Egyptian parliamentary elections have taken
place, and the winners were two Islamist parties.
The Islamists themselves are split between more extreme and more
moderate factions, but it is clear that the secularists who dominated the demonstrations
and who were the focus of the Arab Spring narrative made a poor
showing. Of the three broad power blocs in Egypt — the military,
the Islamists and the secular democrats — the last proved the
weakest.
It is far from clear what will happen in Egypt
now. The military remains unified and powerful, and it is unclear how much
actual power it is prepared to cede or whether it will be forced to cede
it. What is clear is that the faction championed by Western governments and the
media will now have to accept the Islamist agenda, back the military or fade
into irrelevance.
Democracy does not always bring secular democrats
to power. To be more precise, democracy might yield a popular government, but
the assumption that that government will support a liberal democratic
constitution that conceives of human rights in the European or American sense
is by no means certain. Unrest does not always lead to a revolution, a
revolution does not always lead to a democracy, and a democracy does not always
lead to a European- or American-style constitution.
In Egypt today, just as it is unclear whether
the Egyptian military will cede power in any practical sense, it is also
unclear whether the Islamists can form a coherent government or how
extreme such a government might be. And as we analyze the possibilities, it is
important to note that this analysis really isn’t about Egypt. Rather, Egypt
serves as a specimen to examine — a case study of an inherent contradiction in
Western ideology and, ultimately, of an attempt to create a coherent foreign
policy.
Core
beliefs
Western countries, following the principles
of the French Revolution, have two core beliefs. The first is the concept of
national self-determination, the idea that all nations (and what the term
“nation” means is complex in itself) have the right to determine for themselves
the type of government they wish. The second is the idea of human rights, which
are defined in several documents but are all built around the basic values of
individual rights, particularly the right not only to participate in politics
but also to be free in your private life from government intrusion.
The first principle leads to the idea of the
democratic foundations of the state. The second leads to the idea that the
state must be limited in its power in certain ways and the individual must be
free to pursue his own life in his own way within a framework of law limited by
the principles of liberal democracy. The core assumption within this is that a
democratic polity will yield a liberal constitution. This assumes that the
majority of the citizens, left to their own devices, will favor the
Enlightenment’s definition of human rights. This assumption is simple, but its
application is tremendously complex. In the end, the premise of the Western
project is that national self-determination, expressed through free elections,
will create and sustain constitutional democracies.
It is interesting to note that human rights
activists and neoconservatives, who on the surface are ideologically
opposed, actually share this core belief. Both believe that democracy and human
rights flow from the same source and that creating democratic regimes will
create human rights. The neoconservatives believe outside military
intervention might be an efficient agent for this. Human rights groups oppose
this, preferring to organize and underwrite democratic movements and use measures
such as sanctions and courts to compel oppressive regimes to cede power. But
they share common ground on this point as well. Both groups believe that
outside intervention is needed to facilitate the emergence of an oppressed
public naturally inclined toward democracy and human rights.
This, then, yields a theory of foreign policy
in which the underlying strategic principle must not only support existing
constitutional democracies but also bring power to bear to weaken oppressive
regimes and free the people to choose to build the kind of regimes that reflect
the values of the European Enlightenment.
Complex
questions and choices
The case of Egypt raises an interesting and
obvious question regardless of how it all turns out. What if there are
democratic elections and the people choose a regime that violates the
principles of Western human rights? What happens if, after tremendous Western
effort to force democratic elections, the electorate chooses to reject Western
values and pursue a very different direction — for example, one that regards
Western values as morally reprehensible and aims to make war against them? One
obvious example of this is Adolph Hitler, whose ascent to power was fully in
keeping with the processes of the Weimar Republic — a democratic regime — and
whose clearly stated intention was to supersede that regime with one that was
popular (there is little doubt that the Nazi regime had vast public support),
opposed to constitutionalism in the democratic sense and hostile to
constitutional democracy in other countries.
The idea that the destruction of repressive
regimes opens the door for democratic elections that will not result in another
repressive regime, at least by Western standards, assumes that all societies
find Western values admirable and want to emulate them. This is sometimes the
case, but the general assertion is a form of narcissism in the West that
assumes that all reasonable people, freed from oppression, would wish to
emulate us.
At this moment in history, the
obvious counterargument rests in some, but not all, Islamist
movements. We do not know that the Islamist groups in Egypt will be successful,
and we do not know what ideologies they will pursue, but they
are Islamists and their views of man and moral nature are different
from those of the European Enlightenment. Islamists have a principled
disagreement with the West on a wide range of issues, from the relation of the
individual to the community to the distinction between the public and private
sphere. They oppose the Egyptian military regime not only because it
limits individual freedom but also because it violates their understanding of
the regime’s moral purpose. The Islamists have a different and
superior view of moral political life, just as Western constitutional
democracies see their own values as superior.
The collision between the doctrine of
national self-determination and the Western notion of human rights is not an
abstract question but an extremely practical one for Europe and the United
States. Egypt is the largest Arab country and one of the major centers of
Islamic life. Since 1952, it has had a secular and military-run government.
Since 1973, it has had a pro-Western government. At a time when the United
States is trying to end its wars in the Islamic world (along with its NATO
partners, in the case of Afghanistan), and with relations with Iran already
poor and getting worse, the democratic transformation of Egypt into a radical
Islamic regime would shift the balance of power in the region wildly.
This raises questions regarding the type of
regime Egypt has, whether it is democratically elected and whether it respects
human rights. Then there is the question of how this new regime might affect
the United States and other countries. The same can be said, for example, about
Syria, where an oppressive regime is resisting a movement that some
in the West regard as democratic. It may be, but its moral principles might be
anathema to the West. At the same time, the old repressive regime might be
unpopular but more in the interests of the West.
Then pose this scenario: Assume there is a
choice between a repressive, undemocratic regime that is in the interests of a
Western country and a regime that is democratic but repressive by Western
standards and hostile to those interests. Which is preferable, and what steps
should be taken?
These are blindingly complex questions that
some observers — the realists as opposed to the idealists — say not only are
unanswerable but also undermine the ability to pursue national interests
without in any way improving the moral character of the world. In other words,
you are choosing between two types of repression from a Western point of view
and there is no preference. Therefore, a country like the United States should
ignore the moral question altogether and focus on a simpler question, and one
that’s answerable: the national interest.
Egypt is an excellent place to point out the
tension within U.S. foreign policy between idealists, who argue that pursuing
Enlightenment principles is in the national interest, and realists, who argue
that the pursuit of principles is very different from their attainment. You can
wind up with regimes that are neither just nor protective of American
interests. In other words, the United States can wind up with a regime hostile
to the United States and oppressive by American standards. Far from a moral
improvement, this would be a practical disaster.
Mission and power
There is a temptation to accept the realist
argument. Its weakness is that its definition of the national interest is never
clear. The physical protection of the United States is obviously an issue — and
given 9/11, it is not a trivial matter. At the same time, the physical safety
of the United States is not always at stake. What exactly is our interest in Egypt,
and does it matter to us whether it is pro-American? There are answers to this
but not always obvious ones, and the realists frequently have trouble defining
the national interest. Even if we accept the idea that the primary objective of
U.S. foreign policy is securing the national interest irrespective of moral
considerations, what exactly is the national interest?
It seems to me that two principles emerge.
The first is that having no principles beyond “interest” is untenable. Interest
seems very tough-minded, but it is really a vapid concept when you drill into
it. The second principle is that there can be no moral good without power.
Proclaiming a principle without having the power to pursue it is a form of
narcissism. You know you are doing no good, but talking about it makes you feel
superior. Interest is not enough, and morality without power is mere talk.
So what is to be done about Egypt? The first
thing is to recognize that little can be done, not because it would be morally
impermissible but because, practically, Egypt is a big country that is hard to
influence, and meddling and failing is worse than doing nothing at all. Second,
it must be understood that Egypt matters and the outcome of this affair, given
the past decade, is not a matter to which the United States can afford to be
indifferent.
An American strategy on Egypt — one that goes
beyond policy papers in Washington — is hard to define. But a number of points
can be deduced from this exercise. First, it is essential to not create myths.
The myth of the Egyptian revolution was that it was going to create a
constitutional democracy like Western democracies. That simply wasn’t the issue
on the table. The issue was between the military regime and an Islamist regime.
This brings us to the second point, which is that sometimes, in confronting two
different forms of repression, the issue is to select the one that is most in
the national interest. This will force you to define the national interest, to
a salutary effect.
Washington, like all capitals, likes policies
and hates political philosophy. The policies frequently fail to come to grips
with reality because the policymakers don’t grasp the philosophical
implications. The contradiction inherent in the human rights and
the neoconservative approach is one thing, but the inability of the
realists to define with rigor what the national interest is creates policy
papers of monumental insignificance. Both sides create polemics as a substitute
for thought.
It’s in places like Egypt where this reality
is driven home. One side really believed that Egypt would become like
Minnesota. The other side knew it wouldn’t and devised a plan to be
tough-minded — but not tough-minded enough to define what the point of the plan
was. This is the crisis of U.S. foreign policy. It has always been there, but
given American power, it is one that creates global instability. One part of
the American regime wants to be just; the other part wants to be tough. Neither
realizes that such a distinction is the root of the problem. Look at the
American (and European) policy toward Egypt and I think you can see the
predicament.
The solution does not rest in slogans or
ideology, or in soft versus hard power. It rests in clarity on both the moral
mission of the regime and its ability to understand and wield power
effectively. And this requires the study of political philosophy. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, with his distinction between the “general will” and the “will of
all,” might be a good place to start. Or reading the common sense of Mark Twain
might be a more pleasant substitute."
