The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center sponsored a lecture by Larry Diamond, professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University, on April 10 in the Chapel. Professor Diamond, who serves as co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and co-director of the National Endowment for Democracy's International Forum for Democratic Studies, spoke on the possibilities and challenges of democracy-building in the Middle East. This is a topic Diamond has first hand knowledge of, having been called in by the Bush administration in November 2003 to travel to Iraq and advise on democratization efforts there.
Diamond began his lecture by stating that in the democratization boom of the last three decades, wherein the number of democracies in the world tripled, there is only one region that has not followed the trend towards liberal democratic government: the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East has been trending downwards in Freedom House's annual ratings of political rights and civil liberties. Of the 19 states of the Middle East, Diamond said, there are only two that can be considered democracies – Turkey and Israel. Neither of these states are ethnically Arab, and Turkey, while a Muslim nation, has a long tradition of secularism. This leads to the popular questions: are Arab culture and Islamic religion hostile to democracy?
"We're in very deep trouble in the Middle East," Diamond said, noting that the title of his book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, accurately depicts his opinion of the situation. Today with the increasing sectarian violence in Iraq, he said, the US is in an even worse situation than it was when he wrote the book last year. Even if we can stabilize the country and end the violence now, he believes that the resulting government will be dominated by one abusive group or another. Throughout southern Iraq, fundamentalist Shiites are creating "mini-Taliban regimes" which are becoming the law of the land there, while the Sunni region has been described by the U.S. military as "critical" and "virtually lawless." The northern Kurdish region has relative stability, but now there is increased unrest there and resistance to the ruling parties.
The demonstration effects of establishing democracy in Iraq have influenced increased democracy in other states of the Middle East, but Diamond explained that this will not necessarily result in the creation of liberal democracies. In Egypt's first contested elections, for example, the one opposition party which gained any power was a fundamentalist Islamist party, and in Palestine, the Islamist terrorist group Hamas was elected. These outcomes have panicked proponents of liberal democracy both in the Middle East and throughout the world. It has also caused retrenchment among authoritarian Arab governments, who now have an excuse for maintaining their singular hold on power.
The question that arises then, Diamond said, is "Is it possible to democratize this last bastion of untempered authoritarianism in the world?" He noted his extreme moral distaste for and analytical disagreement with any theory that says that Islam is fundamentally an undemocratic religion. Yes, he said, the Qu'ran and Hadith have passages which are hostile to democracy when read literally, but so do the Jewish and Christian scriptures. For many years there was doubt that strongly Catholic societies could democratize, but that theory has been proven wrong. "All religions are complex bodies of belief that are open to many interpretations," Diamond said. A "reformation" of Islam could make it much more hospitable to democracy, and Diamond believes that there is such a process of change occurring today in places throughout the Muslim world.
If Islam is not the problem with democracy in the Middle East, then what is? Diamond noted that dependence on oil resources and foreign aid has made many Middle Eastern countries into rentier states which are not reliant on the support of their people. Many of the states have also protected their power by pointing to the plight of Palestinians and redirecting their citizens' anger against Israel. In any case, Diamond said, the US has given Middle Eastern states a free pass when it comes to authoritarian rule in the past, and we can no longer afford to do so. In this way, he said, he agrees with the Bush administration's "historic reorientation of U.S. foreign policy," in but believes that its implementation has been "uneven, contradictory, and ineffective."
Diamond offered some practical suggestions for the implementation of democracy promotion policy in the Middle East. If we do not proceed wisely in this area, he said, we risk replacing authoritarian states with equally reprehensible radical Islamist regimes. Therefore, the US must proceed "gradually and incrementally" to build a "third way." Early steps in democratizing these countries should focus less on immediate competitive elections and more on fostering liberal institutions, such as rule of law, an independent judiciary, separation of powers, and political and social pluralism. These institutions will constrain what later elected bodies can do and protect civil rights and liberties.
The war in Iraq was a "colossal mistake" which has only been compounded by further mistakes in the occupation, Diamond said. He hopes that the US will not replicate this policy in countries like Iran, but said that doing nothing to promote democracy in the Middle East is not the alternative. Instead, we need a new strategy that pursues democracy in the region.
Diamond's lecture was the last of the Levitt Center's 2005-2006 series on "The Responsibilities of a Superpower."
-- by Caroline Russell O'Shea '07
