Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • TUnisia
the powerless Baltic nations would become independent, democratic states,
just a year before it happened. If we bet on the stability of authoritarian
states, we will be right most of the time, but wrong at the crucial time.
History is made when the weather suddenly changes—by deviations
from the normal course of events. The challenge for American diplomacy is
not to wait for shifts in favor of human rights and democracy before scrambling
to appear to support them. It is not to wait until a dictator is halfway
out the door before you condemn his abuses, freeze his assets, and demand
free elections. It is to promote change in repressive states before it appears
inevitable. If you think there is only a 10 percent chance that Egypt’s post-
Mubarak transition will usher in a government that answers to its people,
or that in the next few years the Burmese military junta might compromise
with the democratic opposition, or that a popular movement might successfully
challenge political repression in Iran, then why not do what you
can to help raise the odds to 20 or 30 percent In foreign policy, as in baseball,
.300 is a Hall of Fame average.
Political realities mean that American diplomats will use a different tone
when confronting human rights abuses committed by a great power like
China than a small one like Ivory Coast. They will rightly follow different
strategies toward countries with strong democratic opposition movements,
like Burma, than toward those where civil society is atomized, as it is in
Turkmenistan. But where they are serious about promoting human rights
and democracy, they can afford to be bolder, sooner, than they usually are.
American diplomats need not always relegate their honest impressions to
the confessional of a secret cable.
America’s relationship with China did not crumble when Clinton challenged
its government to stop censoring the Internet last year, or when she
challenged the country to account for the dissidents it has disappeared over
the years just days before last week’s summit between Presidents Barack
Obama and Hu Jintao. America’s Arab friends did not walk away from their
alliances with the United States after Clinton told them, at a recent public
forum in Qatar, that “people have grown tired of [their] corrupt institutions
and stagnant political order.” Such public candor not only encourages dissidents
in repressive societies, but stimulates debate among elites, who often
privately admit that the Americans have a point. It can contribute to those
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