Tehran’s brutal crackdown
on democracy-hungry protestors may have defeated the most serious threat to
the Iranian regime since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but the Obama
Administration will continue to face the questions of how to respond to such
uprisings and when to promote democracy around the world.
These questions offer no easy answers. Cultures vary,
dictators rule with different kinds of iron fists and no one knows when a
rebellion will gather the necessary steam to oust an oppressor.
Who could have predicted that Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev’s efforts to reform his nation through perestroika and glasnost in
the 1980s would fuel its disintegration, that Romanian dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu would be booed off stage during an open-air address in late 1989
and then flee from office, or that Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos
would be driven from office after calling for presidential elections in 1986
and then fraudulently claiming victory afterwards?
History does, however, suggest some realities that the
administration would be well-advised to keep in mind in the months ahead,
for it surely will face the challenge again – perhaps many times – as to
what to say and what to do when people in a foreign land seek to cast off
the yoke of oppression.
First, even if a president remains silent during a
democratic insurrection, America will
almost surely become part of the story.
A regime under siege will find it all-too convenient to
rally support by painting its opponents as
U.S.
lackeys. The recent turmoil in Iran
makes the point: As President Obama declared his intention not to meddle, Iran’s top leaders were already blaming the
protests on the United States
and Israel.
Second, leading democratic activists often yearn for a U.S. president to publicly support
their efforts, because it both helps boost morale among the dissidents and
also raises the stakes for the regime.
Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has described
how his cell block in a Soviet gulag erupted in celebration upon hearing the
news that President Reagan had labeled the Soviet Union
the “evil empire.”
Reagan’s voice also helped bring the pressure that led
to Sharansky’s release in a U.S.-Soviet prisoner exchange. Whether Obama
follows suit could determine the fate of Sharansky’s successors across the
globe.
“When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day
these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal,” Ayman Nour, the
opposition leader to Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak whose activities have
landed him in jail, told the
Washington Post recently. “This is a test for his government. If they
can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action
here in Egypt.”
Third, despite what post-America theorists suggest, America retains an enormous capacity
to shape world events.
By convincing the social networking site Twitter not to
close for maintenance, the administration ensured that Iranian protestors
retained this vehicle for sharing information. That’s little different from
how, a quarter-century ago, the Reagan Administration and labor groups in
the United States and Europe smuggled copiers, fax machines and other
communication devices into Soviet-dominated Poland to help Solidarity, the
trade union, rally support for human rights.
Fourth, presidents need not choose between promoting
democracy in an authoritarian society and engaging with its masters. They
can do both.
President Roosevelt worked with Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany during World War II after earlier promoting a
world “founded upon four essential human freedoms” (of speech, of religion,
from want, and from fear), all of them in very short supply across the
Soviet empire.
President Kennedy successfully negotiated the nuclear
test ban treaty with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in mid-1963 – just a
month after making clear, in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech near
Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, that the
United States stood with everyone behind
the Iron Curtain who sought freedom.
Fifth and finally, history suggests the
United States
would be wise to align itself with the forces of democracy, rather than with
creaky autocracies in the Middle East and
elsewhere whose days could well be numbered.
To be sure, authoritarian regimes of late have been
digging in, and they have secured some recent successes. But their victories
cannot obscure the larger reality – that democracy has spread far and wide
in recent decades.
It will spread further. And when it does, the United States must not find itself
on the wrong side of history.
