and one that I fervently hope survives into the next administration. Over the long term, transparent and representative government is the only antidote for jihadism. The jihadis have made it clear that they will force people to fight and die to defend the alternative to their extremism. Other than some version of genuine popular sovereignty, there is no competing system that people will fight and die for.
The progress has been so slow in the last year that it is by many measures not progress at all. Egypt in particular has cracked down on its independent judiciary and activists who support it. Blogger Alaa languishes in jail. Yet the United States has been quiet as a church mouse.
The retrenchment in Egypt and elsewhere is the discouraging consequence of the present weakness of the Bush administration. The Arab dictators know that there is very little the American president can do without the support of Congress, and he will not regain the support of Congress until he is no longer a political liability. At the moment, it is very easy to defy the president of the United States.
Of course, the violence in Iraq, and the Arab media's presentation of that violence, works very much to the benefit of the dictators. Elites in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere can easily persuade themselves that they would prefer to live without freedom than suffer the fate of Iraq. Iraq is not the model, yet at least.
None of this means, however, that Bush's vision for the transformation of the region or Rice's explanation of it is invalid. As Rice made plain, the political liberalization of the region will cause instability. It will make life more difficult for Israel in the short run, since the bashing of Israel would almost certainly be a powerful vote-getter in Arab elections. The United States might even find itself expelled from dictatorships or principalities that support our policies today. And, finally, we might find that we have to work harder to improve our own image in that part of the world. The opinion of ordinary Arabs will suddenly matter.
All of it, though, will be worth it. Supporters of democracy in the Arab world must not forget Condoleezza Rice's inspiring speech, and we must not allow it to be ignored.
6 Comments:
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Mon Jun 19, 07:35:00 PM:
Ironic that Murtha is calling for a change in direction, though he was thinking of the smaller issues of the GWOT. It might pay for him to review Condi's speech, however.
By cakreiz, at
Tue Jun 20, 07:15:00 AM:
Jon Henke at QandO provides an interesting counterpoint to Rice's argument. He argues that the Administration adherence to the clean up or we'll clean you up doctrine resulted in missed diplomatic opportunities with Iran in '03. We stuck to our transformational guns, leading with the potent forces of democracy and capitalism. We hit the inevitable wall of intransigient Islam, tribalism and ignorance. Henke sums it up nicely:
Democracy promotion is a good policy within certain limits. One of the more important limits, however, is that such efforts should be reasonably possible. Imagination is not a foreign policy.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Jun 20, 09:00:00 AM:
The challenge of Iran is quite different from the usual problem in the region. In confronting Iran, we are quite directly dealing with a state -- in that sense, it is much the same as a confrontation with any other state, and should be managed with all the tools of realpolitik. I'm not sure that the promotion of democracy is in and of itself useful in dealing with Iran (maybe it is, insofar as it could help subvert the regime, but that is different than the usual rationale).
The point of promoting democracy in most of the Arab and Muslim world is to set up a political philosophy that can compete with jihadism. That rationale does not apply in a direct confrontation with a state.
By cakreiz, at
Tue Jun 20, 09:16:00 AM:
I understand the theoretical counterpoint to jihadism, TH. I still maintain that there are realistic limits to promoting democracy in the region. The grand success of the Palestinian elections hardly bespeak of the transformational power of democracy.
By cakreiz, at
Tue Jun 20, 10:28:00 AM:
Sirius, I hope you're right but I remain skeptical. The Islamic impulse- with its emphasis on submission, conformity and close-mindedness- has enormous cultural persistence. I suppose it could be argued that Japan was much the same way in 1945- but they were a completed defeated victim.
By cakreiz, at
Tue Jun 20, 10:29:00 AM:
completed defeated enemy, not victim.
