Democracy for Muslims?

Just  a year and a half ago  mobs were raging through Tehran demanding  the ouster of  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had  claimed re-election  after a dubious vote-count.  Today  mobs are fighting in Cairo  over whether  President Hosni Mubarak should resign.  Mobs in Tunisia  have already ousted  the dictator there, and  unrest threatens  other Arab countries.

The American response to all these upheavals has been consistent:  allow peaceful demonstrations,  avoid violence, exercise restraint and  move toward real democracy.   Until  President George W Bush started urging democracy on Arab  countries, the American  policy was simply to deal with whoever held power and not meddle in internal affairs.

But  we face  a clash between American interests and American values.  Except for Iran,  the regimes threatened by the massive protests have been friendly to the United States.   Egypt, which had been aligned with the Soviet Union from about  1955 through 1973,  switched to the American side after US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a separation of forces deal with Israel after the Yom Kippur War that saved an Egyptian army division.  As the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel,  Egypt has been a valuable ally in keeping  the Middle East  from exploding for nearly forty years.

But Egypt was never a democracy.  The Free Officers Association, which overthrew King Farouk, established military rule, first under Gamal Abdel Nasser, then under Anwar Sadat and now under Hosni Mubarak.   Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and executed its founder, but the group survives to this day and has inspired Hamas and Al Qaida.   Polls  and results of legislative elections  indicate that  radical Islam has mass support in Egypt, and if the military would surrender power,  the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps other Islamist forces would be major players in national politics.  This could mean the end of the peace treaty with Israel, more arms for Hamas, perhaps even  war.

So we Americans are on the horns of a cruel dilemma:  our values  favor democracy for Egypt and all other countries, but  our interests favor  backing the authoritarian regimes friendly to us  and not too hostile to Israel.   The Shah of Iran  said  that under similar circumstances  "The Americans threw me out like a dead mouse."  (1)

We  Americans must first recognize that  we  cannot impose a government  on  any country against the will of its people.  Under President Bush we  were able to depose Sadam Hussein and conduct elections, but  the winners were not the Iraqis that the Bush Administration had supported.  Similarly, we  deposed  the Taliban in Afghanistan, but are still fighting them today, almost   ten years later.   We can provide arms  and military intelligence  to friendly governments, but   the Islamic Revolution in Iran showed that  these may not be enough to  keep power.

But we are also not obligated to throw  Mubarak (or anyone else)  out  "like a dead mouse."   If that is how we treat our friends, we will not have many friends, nor will we deserve many.  The US did not  "lose"  China, Cuba or Iran and we are not responsible for  "losing Egypt" now;  these countries never were ours to lose.  The more we try to influence events, the more we are blamed for how things turn out----which is often badly.  Just look at  Gaza,  where American-inspired fair elections resulted in a Hamas victory, later implemented by force.

So we must  tread a fine line between advocating human rights for all and unwelcome meddling.   Stability that rests on  raw power is inherently unstable, while stability that rests on democracy  (such as in Israel, Europe and most of Latin America) is  durable.  Of course  we should  advocate democracy, but recognize that  it must arise from the will of the people, and  their  will is often very different from our own.
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(1)   My Turn to Speak by Abol Hassan  Bani-Sadr, MacMillan, 1991.

Tehran: The New Cairo?

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
French Proverb

The President of a Middle East country threatens to destroy Israel. He is supplied with weapons, diplomatic support and electricity-generating equipment by the Russians.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007?
Why not Gamal Abdul Nasser in 1967?

The Moscow-Cairo Axis
Although Nasser portrayed himself as a Third World leader, in fact he had aligned Egypt with the Soviet Union in 1955. Emboldened by Soviet support, Nasser seized the Suez Canal in June, 1956. When British and French armed forces (in alliance with Israel) reclaimed the Canal Zone four months later, combined pressure from the Soviet Union and the United States (1) made the three invaders retreat.
A recent book (Foxbats Over Dimona) claims that the Soviet KGB deliberately provoked the 1967 Six Day War to provide a pretext for destroying the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona. When Israel quickly demolished the Arab armies, that plan was abandoned. By clearly siding with the Arabs, the Soviet Union secured substantial goodwill among the Arab masses, although most Arab governments remained closer to the United States. Without American support, however, the Soviets were powerless this time to force an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.
The Soviets re-armed the Egyptians and Syrians over the next six years, so that the two countries resumed hostilities on October 6, 1973. After initial victories, the Egyptians were thrown back almost to Cairo by the IDF. The efforts by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saved an Egyptian army from starvation by brokering a separation of forces agreement. This was a turning-point in Egypt's geopolitical alignment----within a few years Soviet advisors were ousted from Cairo and the US brokered a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Iran Changes Sides
Iran, under the leadership of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was aligned with the West during the Cold War. The US was even able to monitor Soviet communications from a base in northern Iran.
When massive protests against the Shah erupted in 1978, the Communist Party supported the rebellion, even though it was led by fanatic Muslims whose ideology was remote from Marxism. Presumably, the Communists were motivated by the desire of the Soviet Union to overthrow the Shah and eliminate American power and influence from a country on its southern border.
After the Islamic Revolution, the Communists were suppressed by the new regime, along with all other non-Islamic political forces. The Soviets, however, got exactly what they wanted----an anti-American Iran.
The Soviet move into Afghanistan in 1980 largely forfeited whatever goodwill the Soviet Union had obtained among Muslims by backing the Arab cause against Israel. But meanwhile, Iran had traded places with Egypt in the geopolitical power equation in the final decade of the Cold War.

The Moscow-Tehran Axis
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed solidarity with Iran in a visit to Tehran for a Caspian Sea Conference during the second week of October. He warned other nations (like maybe the US?) not to use military force against Iran. He stopped short, however, of equating an attack on Iran with one on Russia itself .(2) A few days later, Putin met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

What kind of game is Putin playing?

By defending Iran, both in Tehran and at the UN, Russia is showing the world that it is not an American client-state, like, say Britain. Though only a shadow of the now-defunct Soviet Union, Russia is a major power to be reckoned with.

As a major oil-exporting nation, it is in Russia's interest to keep world oil-prices as high as possible; Iran shares that interest. Since tension and the prospects of war in the Middle East drive-up oil prices, Russia finds it useful to keep tensions high by emboldening rogue states like Iran. (3)

The trouble is that if this policy is pushed too far (as it was in 1967), a war could break out that would be dangerous for Russia as well as for other countries in that part of the world. Putin's Tehran remarks were clearly intended to dampen the enthusiasm of those in the US government who favor bombing Iran if other measures to prevent the development of nuclear weaons fail.

Putin's talks with Ahmadinejad and Olmert were private, so we cannot know what he told them, but I believe that his message to both leaders was essentially to "cool it."

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(1)President Eisenhower, like Presidents Roosevelt and Truman before him, opposed the re-assertion of colonial power in the "Third World." The Israel Lobby was not yet strong enough to restrain American pressure on Israel to withdraw from Sinai without a peace treaty.

(2) In October, 1962, President John F Kennedy declared that an attack on any nation in theWestern Hemisphere launched from Cuba would be considered an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and would be avenged as such.

(3) The theory of chess grandmaster Garry Kasporov, a candidate for President of Russia.