Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Democracy promotion has never been the United States’ strong suit in the Middle East. When the administration of President George W. Bush made democratization its formal policy in 2002, pundits labeled it “naive” and “unrealistic” given the Middle East’s purported authoritarian political culture rooted in “Islam,” “tribalism,” and an “Arab democracy deficit.”

Events soon seemed to prove the critics right. In 2003, the Bush administration’s promised rapid transition to democracy in Iraq failed to materialize. In 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. The Islamist movement Hamas then won the 2006 Palestinian elections. Democracy promotion fell by the wayside and the United States returned to its historical pattern of supporting autocratic regimes.

But as recent events have revealed, support for democracy runs deep in the Middle East, especially among the region’s youths – 100 million strong between the ages of 14 and 29. To measure this support, all we need to do is turn on our TV sets. In less than two months, the region’s youth, using non-violent means, have rid the Middle East of two of its most repressive autocrats.
The United States is at a crossroads. Will the Obama administration actively help the region’s new activists bring about a peaceful transition to democracy? Will it continue to pressure its Middle Eastern allies to implement meaningful democratic reforms?  Or will the U.S. allow a historically transformative period to pass it by?
During my 40 years of research in the Middle East, those from the region have constantly complained to me that the United States practices democracy at home but supports authoritarianism in their countries. Now this long-term discontent is challenging many of the regimes in the region, and the chickens are coming home to roost.

Support for authoritarianism has not produced long-term regional stability, but political upheaval and hostility against the United States instead. Washington’s onetime ally Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran was toppled in 1979 by an upheaval that created the most dangerous regime in the Middle East. Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, whose role was to protect U.S. interests from Al-Qaeda in North Africa, was forced to flee his country last month. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, a guarantor of the 1979 Arab-Israeli peace treaty – but who suppressed dissent, imprisoned critics, and countenanced widespread torture – was, likewise, forced out of office last week.

 
Large protests have placed other autocratic allies, notably King Abdullah II of Jordan, who recently dissolved his government, and the perennial Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has vowed not to seek another term, on shaky political ground. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has promised not to seek a new term in office in 2014 and has cut his salary in half. This came after demonstrations broke out protesting his efforts to curtail democratic freedoms and his tolerance of massive government corruption.

Despite the current mass demonstrations, many Western analysts continue to decry democratic change. Radical Islamists will take power, scuttle the Arab-Israeli peace treaty, and promote regional instability, they warn. But the main driver behind the calls for democracy is not the older generation of Islamists, but rather youths – often well-educated youths – who lack jobs, the ability to voice discontent, and any hope for the future. They are less concerned with religion than with employment, raising a family, and leading a stable life. In the age of the Internet and social media, these youths can compare the freedoms they lack with those their counterparts enjoy elsewhere in the world.

As my research with Iraqi youths over the last two years has made clear to me, most of them abhor religious radicalism because they know it results in intolerance, violence, and new forms of political and cultural repression. Those youths who do turn to religion increasingly are searching for a tolerant Islam that promotes personal freedom and is compatible with democratic practices.

Above all, youths in Iraq and elsewhere realize that they can achieve a better life only by ridding their countries of the rapacious ruling elites that have institutionalized corruption and nepotism and are unconcerned with the problems of the citizenry at large.

Although the United States does not control events, it maintains enormous political and economic influence in the Middle East. Strong support for democracy will also enhance its moral standing. The U.S. needs to curtail military and financial assistance it and its global partners give to authoritarian regimes, criticize allies that engage in political repression, mobilize international aid for local civil society groups, and consistently voice support for the new democracy movements. Such sustained pressure would at the very least temper the behavior of Middle Eastern autocrats, especially those who seek closer ties with the U.S. These policies could also win the gratitude of the large youth demographic, from which will emerge the next generation of leaders.

Surely making democracy promotion the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the Middle East is not too much to ask of a country that still claims leadership of the free world.

Eric Davis, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, is author of theforthcoming “Taking Democracy Seriously in the Middle East,” Cambridge University Press. He blogs at www.newmiddleeast.blogspot.com. A version of this commentary first appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and is published by permission from the author.