[Mb-civic] In the Mideast, the Third Way Is a Myth - Shibley Telhami - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

In the Mideast, the Third Way Is a Myth

By Shibley Telhami
Friday, February 17, 2006; A19

The reality shown by Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections is 
this: If fully free elections were held today in the rest of the Arab 
world, Islamist parties would win in most states. Even with intensive 
international efforts to support "civil society" and nongovernmental 
organizations, elections in five years would probably yield the same 
results. The notion, popular in Washington over the past few years, that 
American programs and efforts can help build a third alternative to both 
current governments and Islamists is simply a delusion.

In Arab politics there are primarily two organized power groups: Islamic 
organizations, drawing their support from a disenfranchised public 
mobilized by the mosque, and governing elites. Sure, there are many 
other organizations, sometimes even ones whose aspirations match those 
of large segments of the public, but their chances will remain small. 
This we have ascribed to bad governments always forcing the choice 
between themselves on the one hand and the Islamists on the other.

But this is usually the outcome of normal politics, even in mature 
democracies. Most people around the world would be hard-pressed to see 
the U.S. political system as a multiparty one. Even in many 
parliamentary multiparty systems, politics evolves into competition 
between two dominant parties, making it extremely difficult for a third 
way to emerge. It is a remarkable leap of faith to expect that we can 
engineer a different outcome in the Middle East.

It isn't that democracy is not possible in the Arab world. In fact, the 
remarkable thing about the Palestinian elections was that they were free 
and highly contested under difficult circumstances. Over 20 percent of 
the candidates, including those of Hamas, were female. The ruling elites 
accepted defeat and stepped aside. In the limited parliamentary success 
in Egypt, government candidates lost in a majority of the districts 
contested by the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and the results 
stood.

But in this historic moment Islamists remain the most well-organized 
alternative to governments, a situation that is unlikely to change soon. 
And current governments are not popular: A survey I conducted in October 
with Zogby International (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, 
Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates) asked Arabs which world leaders 
they admired most (outside their own countries). The only leader who 
received double-digit support was French President Jacques Chirac (for 
his perceived defiance of the United States on Iraq). No sitting Arab 
ruler received more than 2 percent. A plurality of Arabs believe that 
the clergy plays "too little" a role in Arab politics. There is a vacuum 
of leadership that will inevitably cost governments in truly free elections.

This leaves U.S. foreign policy with limited choices. Full electoral 
democracy in the Middle East will inevitably lead to domination by 
Islamist groups, leaving the United States to either continue a 
confrontational approach, with high and dangerous costs for both sides, 
or to find a way to engage them -- something that has yet to be fully 
considered. Given this, skepticism about the real aims of these groups 
should be balanced by openness to the possibility that their aims once 
they are in power could differ from their aims as opposition groups. 
This requires partial engagement, patience, and a willingness to allow 
such new governments space and time to put their goals to the test of 
reality. Hamas, in fact, could provide a place for testing whether 
careful engagement leads to moderation.

If we are not willing to engage, there is only one alternative: to 
rethink the policy of accelerated electoral democracy and focus on a 
more incremental approach of institutional and economic reform of 
existing governments. There is no realistic third party that's likely to 
emerge anytime soon.

Whatever the message of American foreign policy on democracy, it has not 
been clear in the Middle East. Most Arab governments see the American 
advocacy of democracy as primarily aimed at pressuring them to cooperate 
on strategic issues (such as Iraq, the war on terrorism and the 
Palestinian-Israeli issue) and at diverting attention from the absence 
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The majority of Arabs surveyed 
in our poll do not believe that the United States is serious about the 
pursuit of democracy and that the Middle East is even less democratic 
than it was before the Iraq war.

The focus on democracy, and the United States as a key agent in driving 
it, has been a distraction from other central challenges. The single 
most significant demographic variable correlated with anti-Americanism 
in the Arab world is income. In Gaza, where unemployment is nearly 50 
percent, per capita income is half of what it was in the late 1990s. 
Income is related to the quality of education. In Egypt, home to 
one-quarter of Arabs, Cairo University, the leading Arab university, is 
now rated 28th -- in Africa. Human rights violations remain widespread 
in the region, where our own troubling behavior toward prisoners has 
significantly hampered our ability to lecture others. Concerted efforts 
in those areas of economic, educational and judicial development, 
coupled with a strong human rights policy, have a far greater chance to 
make a difference.

Despite all its troubles, the United States remains the most powerful 
country, still powerful enough to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East. 
But it will never be powerful enough to determine where the cards fall.

The writer is a professor of government and politics at the University 
of Maryland and a non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center of the 
Brookings Institution.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021601576.html
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