Paradoxes

 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

It has been more than two months since the death of Mohamed Bouazizi and the start of the popular uprisings against home grown dictators all over the Middle East. The toppling of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes should certainly be greeted with elation as it yet again opens up a fissure for real democracy for the Arab states since the end of European colonisation. However, there are some who watch warily as their allies are being overwhelmed by their rebellious subjects one after another.

 

Amidst the trepidations in Washington and no less so in Israel towards these unforeseen developments, there are two important observations that can be made:

Paradox of Security

Successive American administrations after the Second World War have chosen to pursue national security by propping up autocratic regimes in states considered to be strategic in the fight against the Soviet Union. This approach had backfired disastrously in some cases, such as in Vietnam, but in view of the fact that the Cold War did end with the U.S. prevailing over the U.S.S.R., most people would be hard-pressed to say that this policy has failed entirely. The problem is that after the Cold War, while countries like the Republic of Korea and Japan have transformed into maturing democracies with American assistance, Arab states still remain languishing under ruthless dictatorships backed by Washington. The sinister assumption underlying the continuous application of this policy by the U.S. seems to be that the Arabs are unfit for democracy by their very nature hence American interests can only be maintained where they reside through their suppression.

 

The paradox resulting from this Weltanschauung lies in the short-term attainment of security in oil supply and for Israel has spawned the long-term threat of extremism and radical Islamism. More importantly, Washington’s support for dictators who spurn democratisation and improvement of human rights for their own people has inevitably propelled the belief that democracy will never take root in the Middle East into becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The toxic environment in domestic U.S. politics post-global financial crisis has unfortunately exacerbated this type of short-sightedness since Democrats and Republicans alike are now more than ever eager to make electoral gains through divisive rhetoric and quick fixes.

Paradox of History

The more we learn about people the more we realise that people never learn. The 1979 Revolution in Iran forced the Washington-backed Shah to abdicate and fled the country. Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. at the time had wanted a piece of Iran for similar reasons, the former oil reserves and the latter continuous access to what comes out of those reserves. One would surely have to be surprised if the causes of the widespread discontentment that led to the Revolution were seriously deliberated in the inner circle of the Reagan administration because in the end it became simply a matter of replacing one pro-U.S. puppet with another in the Persian Gulf, i.e. Muhammad Reza Pahlavi with Saddam Hussein. Even though the White Revolution can at best be described as well-intentioned, it was an imposition nonetheless rather the outcome of democratic processes. In terms of human suffering, it has not only increased after Saddam gained Washington’s backing but sharply so due to the ensuing Iran-Iraq War which the U.S. helped foment and intensify.

After 9-11, it has become clear that decades of Washington’s meddling in the Middle East helped produce a monster in Islamic extremism. Under the rule of Washington-backed despots, living conditions of the citizenry range from deplorable to intolerable with little hope for the future. Not without a sense of irony though, this in part explains why anti-West fear-mongering has worked so well for the likes of Mubarak, Gaddafi and Saleh in holding on to power and controlling their people. Viewing in this light, the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt represent a seismic change in the Arab general public’s epistemology towards the West as a symbol and as an idea. In other words, they finally understood the game and with that understanding are able to muster their collective will to seize control of their own collective destiny – the pro-democracy protestors have already scored a victory by demonstrating to the world that Egypt can stand together as one.