There’s not much more to say in a general sense about Michael Totten’s badly needed reality check differentiating liberal democracies — roughly, those that have robust democratic institutions that insulate themselves — from mere democratic spectacles. But it’s worth noting, as a way of beginning to evaluate how the Cairo riots will affect Near East diplomacy, just how much this fundamental point has been neglected in the specific context of Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
For Israel, the cold peace with Egypt and the intermittent peace with the Palestinian Authority have always been conducted against the backdrop of a see-no-evil approach to incitement. As long as Cairo and Ramallah cooperated with Jerusalem on security issues, Israeli and Western diplomats looked the other way as those regimes violated their Camp David and Oslo pledges to undertake normalization.
Put more bluntly: as long as Egypt and the Palestinian Authority helped stymie the terrorists of today, Israel and the West were content to let them go on creating the terrorists of tomorrow. Because at least those regimes were stable!
Those terrorists of tomorrow were made possible through geography textbooks that erased Israel, and through television programs that vilified Jews, and through official government propaganda that scapegoated the Jewish state for every imaginable social ill. As of this morning, the Mubarak regime is parading “protesters” in front of state-TV cameras to explain how they were trained by the Mossad to bring down the regime.
The result is that Egyptian and Palestinian civil society is a feverish cesspool of anti-Semitic conspiracism — recall the minor hysteria a few weeks ago over Zionist attack sharks — while Egyptians and Palestinians continue to very publicly indulge in fantasies of eradicating Israel itself.
These are the wages of making peace with governments while allowing normalization between societies to atrophy. Israel let its partners in peace purchase domestic tranquility by demonizing the Jewish state in terms that often crossed the line into outright bigotry, and so now that its partners in peace are collapsing — Cairo, Palileaks, etc. — we’re in a situation where serious people are talking about a return to cyclical nation-state war-fighting.
If a defensible land-for-peace framework returns — and that’s a real question — normalization will have to become more than a pro forma addendum to treaties. Above and beyond normalization being good in itself, an end to incitement will force regimes to undertake badly needed liberal reforms. If they don’t have the Jewish state to demonize for their problems, they might need to address those problems, and something approaching liberal democracy might begin to take shape.
But instead, our best foreign-policy minds are engaged in white-washing the Muslim Brotherhood into an organization with which we can do business. That’s not true and it’s never been true, but let’s pretend it is.
In that case, it would still be a disastrous decision, since it repeats the same stability-oriented mistakes of the old see-no-evil approach. Under autocracies, anti-Israel incitement suffocated liberal institutions indirectly, by channeling dissent into hatred of Israelis and Jews. A Muslim Brotherhood government would suffocate liberal institutions more directly, insofar as the party would make good on its promises to exclude gender and religious minorities from the highest echelons of Egyptian life.
If the instability in Egypt shows us that there’s a difference between democratic niceties and actual liberal democracy — and it does — then the question becomes one of how to create the conditions for liberal democracy. Viewed through that lens, there’s no real difference between engaging Mubarak and engaging the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are out to undermine the institutions and practices that are preconditions for genuine peace in the Middle East.
“That’s understandable for a nation that collapsed into pieces last decade after losing a multi-decade struggle to the West and its allies.”
Gordon, I would change the wording to “That’s understandable for an empire that collapsed into pieces last decade after it became bankrupt.” It’s less propagandistic this way. Besides, we’re having a bout with insolvency ourselves, maybe the competition between the US & the USSR was closer than we thought in 1989.
RCAR, thanks for the word change, which I like.
I don’t think we would be having today’s economic problems if the Cold War had not ended the way it did. The global downturn is largely a result of too much post-Cold War prosperity.
Gordon Chang Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 3:50 PM
” The global downturn is largely a result of too much post-Cold War prosperity”
Gordon, In its most simplified form, there are three parts to the economic crisis. (1)The creation of a Super Bubble due to the expansion of the World’s money supply from 1971 to 2007. (The post cold war prosperity was part of that Super bubble).(2) The derivatives were the financial weapons powerful enough to burst the Super Bubble. (3)The Sub-Prime collapse was the detonator for the derivatives to explode the Bubble.
Hope they don’t conduct the same poll in Germany. I shudder to see the results.
RCAR, thanks.
“Super Bubble” is a good description. And what happens when overly large bubbles burst? I think we can all figure this one out.
#3: It wd be very interesting to have wheelless define his “three parts” in the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Alexander Almasov Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:40 PM
#3: “It wd be very interesting to have wheelless define his “three parts” in the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Nothing more boring than bankruptcy,expenses>revenues. Hybris is,however,always fascinating to observe,except in our own selves.
Well, Gordon, this is an interesting reflection, especially coming in the wake of your musings on the work of Samuel Huntington. Some would take your statement that “the Russians obviously hold values we find abhorrent” to be an example of essentialism, the boiling down of a nation’s politics to a set of mental/psychological traits presumed to be deeply and eternally rooted. A notion that makes a hash of socio-political, economic, and cultural complexities.
I imagine one argument you’d make is that ancient cultural prejudices can be eroded, but not quickly and not easily. Meanwhile, they exercise an influence on a nation’s conduct other nations, especially those with liberal and democratic cultures, either can’t or don’t wish to recognize.
Now, with Russia, it does seem that there is a sizeable minority desirous of living in an open, democatic society, one that doesn’t long for a strong man. What can be done to bolster these kinds of Russians? After W.W. II, Japan and Germany certainly shed their attraction to authoritarian leaders very quickly. Of course, they were conquered and utterly humiliated.
It seems that while our influence is limited, we should certainly do nothing to help Putin glorify himself- in this regard, more Nato is better than less Nato.
Gordon, if I were you I wouldn’t take Russian Internet polls too seriously.
A couple of stories.
Last year the BBC asked Russians via the an Internet poll the following question, “Do you drink eau de cologne, anti-freeze, or detergents?” 90% of Russians answered, “Regularily.”
Another story. Few months ago, Putin decided to do an online conference. Internet users were called to submit questions and vote for favorite ones. The two top questions they selected were:
1. “Is Russia going to deploy huge combat android robots for protection of its borders?” and
2. “What do you think about the awakening of Cthulhu?”
By the way, here is a country where Stalin is genuinly popular:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world/europe/01stalin.html
Can’t argue with Nevsky, or Stolypin, they probably should be reversed in order; reading Soltzhenitsyn’s August 1914, convinced me of that. Had he not been killed by the SR, working who in turn was working with the Okhrana; there might have been some breathing room to forestall the Russian Revolution. Whatever did happen to the standing of Peter the Great.
Stuart Rose, the best we can do is try to engage those Russians who do not buy into the Stalin-was-great line pushed by Putin. I think it’s useless talking to the rest of the country.
And as you suggest, Nato still has an important purpose.
Al, yes, but a lot of Russians participated in the Rossiya poll, which appears to have been organized by the state. This was not some fringe operation influenced by lunatics.
Al, thanks for the link. This is explained by Stalin’s origin, no?
narciso, I was wondering about Peter the Great and other czars as I was writing this posting. I suppose we should rename him Peter the Not so Popular.