What a glorious week for the world.
Free and fair elections in Tunisia, Muammar el-Gadhafi’s demise. All the fomentation and death brought by the Arab Spring have produced two new states that stand as shining examples ― not just for the still-struggling people of Syria and Yemen, but also for China, Belarus, Cambodia, Zimbabwe and countless other unyielding authoritarian states.
“You have won your revolution,” President Obama proclaimed with a big smile just after Gadhafi’s death. And on Sunday nearly 90 percent of Tunisians voted, visibly proud to be leading the way for the Arab world. Heady stuff.
But now is also a time to regard these two states with circumspection. Recent history demonstrates that the road from exultant revolution to functioning democracy is littered with obstacles ― and not just for the reasons most people assume.
Yes, of course, there’s always the danger that a fundamentalist Islamic party will take advantage of uncertainty and disorder to seize power, as happened in Iran three decades ago. Tunisia’s Islamic Renaissance party won the most votes on Sunday, and its smiling leaders are offering flowery assurances that they will champion democracy and pluralism ― assertions that warrant cautious skepticism.
In any case, even if they’re telling the truth, consider how hard it is to turn an autocratic dictatorship into a free and open state. Recent examples make this plain. My favorite is Ukraine.
Not so long ago, back in the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush spent $58 million coaching Ukrainians to stage a peaceful uprising. Thousands of Ukrainians did stand up to their dictator and, in retrospect, those protests looked quite similar to the uprisings across the Arab world this year.
One U.S. government contractor, the Institute for Sustainable Communities, won an $11 million grant to help bring about “a fundamental cultural shift from a passive citizenry under an authoritarian regime to a thriving democracy with active citizen participation.” That’s how one of the group’s officers described it to me at the time. Doesn’t this sound just like the goals of the Arab Spring?
Well, just like in Libya and Tunisia, the demonstrators in Ukraine succeeded. They called it the Orange Revolution. President Viktor F. Yanukovych, Moscow’s man, was ousted from office. Opposition candidate Viktor A. Yushchenko, Washington’s man, moved into the presidential palace.
After the cheers faded and the balloons floated away, when Yushchenko looked out the palace window he saw a newly energized people. Their American coaches, as well as Western media, had showed them what was possible. They held sky-high-expectations ― just like Tunisia today. A poll this year showed more than 80 percent of Tunisians now expect dramatic improvements in their standard of living.
But the truth was, Ukraine had none of the instruments of a free state. No civil society, no groups like Freedom House, the Sierra Club, the Children’s Defense Fund ― no one whose job was to stand up and tell the new government what needed to be done.
Nor were there any government agencies whose officers had been concerned with anything other than keeping the dictator in power and stuffing their pockets full of cash, in part because Ukraine also lacked the most important element of a democratic state ― a free press.
Looking at Tunisia and Libya right now, are they any better equipped to host a democracy? Probably not, and in Ukraine that proved to be a fatal problem.
Yushchenko simply could not meet his people’s expectations. He had none of the tools. And after the Bush administration paid for the revolution, Washington largely dropped interest.
Soon enough, Yushchenko was voted out, and guess who is president of Ukraine right now: Yanukovych, the man thrown from office in the Orange Revolution, the man who just put his most important political opponent, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in jail for seven years on bogus charges.
Already, however, we can see one important difference between Ukraine and Libya, at least. Ukraine had a longtime jealous patron, Russia. But Libya had no friends, none at all. Remember, even the Arab League urged NATO to intervene.
Obama already appears to be using a smarter approach than Bush did. He seems to realize that America must remain engaged. A few days ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped by Tripoli for a visit with the new government.
Just as the West joined forces through NATO to bring down Gadhafi, Western leaders now must remain involved with both Libya and Tunisia. The benefits of successful outcomes are manifest, the risks from failure grave.
By Joel Brinkley
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.
(Tribune Media Services)
