How To Save The Arab World

It is always the same splendid setting--and the same sad story. A senior American diplomat enters one of the grand presidential palaces in Heliopolis, the neighborhood of Cairo from which President Hosni Mubarak rules over Egypt. Walking through halls of marble and gilt, passing layers of security guards, he arrives at a formal drawing room where he is received with great courtesy by the Egyptian president. The two men talk amiably about U.S.-Egyptian relations, regional matters and the state of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Then the American gently raises the issue of human rights and suggests that Egypt's government might ease up on political dissent, allow more press freedoms and stop jailing intellectuals. Mubarak tenses up and snaps, "If I were to do what you ask, the fundamentalists will take over Egypt. Is that what you want?" The diplomat demurs and the conversation moves back to the latest twist in the peace process.

Over the last decade Americans and Arabs have had many such exchanges. When President Bill Clinton urged Yasir Arafat to sign on to the Camp David peace plan in July 2001, Arafat is reported to have responded with words to the effect, "If I do what you want, Hamas will be in power tomorrow." The Saudi monarchy's most articulate spokesman, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, often reminds American officials that if they press his government too hard, the likely alternative to the regime is not Jeffersonian democracy but Islamic theocracy.

This fear--the Fear of the Alternative (FOTA)--has paralyzed American foreign policy in the Middle East. Compared with almost every other part of the world, where over the last three decades the United States has pushed for economic and political reforms--sometimes more slowly than democrats would like--in this region it has always veered away from any such confrontations. The Middle East is the great exception in American foreign policy.

The results are plain. The Middle East today stands in stark contrast to the rest of the world, where freedom and democracy have been gaining ground over the last two decades. In its latest annual survey, released last week, New York's Freedom House finds that 75 percent of the world's countries are currently "free" or "partly free." Only 28 percent of Middle Eastern countries could be so described, a percentage that has fallen during the last 20 years. By comparison, more than 60 percent of African countries today are free or partly free.

The initial reasons for this hands-off approach to the Middle East were oil, then Israel. The United States is terrified by the prospect of chaos in the petroleum paradise of Arabia. It has also assumed that dictators could guarantee a more secure peace with Israel than democrats. But now, above all, Washington simply worries about change--FOTA. The monarchs and dictators are quick to remind us always that for all their faults, they are better than the alternative.

The worst part of it is, they may be right. America's allies in the Middle East are autocratic, corrupt and heavy-handed. But they are still more liberal, tolerant and pluralistic than what would likely replace them. If elections had been held last month in Saudi Arabia with King Fahd and Osama bin Laden on the ballot, I would not bet too heavily on His Royal Highness's fortunes. Last year the emir of Kuwait, with American encouragement, proposed to give women the vote. But the democratically elected Parliament--packed with Islamic fundamentalists--roundly rejected the initiative. A similar dynamic is evident in the kingdoms of the gulf from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. In Jordan and Morocco, on virtually every political issue, the monarchs are more liberal than the societies over which they reign. In the Palestinian Authority, Hamas has more popular support than Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, especially with the young. And many of these Islamic fundamentalist parties are sham democrats. They would happily come to power through an election but then set up their own dictatorship. It would be one man, one vote, one time.