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foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • barack obama Returning Freedom to the Agenda By Elliott Abrams It’s time to bury the unreal, failed “realism” of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability. What we have seen is that the stability they bring—for years or even decades—carries with it a curse. For when they go, they leave behind a civic culture that has been drastically weakened and moderate parties that are disorganized, impoverished, and without recognizable leaders. For 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak told us to stick with him, or the opposition Muslim Brotherhood would grow stronger. Well, we stuck with him—and the Muslim Brotherhood grew stronger. As he crushed the political center and left, the Brotherhood became the main forum for opposition to his regime. Of course it doesn’t have to be this way, in theory: Dictators can theoretically oversee a slow but steady expansion of political space and leave behind a stable democracy. But they don’t. Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them. This crisis should also have put paid to another shibboleth: that everything in the region revolves around the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. What we are witnessing from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen and beyond has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians. Nor would resolving that conflict have satisfied those who have demonstrated against Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali or Mubarak or Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, for protesters’ demands were focused on their own countries. 188
foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • barack obama U.S. policy should move toward backing freedom, using the full force of American influence against regimes like those in Syria and Iran, and assisting in every practical way possible the efforts in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere, to build democratic parties, protect human rights, and move toward stable democratic politics. Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former deputy national security advisor for the Middle East under President George W. Bush. 189
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