More on Eric’s post below, case of Egypt
Kurt Bassuener October 3rd, 2008
Soon after Eric posted the link below to the excellent Joshua Kurlantzick article, “Monster’s Ball,” the two of us discussed some of the themes therein. The reliance on particular leaders seems a constant and repeated error throughout American statecraft, nearly always ending in tears.
One factor seems very clear to me - that the Bush administration was far more concerned with having talking points to buttress the assertion that “freedom (was) on the march,” even before his second inaugural address, than it was with the adherence to democratic principles. Furthermore, it conflates “democratic” with “pro-Western,” or “pro-American,” and these don’t always go hand in hand. And when a regime is undemocratic and aligned with the US, it’s a safe bet the population will rightly see the US as complicit in their oppression. The primary concern, despite all discussion of the paradigm shift away from backing “our SOBs” that came with Bush’s 2003 NED address, has been to have governments aligned with the US.
Post-Rose Revolutionary Georgia in particular came at an opportune time for the Bush administration, which was scrambling to find another rationale for the invasion of Iraq. So the Saakashvili administration and the Bush administration were in a symbiosis, with Washington not wanting to point to Georgia’s increasing bellicosity or democratic transgressions, both of which might have been reined-in with a bit of friendly pressure early on. The fact that they were not helped lead to the debacle of August’s “five day war” with Russia, which saw the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia leave Georgia’s orbit - even before the war legally Georgian territory but not under physical control - probably for good. But Bush was happy to adopt and keep Georgia as a poster child - never mind the more complicated reality. Georgia of course deserved support, but not uncritical support.
Yet the sorts of blatant hypocritical mistakes that gutted the credibility of the “freedom agenda” from the start were, as Kurlantzick notes, the relationships with such “friendly dictators” as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, recipient of $2 billion a year in guaranteed aid. That massive potential US leverage has never been employed to press Mubarak’s brutal and sclerotic regime to open up, and is the subject of a fascinating new book, Inside Egypt - The Land of the Pharoahs on the Brink of a Revolution, by John R. Bradley (recently banned in Egypt, natch).
Near the close of his angry book, Bradley cites the bizarre position of Egypt’s beleagured liberal democrats with a recounting of the experience of Hisham Kassem, winner of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award a year ago:
These conflicting goals (democracy and transparency along with stability) were captured in the rather bizarre experience of one Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian human rights activist who, in October 2007, was one of four international activists given the prestigious Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy. Kassem found the experience woefully depressing. “To see the president of the United States in person and his more or less lack of interest in what is happening politically in Egypt left me without any doubt that this whole [democracy] program was over,” he told Reuters after collecting his award. Kassem said that although the president asked about reformers in the ruling NDP (to which he replied “Sorry, there are no reformers in the NDP”), Bush was mainly interested in the position of Islamists in Egypt. Kassem made clear that the government had made it impossible for secular movements to operate, leaving the field open to the Islamists: “There is no alternative now for the people, given that that Islamists operate out of mosques while secular parties are not allowed to operate at all.” With the difficult economic situation, he added, “I am worried Egypt will become a theocracy by 2010.” Apparently that comment finally got Bush’s full attention, and he seemed rather perplexed that American policy was not working, noting: “We give your country $2 billion a year in order to keep it stable and prevent it from turning into a theocracy.” He looked, Kassem said, quite dismayed.
Some would argue Kassem did himself no favors in meeting with Bush and his top advisors. For the unfortunate reality is that the American push for democracy is now perceived as having been insincere at best, hypocritical at worst. Which is hardly surprising, when for the president the purpose of the payoff to Mubarak’s regime is stability rather than reform.
Bradley further quotes another Egyptian human rights activist, Ahmed Said al-Islam, as saying:
The war on terror is undermining democracy advocates and strengthening Arab dictatorships…The latter are using it to put off reforms and arguing that being pro-reform means siding with the enemies of the state.
American credibility in democracy promotion is so denuded after the Bush years that respected Carnegie Endowment scholar Tom Carothers says it needs to be ”decontaminated” to regain credibility in a new administration. Harsh words, but apropos, I believe.
The US, having beat the democracy drum so loudly, is front and center in being cited for hypocrisy, but sadly not alone. In the case of Egypt, French President Sarkozy asked Mubarak to co-chair the Mediterranean Union summit last summer - though it’s fair to note that none of the potential members from the southern littoral of the Mediterranean really fits the bill as a democracy. The larger point to be made is that the democratic world has no clear strategy to employ the leverage it has to promote its values. The US and EU remain divided on democracy support largely because the Bush administration has shot its credibility on the subject.
No matter what the result of the US presidential election, the bottom line is that the EU and the US have to collaborate in that endeavor if it is to bear fruit and help reverse authoriarian capitalism’s increasing appeal.
