the gold standard
By Jacob Goldberg

between democracy and terrorism

Since its accession to power in 2001, the Bush administration has advanced a central theme: the export of democracy into autocratic countries with a long history of tyrannical rule.

Washington has been repeatedly warned that a premature export of Western concepts (democracy) could lead to negative consequences. For one, such efforts could overextend the American reach and end badly.

Past experience has shown that realization of democracy requires decades of preparation and long periods of “trials and errors,” and could not be achieved overnight.

A cursory glance at Middle East countries which went through democratic elections in the last decade (Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon), clearly shows that swift attempts to shift from tyranny to democracy either installed Islamist ideologues into power or enhanced their dominant position in their respective countries, thereby creating the basis for totalitarian ideology.

The notion that “democracy” will turn radicals into moderates and shift them from ideology to practical issues turned out to be wishful thinking.

Concurrently with its drive towards democratization, the Bush administration has been promoting another major theme since 9/11 – the need for a global fight against international terrorism.

It seems, however, that the US preferred to remain oblivious to the inherent conflict between the two central themes in its foreign policy – the desire to democratize Middle Eastern societies on the one hand and the commitment to confront (mostly Islamist) terrorism on the other. What if elections were held in a country and a radical group, with a terrorist wing, sought to run in the elections? Should the US support the democracy of its participation or fight its principles of terrorism? To which of the two themes should the US give priority – democracy or anti-terrorism?

Nowhere was this conflict more fateful than in the January 25th elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council. How could the US accept the participation in the elections of candidates of a movement – Hamas – categorized by Washington itself and US law, even by the European Union, as “a terrorist organization?” How could the Bush administration push the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to hold the elections on time and apply pressure on Israel to allow Hamas’s participation, despite the organization’s terrorist record and its refusal to disarm and abandon its platform of “destroying Israel?”

Does the US stand imply that in President Bush’s eyes “democratization” carries more weight than “the war against terrorism?” The answer is probably not. But it does point to a shortsightedness, one which created a novelty in the Middle East and in the Arab-Islamic world as a whole: an Islamist movement, with outright terrorism and the destruction of a neighboring state being its central goals, came to power through a seemingly democratic process.

It remains to be seen whether and how the US administration is going to tackle this dilemma. As of now, it does not seem yet that a soul-searching process has even started in Washington. However, foreign policy imperatives would force President Bush to deal with the practical repercussions of this ill-fated policy.

With a Hamas-led government in the PA and a new government in Israel, the Bush administration cannot simply reiterate its four-year old mantra of “the roadmap” being the only plan on the agenda.

There are strong indications that Hamas is unwilling to accept any of the three conditions cited by the US and the EU as prerequisites for being recognized as partner in the political process: disarming and abandoning terrorism, recognizing Israel, and adhering to all previous agreements and commitments of the PA. In the absence of a Palestinian partner, the new Israeli government, then, is likely to ignore, if not abandon altogether, the “roadmap” and pursue a unilateral initiative based on evacuating more settlements, this time in the heartland of the West Bank, and finishing the erection of the security barrier.

It is high time that the US “digests” the consequences of its ill-advised policy and devise a strategy that is in line with the new realities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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