Elliott Abrams, writing at the Council on Foreign Relations website, argues that America has an interest in supporting democracy in the Arab world. Here’s an excerpt:
U.S. support for democracy and human rights in the Arab world has varied over time, and presidential administrations have too often preferred dealing with autocrats to supporting their critics. President-Elect Donald J. Trump will soon face these choices, and his campaign rhetoric suggests that he may view support for democracy as a luxury the United States cannot afford when faced with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But Islamic extremism is an idea, and while it cannot be defeated without arms, it cannot be defeated by arms alone. A better idea, democracy, is a formidable and necessary weapon…. Polls in the “Arab Barometer” series, conducted by Arab and American scholars, found that 80 percent of respondents support the proposition, “A democratic system may have problems, yet it is better than other political systems.” U.S. support for repressive and illegitimate regimes therefore risks further alienating Arab populations, who may see the United States as indifferent or hostile to their desires for less corrupt and repressive governance. Moreover, Arab democrats are usually pro-Western and reliable allies for the United States when they enter political office. Washington always has difficulty sustaining close relationships with repressive regimes: objections from Congress and influential voices in American society grow louder as crackdowns grow harsher. Finally, such regimes are inherently unstable. As the collapse of Arab regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen demonstrated, governments that lack legitimacy are poor bets. Uncritical support for them is not a realistic policy. American policy should reflect the United States’ own political beliefs: the goal is not merely democracy in the narrow sense of winner-take-all elections. The U.S. Constitution instead establishes a system of institutional restrictions on government power that guarantees minority rights and the rule of law. Too often the United States has concentrated on pressing for elections without giving equal weight to the institutional and legal arrangements that protect political rights, especially for minorities and political groups that are out of power. This is not to argue against the centrality of elections, which are the only democratic way to determine who should govern, but to suggest that U.S. support for democracy should stress nonelectoral elements of democracy more often than has been the case. Given the role of law and justice in Muslim history and beliefs, for example, greater efforts to help write constitutions and legal codes, protect parties that lose elections, and maintain independent judicial systems may be more beneficial than election monitoring in many cases.
Read the whole piece here.
