Like most everyone else, I'm pleasantly surprised by Hosni Mubarak's speech calling for multiparty Presidential elections. It's great news, and a welcome positive development in Egypt.
It doesn't in and of itself amount to much, though. Whether it is a cosmetic reform aimed at deflecting American and popular pressure or a first step towards genuine reform depends on what happens next. Does Mubarak begin to ease the repression of the media, the professional associations, political parties, and civil society which has characterized Egyptian politics in recent years? Because without real liberalization, an election won't mean much - just look at Tunisia, for one of countless Arab examples of elections which don't really involve democracy. What are the conditions for who is allowed to stand for election? Most important, will the Muslim Brotherhood in some form be allowed to field a candidate? So a welcome first step, but only a first step.
What does this mean for American foreign policy? I've been mulling over a basketball analogy for Bush's foreign policy. The US is basically a very strong team, with great players and an appealing style. In the first half (Bush's first term), due to astonishingly atrocious coaching and poor execution, the team dug itself into a big hole and went into halftime trailing big. Now, the US has come out in the second half and is playing a bit better - executing more crisply, running basic plays, and is starting to score some points. It's still in a big hole, but a few minutes into the second half its fans are starting to get excited, while the other side is starting to get restive. As anyone who's ever seen this kind of game knows, things could break in a couple of ways at this point: the other team could begin to feel the pressure, the US could gather real momentum, and the big deficit could fade away so that by the ten minute mark (I'm thinking college ball here) it could be anyone's game; or the other team could buckle down, slow the game down, absorb this first flurry and then grind out a victory over its more talented rival. Which way will it break? Too soon to tell. But Egypt and the other Arab dictators are old hands at playing tough, physical defense and frustrating more talented rivals. Is Mubarak's multiparty gambit another basket for the Americans... or a tough defensive gambit which will ultimately bog the Americans down and let the old professionals survive and advance?
And with that... my basketball analogy has run its course.
(lthough doesn't Hosni Mubarak even look a little like Bill Laimbeer in a certain light?)
UPDATE: I like this analogy for internal American debates about foreign policy and the Middle East, but I really dislike it for one big reason: it accepts the frame that equates Bush with Arab reform. That doesn't work, really. The essence of my critique, and many other peoples' critiques, has always been that we don't think that Bush is serious about Arab reform, that he doesn't really want Arab democracy, and that his means of achieving such Arab reform and democracy are misguided and counterproductive. Many Arabs - the dominant trends in public opinion including what you could call the al Jazeera trend - want Arab reform and democracy for their own reasons which have nothing to do with American foreign policy objectives, and their hopes for Arab democracy don't mean support for American policy on, say, Iraq or Palestine. Hazem Saghiye, in the Daily Star piece noted in comments below, captures this position well: some things are good even if America says them. So that's what I don't like about my own analogy here: equating *Arab* reform efforts and successes with *Bush* successes misses this vital point. That frame should be resisted, not encouraged as I've unthinkingly done here!
"Many Arabs ... want Arab reform and democracy for their own reasons which have nothing to do with American foreign policy objectives, and their hopes for Arab democracy don't mean support for American policy on, say, Iraq or Palestine."
Great. Fine. I'd take an Arab democracy that doesn't support American policy on Palestine over a dictatorship any day. The point is a democracy is a democracy and whatever disagreements we might have with it it's still a damn sight better than a dictatorship for all concerned. What is so hard to understand about that?
We have plenty of disagreements with other democracies but we know we can discuss those disagreements, we know they are very unlikely to lead to war, and we know that policies can and will be modified over the course of time to reflect the changing will of the people. Again I'd take that over a dictator who might be in place for 30 more years and pursuing the same disastrous policies regardless of the will of his people. The outcome of that system we've seen all too often over the years. If North Korea had a democracy, any kind of democracy, you can bet their country wouldn't be starving its people to build nuclear weapons.
Posted by: kcom | February 27, 2005 at 07:49 PM
Right, then, we agree. I want the US to do what it can to promote democratic reform in Egypt, and it sounds like that's what you want too.
Posted by: the aardvark | February 28, 2005 at 02:24 PM