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The Perils of Wishful Thinking on the Middle East

(World Affairs) Walter Laqueur - The reports from Cairo and other capitals described the Arab awakening as an event perhaps unprecedented in the annals of mankind. Some journalists predicted the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies would get at most 25% in free elections in Egypt. Then in December 2011 elections took place; the Islamists received 65% in the towns, more in the countryside. Beyond the small and isolated freedom fighters were towns and suburbs where many millions lived in a desperately poor, overcrowded, and conservative society a world away from Jeffersonianism. The partisans of Arab Spring failed to consider that under Mubarak the position of women and minorities had been better than under the new regime that would probably succeed him. Desirability bias affected our thinking about foreign affairs. Dissatisfaction with the status quo was mistaken for an overwhelming embrace of the universalism of liberty and democracy - and ignored the strength of the Islamists and of nationalism itself. It should have been clear that the odds against the emergence of a democratic order in the foreseeable future in the Arab world were impossibly heavy: The lack of a democratic tradition, the great and growing influence of Islamism, the weakness of the secular forces and their disunity, overpopulation in a country like Egypt, and the inherent poverty.
2012-03-23 00:00:00
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