Daniel Larison

“Dictatorships and Double Standards” Revisited

Mubarak and Wikileaks

By Daniel Larison • January 28, 2011, 2:36 PM

But they also show U.S. pressure is viewed skeptically by Mubarak, who believes ill-advised U.S. pushes for reform in the Middle East have produced colossal mistakes, from the ouster of the Shah of Iran to the election of Hamas Islamists in Gaza.

“We have heard him lament the results of earlier U.S. efforts to encourage reform in the Islamic world,” the U.S. embassy in Cairo told Clinton in a cable before Mubarak’s visit to Washington in May 2009.

“He can harken back to the Shah of Iran: the U.S. encouraged him to accept reforms, only to watch the country fall into the hands of revolutionary religious extremists. Wherever he has seen these U.S. efforts, he can point to the chaos and loss of stability that ensued.” ~Reuters

The problem that democratists have is that Mubarak is basically right about all of this. Of course, he’s going to look for reasons to avoid opening up Egypt’s political system to more competition, but just because he’s self-interested doesn’t mean he’s mistaken. One thing to take away from this is that every other time the U.S. has claimed to be seriously interested in promoting political reform in the Near East, it has either been associated with the empowerment of militants and terrorists, the devastation and occupation of an entire country, or some combination of the two. We know why Mubarak doesn’t want political reform, but isn’t it remotely possible that his skepticism is more well-founded than Western demands for reform?

What the report also shows is that the Obama administration has been pressing Mubarak for reforms. They just haven’t been doing it in public. That ought to put to rest the garbage analysis we’ve been hearing from the crowd at the Post that the protests in Egypt are somehow the fault of the administration’s supposed lack of agitation on the subject of reform. It should also drive home just how irrelevant American advocacy for reform really is: advocacy for these things has been going on all this time, and if anything Mubarak has simply become more stubborn and skeptical of the idea. Bearing the example of the Shah in mind, Mubarak has resisted. The better question is this: why do so many Americans want him to acquiesce in a process that will lead to regime collapse?

8 Responses to Mubarak and Wikileaks

walter42 says:

January 28, 2011 at 6:51 pm

Is the Shah in Iran the only example we have to go on? What about Eastern Europe? We encouraged Glasnost in the Soviet Union didn’t we? Certainly the results of all that is better than the Cold War.

“[B]ecause he’s self-interested doesn’t mean he’s mistaken.”

Self-interested is a bit of an understatement, he is easily the most biased party possible here.

“[The US Government] has either been associated with the empowerment of militants and terrorists, the devastation and occupation of an entire country.”

“[W]hy do so many Americans want him to acquiesce in a process that will lead to regime collapse?”

Liberal guilt. I know it’s working on me when I see shit like this:
http://i.imgur.com/zkE0u.jpg (Zoom in it says made in the USA)

With billions of dollars funding the Egyptian military basically says that the US could, if it so desired, pull the plug on the regime if it wanted to.
Duncan in London says:

January 28, 2011 at 7:24 pm

Reform in Egypt, as everyone including Mubarak knows, involves the removal of Mubarak, which naturally means US advocacy for reform has always been on a hiding to nothing, though I still wouldn’t really fault the administration for trying.

The scenes from Egypt today suggest the tipping point has been reached. The Egyptian public will be determined not to lose this opportunity to overthrow the regime, even though they have no idea what will follow.

“Why do so many Americans want him to acquiesce in a process that will lead to regime collapse?” All roads, I think, lead to regime collapse in the coming days and weeks. We’ll see if I’m wrong (I may well be). I don’t think it’s true, as the question implies, that it is within the power of the Administration to save Mubarak. The citizenry will keep going until the army ask him to leave. This feels eerily similar to Tunisia.

Obama can, however, avoid the trap of France in Tunisia, of appearing to give comfort to the old regime in its last days, which may have a long-term impact on how the French are perceived there.

Al Jazeera Arabic interestingly doesn’t have an editorial line on Obama’s response so far, simply describing it as “unknown”.
NattyB says:

January 29, 2011 at 12:41 am

Daniel,

Isn’t WIkileaks amazing. Just think of all the insight we’re gaining into the conduct of our government, and in particular, the mechanics and implementation of our foreign policy.

I can see why so much of the establishment press is threatened. They’re outscooping the MSM, while providing the MSM with troves of Raw Data So it isn’t surprising that the NYT’s is now onto, what I believe, their 3rd feature [smear] on Assange and his personal peculiarities. It’s quite wild when the Vice-President calls Assange a cyber-terrorists, meanwhile the US can’t bring itself (which was a comment, I heard on Al-Jazeera today as streamed their live feed on Egypt, which is a juxtaposition you’d never hear from the US media)

***

With respect to your post, another thing Wikileaks revealed, and puts some context into the current Republicans insistence to cut Foreign Aid/USAID, yet, won’t even touch the Defense spending, was the extent that the US and USAID were active in, not just “democracy” promotion, but civil society development, experts on rule of law.

According to this cable: http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/article4008796.ece , Condoleezza Rice’s State department, was spending $65M – $75M on such programs.

The purpose of such Aid:

We will sustain successful programs and create additional on-shore initiatives to optimize American influence through the looming leadership succession.

Now, you don’t have to be a tenured International Relations/Game Theory Professor to see that a “soft” power approach is going to be more successful at achieving your foreign policy goals (backed by deterrence), then just dropping bombs and installing lackeys.
NattyB says:

January 29, 2011 at 12:44 am

Woops, this sentence was supposed to read:

It’s quite wild when the Vice-President calls Assangea cyber-terrorists, meanwhile the US can’t bring itself to refer to Mubarak a dictator (he of 31 years continuous rule under an Emergency law that stills in existence).
Elvis Elvisberg says:

January 29, 2011 at 11:14 am

What the report also shows is that the Obama administration has been pressing Mubarak for reforms. They just haven’t been doing it in public. That ought to put to rest the garbage analysis we’ve been hearing from the crowd at the Post that the protests in Egypt are somehow the fault of the administration’s supposed lack of agitation on the subject of reform.

In a parallel universe where our mainstream discourse hews carefully to the facts, that would absolutely be the case. Alas…

The better question is this: why do so many Americans want him to acquiesce in a process that will lead to regime collapse?

In the very short term, it’s very hard to see what the US should do. The situation looks much more chaotic there today than yesterday.

But it seems to me– and I could certainly be wrong or naive– that it is always a mistake for the US to spend years & years propping up hated autocrats. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran hates us. And you would too, if you were Iranian & had lived through the overthrow of the democratic regime there in the 1950s, and the decades of US-enabled and funded brutality that followed. When we support dictators who choke off the development of civil society, we encourage radicalism generally, and resentment of the US specifically. US citizens really like the US because liberal democracy is a very good thing. Generally speaking, when we stand for those ideals, rather than supporting autocrats who oppress their resentful citizenry, we do better morally & strategically.

every other time the U.S. has claimed to be seriously interested in promoting political reform in the Near East, it has either been associated with the empowerment of militants and terrorists, the devastation and occupation of an entire country, or some combination of the two.

This is absolutely true. I guess I’m saying that our default ought to be not invading countries, and not arming & supporting people like the Shah & Saddam & Mubarak.

The immediate objection that comes to mind is, “Mubarak is a better alternative than anything else.” Even if that is true, does that mean it’s in our interests to be seen as imposing or supporting him?
Raashid says:

January 29, 2011 at 4:15 pm

I’ve yet to hear a proper analysis of how “the alternative” i.e. The Muslim Brotherhood will be so detrimental to “US inerests”. For sure, they are opposed to Israel, but even if one has bought into The Lobby’s notion that Israel’s survival is paramount to US intrests (something that has never been explained) an Egypt ruled by The Muslim Brotherhood will be no more effective militarily then when it was ruled by Nasser, given that all Egyptian weaponry and expertise is provided by the US and that same expertise is in the hands of Egyptian secularists who are unlikely to want to fight (and die) for Islam.
DmitryAleksandrovich says:

January 30, 2011 at 1:04 am

Americans in my opinion have lost the ability to reason. They see the world through the lenses of liberal idealism. This is liberals and their cousins the neo-conservatives. What do they both have in common. They both have the false belief that they can somehow change the world in a way that brings peace and harmony. The Bolsheviks had the same idea and just as American idealism has led to military interventionism and millions of deaths throughout the world, so did Communist idealism before it. A humane foreign policy is a pragmatic foreign policy. It is a foreign policy based on real politik that has a focus on safeguarding its own citizens rather than trying to impose a one’s own ideals on the rest of the world. Actually my grandfather said it best, “He said America has so many enemies because we have our nose up everyone elses behind”. He didn’t say it so nice but you get the picture.
JJM sans password says:

January 30, 2011 at 10:00 am

What the Egypt-as-Tunisia comparisons don’t acknowledge is the economic dimension; Tunisia’s economy was volatile and without net gains in Ali’s years while Mubarak’s Egypt has shown constant, if sub-optimal, growth.

All the recent Tunisia/Egypt commentary has focused on the ideological angle. Mubarak and Ali are tyrannical and anti-liberal leaders; the suspicion and fear of political Islam’s role in the protests and new government; lingering questions about colonialism; and such. While this is an attractive angle if you want to sell newspapers, it completely misses the larger role that patronage plays. The regime with the relatively richer patron (Egypt) is likely to survive the same wave of protests that unseat a regime with a poorer patron (Tunisia). US patronage was able to stably grow a country for decades and thus cement the current regime, while French patronage produced erratic results and ultimately allowed the conditions for popular revolt to come about and fester.