An American Response to the Arab Spring

This article is the second and final installment in a series on the Arab Spring. Read the first installment, The “Arab Spring” Arrives in Syria” by Etan Schwartz here. Few analysts could have predicted the event that sparked widespread revolution across the Arab world. It all began last December when a few hundred protestors gathered outside the regional government headquarters in Sidi Bouzid to protest the treatment of Tunisian vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Following this, the Egyptian people rose up to successfully end the thirty year reign of Hosni Mubarak. Protests have now spread to Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. It is apparent that the revolutions dubbed the “Arab Spring” do indeed have far-reaching implications that present significant opportunities and challenges for the United States.Until now, U.S. diplomatic policy in the Middle East has been based on the notion that supporting autocratic rulers who were willing to guarantee U.S. interests and stability was a necessary evil, since promoting democracy in the region would empower political actors with an Islamist agenda. The war in Iraq made many Americans think twice before attempting to democratize societies held together by the firm hand of a dictator.The Arab Spring has now upended the assumption that dictatorships guarantee stability. On the contrary, America’s support for secular dictators may have empowered Islamists more than any form of democracy promotion. Al Qaeda drew much of its propaganda from American support of unpopular autocrats such as Mubarak.A new political reality in the Middle East demands a new American approach. However, for the various countries currently experiencing upheaval, a simple call for rulers to abdicate will not suffice. America must promote the idea that stability should be linked to the legitimacy of a government rather than the degree of its repressiveness. At the same time, it is also imperative that the U.S. approach the democratization of the various Middle Eastern countries with caution, lest the instability that the U.S. is so justifiably concerned with overshadows the positive potential of the Arab Spring.Political scientist and President of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer has developed a model that helps to account for the instability that previously closed states experience as they democratize. Using a graph with a horizontal axis labeled “openness” and a vertical axis labeled “stability”, Bremmer draws a J curve to illustrate that repressive but relatively stable countries (represented by the lower-curl lip of the J curve) experience a period of instability (the trough of the J) before they are able to rise up to the far-side of stability-openness function.The stability of the states on the left side of the J curve frequently depends on individual leaders while the stability of states on the right side of the J curve depends on institutions. As strong rulers are deposed, the state must go through a dangerous period where neither institutions nor rulers are able to guarantee stability – hence the dip in the vertical stability axis. As Bremmer points out, some states like South Africa survive the transition to democracy while others, such as Yugoslavia, do not. Additionally, economic and social shocks such as a famine, natural disasters, or rioting, can push the entire J curve lower, resulting in greater instability for every degree of openness.The strategic importance of the Middle East means that the U.S. must create conditions that would push the J curve higher so that a closed regime can safely pass through the least stable segment of the curve. The U.S. has already recognized that it cannot instinctively support immediate democratic elections in what are now closed authoritarian countries for fear of creating instability so great that it leads to widespread chaos and even the total dissolution of the state (as was a feared possibility during the civil strife in Iraq). At the same time, the U.S. period of instinctively supporting autocrats as long as they guaranteed stability has ended. Such an approach has never been ethical and in any case, the autocrats are no longer able to provide the stability that they previously used to justify their rule.The United States should therefore encourage Arab rulers in the rest of the states currently facing protests to cancel emergency laws that have allowed security forces to tyrannize citizens with impunity; to weed out corruption that stifles economic growth; and to give more power to representative legislative bodies. The U.S. should also promote initiatives such as the ones that are currently undertaken by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. These include civic advocacy education along with budget oversight, government monitoring and political party development.At the same time, the U.S. should offer moral support to the protestors by making clear that regimes which respond to legitimate protests with violence will be faced with sanctions and other penalties. In this way, rulers will be given a choice between ushering in a long period of civil strife, à la Libya, and navigating their governments along the precarious path to democratic reform, building increased legitimacy among their citizens along the way. Such an approach would slowly move the Middle East towards representative government in the least disruptive way possible while finally increasing U.S. credibility in the eyes of the Arab public. This image is being used under Creative Commons licensing. The original source can be found here.