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The Arab Backlash

(Washington Post) Editorial - The administration's new democracy initiative for the "greater Middle East" is prompting an animated discussion. Entrenched Arab autocrats, such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Syria's Bashar Assad, have tried to stop the initiative by denouncing it as an outside imposition or by claiming that no liberalization is possible before a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - which, they insist, can occur only by outside imposition. Such decades-old rhetoric is as empty and exhausted as the nationalism and socialism on which the Egyptian and Syrian regimes are based. Yet it has been swallowed and retailed at face value by some European diplomats and critics of the administration. Of course Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt under emergency law for 23 years, is opposed to the democratization policy - and would be regardless of how it was put forward, or whether or not peace had arrived between Arabs and Israelis. Unless change is encouraged by the U.S. and Europe, it will be blocked indefinitely by the strongmen, most of whom depend on Western aid and alliances. Until the administration is prepared to use its considerable leverage with allies such as Mubarak to promote political freedom, as opposed to stability, its democracy initiative will lack credibility.
2004-03-10 00:00:00
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