The Week in Pre and Re-view: Revolution in Egypt and Beyond

I had the good fortune of being an eye witness to one of the major changes in the geopolitical world of my life time.  I observed the Soviet Empire collapsing, chronicled it at the front lines, even before many saw the collapse coming.  I don’t have such a privileged seat as we observe the transformations of in Egypt and Tunisia, but my intuition tells me that these may be every bit as significant as the ones I saw in their infancy thirty years ago.  We can’t be sure that the changes begun this past month will reach a fully successful conclusion: fully? probably not.  But there is no doubt that the world has changed, not only there, but also here.

A big change: the idea of the clash of civilizations has been defeated.  It turns out, and should be clear to all, that Muslims are quite capable of initiating a genuine democratic movement.  It may or may not prevail, but it is certainly an important strain in Egyptian and Tunisian political culture.

Another big change: I suspect that the commitment to democracy is now “in,” more appealing than radical jihad, even for the disaffected in the Muslim world.  How long this lasts and with what effect will depend on the continuing success of the transformation begun last month.  I believe this is the first major victory in the so called “war on terrorism.”

A little change, close to home: in everyday life, Islamophobia may be in retreat.  After seeing the images from Cairo, why should Juan Williams wonder about that person in Muslim garb on an airplane?  It may never have been particularly rational, but especially not now.  There are crazy people of all sorts of cultural and religious persuasions, and also admirable ones.  Now the admirable of the Arab and Muslim world are front stage.  Now they are most visible.  Only the most close-minded will refuse to see them, i.e. over at Fox, Glenn Beck but, I suspect, not Juan Williams.

And now the “only democracy in the Middle East” seems to be most openly uncomfortable about democratic developments in Egypt and among its neighbors.  Better the autocrat you know, than the democrat you don’t know, seems to be the operative insight animating Israeli official reaction to recent events.  The striking limitations in Israeli democratic practice are also now strikingly apparent, as will be explored by Nahed Habiballah in her post tomorrow.

Indeed, this is not to say that everything and everyone is or should be happy.  Such expectations of revolutionary change are naïve, even dangerous.  The contradictions in American foreign policy, our professed commitment to democracy, and our pursuit of good relations with our “moderate” autocratic allies, are now clearly revealed and present pressing problems.  I have some expectations that this may be resolved in Jordon with the formation of a genuine constitutional monarchy a la Britain. Perhaps we will even see an interesting movie in the not to distance future about the King’s speech and the President’s speech there, and discuss it at DC. But such will not be the case in Saudi Arabia.  If there are negative consequences of these contradictions for American interest, we may be hearing the nationalistic question – who lost Egypt?  – echoing the old who lost China debate.  This will be explored by Gary Alan Fine in an upcoming post.

I think the discussion that we have had about the events in Egypt this past week illuminated the events as they were happening and provide insights for understanding what is yet to come.  Hazem Kandil concern about the need for the democratic movement to develop alternative grounds for political action is even more pressing this week, than it was last.  Thus far there has been a military coup against a dictatorial regime.  Those in control right now include principally those who benefited from the old order.  It is imperative that the forces in the society that opposed that order get their act together.

There is a clear analogy to be drawn to the changes of ’89.  There is a danger that those who can say “no,” but little else, will be overwhelmed by those who positively assert a new authoritarian order, as I have shown happened in Romania in 1989.  I am not sure that the alternatives are as stark as Daniel Dayan fears, military dictatorship or religious integralism.  But there clearly is a need for people who want alternatives to these stark alternatives to speak to each other and develop a capacity to act in concert, as Hannah Arendt would put it, beyond protesting against.  They must develop programs, policies, and parties, and a way to discuss their competing visions.  They must present alternatives to what Dayan calls “fear mongers “and “sleepwalkers.”

I was talking to Elzbieta Matynia about her post through Skype on Friday, just as Mubarak’s resignation was announced.  I thought that her post was too long.  We were discussing how I might edit it, so that it appeared in two installments.  But at that revolutionary moment, I decided not to cut her piece in two, because of the importance of what she had to say and my sense that it should be said as quickly and coherently as possible.  She put forward a key way that the sorts of problems that Dayan and Kandil anticipate have been avoided in transformations from dictatorship to democracy in the recent past.  Opposing parties and interest groups have to work together on the transformation, and the roundtable with its public etiquette, is an invention that has facilitated this.  I hope the Egyptian generals and oppositionists keep such experience in mind.

And as I am posting this, the revolution is spreading, confirming my conviction that 2011 may very well be as significant as 1989.  The headline in The New York Times is “Unrest Spreads in the Middle East” at this moment, with reports from Iran, Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt.

A specter is haunting the Middle East and it is up to the people of the Middle East to decide what this specter is all about – my point in my appraisal of President Obama’s performance thus far in these revolutionary times.