Recall when President George W. Bush talked about democracy taking hold in Iraq and then the region? Now Bush’s vision seems very prescient. Shouldn’t we all be in favor the freedom agenda? ~Jennifer Rubin

Recall how the invasion of Iraq and the horrible bloodletting fueled by the sectarianism surrounding the first election discredited the idea of U.S.-directed democracy promotion throughout the region for at least a generation? No, I expect she doesn’t. If the danger from the Tunisian uprising is that the violence and disorder of its early days might lead to the consolidation of power by Tunisia’s political class and that it might discourage people elsewhere in the region from imitating the Tunisian example, the disaster of the Iraqi example empowered sectarian thugs and reinforced the political status quo everywhere else. There was nothing less likely to aid political reformers in Arab countries than a “freedom agenda” tied up with the invasion, occupation, and ruin of an Arab country. That remains as true now as it was in 2003. Far from being a vindication of the “freedom agenda” as it was actually practiced by the Bush administration, people around the region are correctly seeing the Tunisian uprising as proof that the “freedom agenda” was misguided and unnecessary:

All the blood, sweat and bullet-torn flesh have demonstrated how the neo-conservative model was wrong, how democracy can come about without foreign fleets, without the imposition of the star-spangled banner, without the smiling faces of Jay Garner and David Petraeus. Second, democracy can grow out of cultures of military repression without resorting to Islamic radicalism and without devolving into a situation of “one man, one vote…one time!” Third, not only has America failed to promote democracy in this region, it has actually propped up regimes which stifled its flowering.

So, no, we shouldn’t all be in favor of the “freedom agenda,” because the actual “freedom agenda” as it was practiced was ruinous for all of the countries that “benefited” from it. That doesn’t mean that the Tunisian uprising is sure to lead to a good outcome for the people of Tunisia. If it is a revolution, revolutions are often destructive and leave the polity worse off than before. Violent, dramatic swings between despotism and chaos aren’t good for the development of a healthy polity, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Tunisia’s uprising yielded a new government that is incompetent, authoritarian, or both. All of the obstacles to democratization that exist in other countries with no real tradition of representative or popular government exist in Tunisia, and Tunisia’s future government could be stricken with paralysis and factionalism or an abusive majoritarianism that tries to settle scores against old regime supporters. Crucially for the legitimacy and success of whatever government emerges out of this, it will be a government that Tunisians created for themselves without outside intervention or support. Not only did the Tunisian uprising not receive outside support, but it drove Ben Ali out in spite of France’s ongoing, public support for the regime.

It is indeed too soon to know what will come of the Tunisian uprising. Significant parts of Ben Ali’s regime remain in place, which makes restoring order more likely and also reduces the possibility of full political revolution. Anyone who wants to see a relatively peaceful transition from Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule to something even marginally better can be glad that there was no intervening foreign power on the scene to dissolve all existing state institutions for the sake of making an ideological point. We can acknowledge that it is an example of stasis, a violent conflict that affects the entire polity, and that this is a marker of a disordered polity, and the remedy for this is the establishment of eunomia. As Raaflaub has written, “The ideal of eunomia thus stands not only for a good social order, but for the political resolution of crisis and stasis and for the integration of the polis….”

Even so, when a mass popular uprising compels the head of state to flee the country, the phrase “democratic revolution” seems at least partly fitting. It is certainly a far more appropriate use of the phrase now than when it was freely applied to every coup, election protest, and oligarchic takeover of the last ten years that happened to draw Western attention. Many Westerners have spent so much time misidentifying other political events as revolutions that they seem not sure what to do when they see a real one taking place. Of course, it might prove to be an abortive revolution, and might fizzle out or be crushed. The members of the regime and the opposition may try to preserve as much of the regime’s structure, the military leadership may decide that restoring order justifies continuation of an authoritarian system, and those Tunisians who have the most to lose may support the return of security at the expense of the protesters’ demands.

The Tunisians have also driven home just how irrelevant American involvement or indifference can be. As most observers recognize, U.S. influence and leverage in Tunisia were not that great, so Washington had more room to take a hands-off approach, and the administration did just that. If the Tunisians could drive out their dictator without American support or interest, that should be a lesson that many other nations don’t actually need Americans to take their side and may not want us involved at all. Most of us remain so preoccupied with arguing over who “lost” this or that country or how a given administration mishandled another country‘s internal political crisis that we miss that what Americans do or say on behalf of political dissidents and movements in other countries won’t help and ultimately doesn’t matter to the people involved. The best thing we can do in these circumstances is to recognize that it is really none of our business, and beat back the impulse to interfere.