washington | President Bush’s jubilant predictions may be right and democracy may be coming to the Middle East — but the road ahead is not without its dangers.
“Don’t start uncorking the arak,” quipped David Makovsky, a top analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, referring to a popular Middle Eastern liqueur. “We don’t know yet how this plays out.”
Bush made burgeoning anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon and progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks the centerpiece of a major policy speech Tuesday, March 8, to the National Defense University in Washington.
“For the sake of our long-term security, all free nations must stand with the forces of democracy and justice that have begun to transform the Middle East,” Bush said.
But experts cautioned that democracy could produce militant leaders who would not serve American, Israeli or international interests.
In his speech, Bush went further than ever in demanding that Syria withdraw from its 29-year occupation of Lebanon, saying that unless the Syrians are gone by May, he would not consider the scheduled Lebanese elections as free and fair. He also called for international observers.
Bush has led international support for the popular Lebanese anti-Syrian movement that burgeoned after last month’s assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister who was leading efforts to end the Syrian occupation.
Many in Lebanon blamed Syrian agents for the attack, although the Syrians have said they had nothing to do with it and insist that it has been counterproductive to their interests.
Still, Syrian President Bashar Assad this week pledged a limited withdrawal by the end of this month. News reports said a partial redeployment into eastern Lebanon had begun. It is not clear if the redeployment simply will be toward the Syrian border, or if any of the 14,000 occupying troops actually will cross back into Syria.
Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, told CNN this week that all Syrian troops would be gone from Lebanon.
Syria was central to Bush’s appeal on March 8, but he sees events there as the bulwark of regional change. He noted Saudi Arabia’s recent municipal elections, but said next time women should be allowed to vote as well. He commended Egypt for its plans to open up its presidential elections to opposition candidates. And he praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, citing his January election as a beacon of the democracy he hopes will spread.
“The people of the Palestinian territories cast their ballots against violence and corruption of the past,” he said.
The problem, though, is that democracy is often messy. Experts say that the consequences of recent events are not yet clear.
“Democracy can produce militants,” said Moshe Maoz, Israel’s leading Syria expert, who is on leave this year with the U.S. Institute for Peace. “Look at Algeria in 1993. With militants it’s hard to make peace, but you can make peace with autocrats, like in Jordan and Egypt.”
David Mack, a former assistant deputy secretary of state for Near East affairs who also served at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was appalled at the prospect of an electoral victory in Lebanon for Hezbollah.
Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom, in Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, praised Bush’s speech, especially when Bush noted Syria’s role in harboring the terrorists behind last month’s suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv.
But he acknowledged fears that a Shi’ite ascendancy in Lebanon could bring similar results in more moderate Arab states.
Tom Neumann, the executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, acknowledged the serious short-term risks of democratization. But in the case of Lebanon, they were outweighed by the reality of Syria’s negative influence there, he said.
“Anything anti-Syrian right now is good. Syria is a cause for lots of problems in Israel, in Iraq, in Lebanon.”
In any case, Assad may not be ready to fold. Syria has too much at stake in Lebanon. It is an outlet that bypasses existing and potential sanctions and provides jobs for about a million Syrian workers.
Even if Syria does remove all its troops, experts say, it will still keep its broad network of proxies and intelligence agents in Lebanon.
A negotiated withdrawal could avert that possibility. “One should use carrots and not just sticks,” Maoz said.
Yet sticks were what congressional legislation proposed this week promised. The Lebanon and Syria Liberation Act, introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Eliot Engel (D- N.Y.), would expand the sanctions made available in the Syria Accountability Act, an Engel-Ros-Lehtinen bill that overwhelmingly passed in 2003 and was implemented by Bush last year.