Editorial: The reality of Arab democracy

You can’t overstate the discomfort for Britain, or America, from the revolution in Tahrir Square and the shock it sent across the middle east. William Hague, foreign secretary, was cautious in greeting the upheaval, although he did urge Egypt’s army to resist the temptations of power and move quickly to elections. It was more painful to watch President Obama try to put words to the uprising which embodies all the youthful idealism he champions, but confounds his own actions in office.

After all, it is less than two years since he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Hosni Mubarak (albeit a head taller) and called the Egyptian leader a “stalwart ally” and a “force for good.” When Mubarak quit, Obama ventured that: “Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence.”

Indeed. He meant it as a compliment to the protestors’ peaceful tactics. But in supporting Mubarak, Europe and the US have propped up an autocrat whose violence against opponents has been chronicled for years. In a notable 2004 report, “Egypt’s Torture Epidemic,” Human Rights Watch recorded the rise in the torture of dissidents and in deaths in police custody.

It is not just that backing a dictator offends the values that Europe and the US claim to promote (although beyond dispute, it does). David Davis asks when you should exchange idealism for realpolitik. Less quickly than in the past, should be the first retort. That’s also the answer given by Eugene Rogan, who argues that Arab democracy is certainly no fantasy. But while it’s overdue, it will bring immense upheaval, he says, and Yemen may prove the most dangerous of all.

Of course, it is easy to warn that Arab elections might install rulers who prove uninterested in sustaining democratic values at home, never mind being friendly to the west. Yet democratic countries, in failing to urge their own values on other nations, have thrown away the chance to help them manage two decades of extraordinary global change. Too many Arab countries became frozen societies, failing to develop ministries, justice, jobs—or the taste for smaller families that much of the world has acquired. The demographic explosion in the region has long been predicted; in Tahrir Square, it converged with the phenomena of the internet, Facebook and Twitter. Shereen El Feki, who says her Cairo friends have found the overthrow of Mubarak “inevitable but also inconceivable,” asks whether relations between old and young will also be transformed, and whether the patriarchal cast of many Egyptian families will now give way.

It’s not impossible for democratic countries to help that transformation, although their influence will be small. In his report on Tony Blair’s four years as middle east envoy, Donald Macintyre points out that the former prime minister has had some small successes in helping Palestinians build the base of their own state. Blair himself argues that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock would remove a provocation of endless resonance that Islamic militants use to win recruits. On that point, he is surely right.