The Arab Spring: Ideals, Stability, and Security Issues

With the first free and fair(ish) democratic elections taking place in Egypt, the United States must once again evaluate its strategic interests with this and other states in the region.  As has been the case for decades now, we find ourselves struggling to balance our democracy-promoting idealism with the take-it-as-we-find-it realpolitik of working with dictators and other dubious allies.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, the runoff in the Egyptian presidential elections will feature Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s champion, Mohammed Mursi.  People argue that Shafiq is no fan of the revolution; indeed, he refers to Mubarak as his idol and promises to clamp down on dissent with an “iron fist.”  Mursi, meanwhile, hails from a party that promises greater influence of Islam in Egyptian law and affairs.  Many Egyptians see no good choice at all and, indeed, analysts expect voter turnout to be low.

Just glancing at another Arab Spring country, one can see continued turmoil in Yemen.  Yemen held elections a few months ago, though the fact that there was one candidate (Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi, who had been acting president after Saleh stepped down) made the use of the word “election” questionable.  Still, the situation in Yemen makes one question what U.S. priorities should be: do we push for Hadi to keep his promises and move toward free and fair elections, or do we focus on the burgeoning problem of Yemen becoming a major breeding ground for terrorism and the fact that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is now considered by many the “most active and lethal Qaeda affiliate”?  One might argue that the two options are not mutually exclusive, and hopefully they can co-exist.  However, our prior support for dictators like Mubarak and Saleh (and Qaddafi) makes the U.S. uniquely ill-positioned to be a champion of the Arab Spring – an irony when one takes into account our unique status as the largest democracy in the world with the oldest written constitution.

People sometimes call democracies “natural allies” and argue that democracies don’t go to war with each other.  If so, it follows that the U.S. should promote free elections and democracy everywhere.  On the other hand, one consequence of democracy is that we might not always like how elections turn out (see Palestinian elections in 2006).  For many reasons, Hamas winning elections was not something the U.S. had hoped for.  Still, the very fact that Hamas was able to win elections should have sent some signals to the world community – Palestinians were unhappy with the PA, with their lot in life, and with a multitude of other things that Hamas was able to exploit.  Hamas is a terrorist organization that needs to fundamentally change before it can be an acceptable partner in negotiations on a two-state solution.  While one part of me wants to argue that Hamas is too rotten to its core to ever be a legitimate political partner in negotiations, history reminds us that the Palestinian Authority itself was once a terrorist organization.  This isn’t to say that “terrorism works.”  To the contrary, I think that history has shown that terrorist organizations can sometimes evolve into political organizations (Sinn Fein and the Palestinian Authority immediately come to mind, though I know there are others).

This brings us back to the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt.  Although the Muslim Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization, it is an Islamist political party.  This in and of itself has made many Westerners uncomfortable.  Western countries are unsure whether the Muslim Brotherhood would, for example, continue to let Egypt be the state in the Middle East that helps maintain the regional peace with Israel.  Would the Muslim Brotherhood take a more anti-Israeli stance that could threaten the always-tenuous regional stability?  For that matter, is the alternative – which may well include a violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations – a better option?

While laudable, democracy can often be messy.  Right now, many people look at Egypt’s upcoming elections and see two bad choices.  Many people look at U.S. presidential elections, however, and often see the same thing.  We in America are often told that we are “throwing away” our vote if we don’t vote for one of the two major political party candidates, even if we don’t truly support either of them (one of the problems with not having a runoff system).  Egypt’s experiment with democracy will undoubtedly face many obstacles, but the very fact that it’s having these elections is something to celebrate.

The hope, ultimately, is that the U.S. can have good relations with democratic states in the Middle East, and that those states can be allies in the war on terror.  We tried our hand with dictatorial allies – from Musharraf to Mubarak to Saleh to Qaddafi – because we needed allies to fight terrorism.  We’ve been making the same compromises for decades, however, supporting several dictatorships in the Cold War when they professed to be anti-Communist.  I’m not saying the choices we made were wrong.  I’m just pointing out that supporting dictatorships comes with a cost – aside from exposing ourselves to claims of hypocrisy, we run the risk of losing a potential alliance with a democratic government in the future.  Building a good relationship with a Muslim Brotherhood government, for example, would be complicated by both our prior support for Mubarak and the fact that many in the U.S. are skeptical of any Islamist government, democratic or not.  Would those same people prefer an Egyptian dictatorship?  Perhaps it will require the continued sale of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Egypt to smooth over any rough edges in such a relationship.  My personal hope is that, in Egypt and other countries where democratic elections might lead to results we might not find ideal, we can still develop positive relations and find common ground where our democratic principles align.