IFRAME: http://csm.rotator.hadj7.adjuggler.net/servlet/ajrotator/173780/0/vh?z= csm&dim=130896&kw=&click=&pv= [vc?z=csm&dim=130896&kw=&click=&abr=$imginiframe&pv=] Get FREE NRO Newsletters ____________________ Go [test_061110_DD_sub.png] Log In | Register Follow Us Everywhere [icon_face.jpg] [icon_twit.jpg] [icon_youtube.jpg] [logo_test_2010_FF1.jpg] February 6 Issue Subscribe to NR Renew [cover_nav_120206.png] [cover_overlay_120206.jpg] February 6 Issue | Subscribe | Renew * Home * The Corner * The Agenda * Campaign Spot * The Home Front * Right Field * Bench Memos * The Feed * Media Blog * Critical Condition * Larry Kudlow * David Calling * Exchequer * Phi Beta Cons * Planet Gore * UK [icon_nav_video_2.gif] * Between the Covers [icon_nav_audio_2.gif] * Radio Derb [icon_nav_audio_2.gif] * Tweet Tracker [icon_twitter-bird_nav.png] * NR / Digital [icon_nav_login_EFEFEF.jpg] * Subscribe: NR [icon_nav_print.jpg] * Subscribe: NR / Digital [icon_nav_digital_EFEFEF.jpg] * Give: NR / Digital [icon_nav_digital_EFEFEF.jpg] * NR Renewals & Changes [icon_nav_renew.png] * Shop! * Donate * Media Kit * Contact Close To: ________________________________________ Your Email: ________________________________________ Your Name: ________________________________________ Subject: Is There an Arab Spring?________________ Submit [scrollable_new-on-nro_fade-right.png] [pic_giant_020312_L.jpg] Editors: A Pink Ribbon for the Win [pic_social_020312_D.jpg] Costa: Gingrich vs. Santorum [pic_giant_020312_E.jpg] Taylor& Doren: Obama’s Green-Energy Mirage [pic_giant_020312_C.jpg] Symposium: Game Time [pic_giant_020312_F.jpg] Paletta: Vigilante Films and the Left [pic_giant_020312_B.jpg] Nordlinger: Presidential qualities, &c. [pic_giant_020312_G.jpg] Lowry: Introducing the Cupcake Cops [pic_giant_020312_K.jpg] Malkin: Jim Moran, Racist Pig [pic_giant_020312_J.jpg] Goldberg: The Case for Romney [pic_giant_020312_H.jpg] Charen: Drop the Middle-Class Talk [pic_homie_flat_020312_A.jpg] Krauthammer: Don’t Let Assad Win [pic_homie_020212_A_0.jpg] Goldberg: A Movie for All Time [pic_giant_020212_D.jpg] McCarthy: Big-Government Republicans [Wind Turbine.jpg] Bryce: Wind Energy, Noise Pollution [pic_giant_020212_F.jpg] Crum: Nevada Votes [pic_giant_020212_G.jpg] Derbyshire: January Diary [pic_giant_020212_H.jpg] Trinko: Nevada Mormons for Mitt [pic_homie_flat_020212_B.jpg] Levin& Ponnuru: Romney vs. Obamacare [pic_giant_020212_J.jpg] Barone: Post-Florida Mitt [pic_giant_020212_K.jpg] Hanson: The Un-Obama New on NRO . . . The Corner The one and only. About This Blog Archive E-Mail RSS Send [icon_send-arrow-white3.png] Print | Text Is There an Arab Spring? By Stanley Kurtz March 21, 2011 10:22 A.M. Comments 3 Presumably, we are three months into a great “Arab Spring,” a revolutionary movement for democracy that swept across the Middle East after the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor on December 17, 2010, sparked protests that brought down an oppressive, incompetent, and corrupt Tunisian government one month later. The apparent analogy here is the “Prague Spring,” the eight-month liberalization Czechoslovakia enjoyed under Alexander Dubcek before Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the fragile experiment in August of 1968. More broadly, “Arab Spring” alludes to democratic revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe two decades after Prague, in 1989. The unprecedented turnout on Saturday for what has been dubbed “the first real referendum in Egypt’s history” seems to confirm that the Arab world’s most populous country is happily ambling down the path to democracy. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry hailed popular enthusiasm for the referendum as he toured Tahrir Square. By overwhelmingly approving a series of constitutional amendments, the Egyptian people have set the stage for parliamentary and presidential elections under a reformulated and decidedly more democratic constitution. The great Arab Spring is in blossom. Or is it? Are we quite certain that this Arab Spring even exists? The crowds that have poured for months into the great public spaces of capitals and bustling cities throughout the Arab world may appear to our eyes like European democratic revolutionaries past. On occasion they even tell us that this is what they represent. But do they? Let us recall that politically significant outpourings of large crowds were by no means unheard of in the bad-old undemocratic Arab world. In January 1952, thousands of young Egyptian protesters marched on downtown Cairo, sparking mayhem and fires reminiscent of the early Cairo protests of 2011. Economic decline among peasants and the emerging middle classes, combined with an increasingly corrupt constitutional monarchy and ruling liberal elite, had discredited Egypt’s fledgling democratic experiment. The mass protests in Cairo that January were a prelude to the young officers’ coup against King Farouk nine months later, a move ratified and cemented by yet another mass outpouring of joyous Egyptians into the streets of Cairo. Fifteen years later, in 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser, modern Egypt’s great charismatic hero, the man who had successfully seized the Suez Canal from the former colonial powers, offered his resignation to the Egyptian people in the wake of his shocking defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War. Millions poured into the streets to reject this resignation (even as the traumatic pain of that defeat spelled the end of Nasser’s pan-Arab nationalist dream, soon provoking the rise of Islamism as a substitute ideology). This is why we speak of an “Arab Street.” At critical junctures in Egypt’s history, monarchs and politicians have stood by helplessly as the fate of their regimes was determined by mass outpourings on the streets of Cairo. Those crowds may have ratified and given birth to popular autocracies, but liberal democracy is not what they were about — except insofar as Egypt’s single experiment in liberal democracy was abolished on its streets. So have we been witnessing an Arab Spring, or merely a new iteration of illiberal regime change via the Arab Street instead? Writing at The Weekly Standard on the day before Egypt’s recent referendum, Lee Smith argued that a “yes” vote ratifying the proposed constitutional amendments “may mean that Egypt’s revolution is over — or that is was a Muslim Brotherhood–driven campaign from the outset.” Strong words, but arguably true. Certainly, in light of the 77.2 percent margin for “yes,” we ought to consider Smith’s point. Despite the impressive popular enthusiasm for the first real referendum in Egypt’s history, the proposed amendments were favored by the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Approval of these limited constitutional changes will lead to rapid elections, which favor these two illiberal parties, already the most powerful political forces in Egypt. Against this, the spectrum of parties that were the public face of the Arab Spring demonstrations in Tahrir Square had called for a “no” vote, a more comprehensive constitutional rewrite, and elections delayed long enough to allow their fledgling political organizations to cultivate a popular base. So the massive “yes” vote exposes the supposedly liberal demonstrators of Tahrir Square as a weak national force, and strips away the legitimacy behind any further efforts to delay elections. The referendum also places the power of a more radical reshaping of the constitution in the hands of a parliament likely to be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the National Democratic Party. More disturbing still, I argue that even the supposedly liberal parties that advocated a “no” vote on Saturday’s referendum are actually a largely illiberal and anti-Western force of hard-leftists and Nasserite nationalists. Of course, we have seen enthusiastic participation in Middle Eastern elections before. Enough said. We also saw a disturbing incident this weekend in which presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei was violently attacked by apparently organized Islamist thugs. Although ElBaradei has worked closely with the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, he broke with them on this referendum, staying with the more secular parties in his opposition coalition and recommending a “no” vote. Isolated incident? Or did this attack on ElBaradei strip away the democratic facade, revealing the illiberal well-springs of the enthusiasm behind at least a good part of this weekend’s mass electoral turnout? (Or were the attackers paid thugs, another kind of bad sign?) It is fair to point out that framing the referendum in the first place as a “yes” or “no” to constitutional changes that favored the entrenched parties must have biased the vote toward a “yes.” Not everyone who voted “yes” strongly supported either the Muslim Brotherhood or the National Democratic Party. The case for a “no” vote may have had too little chance to penetrate the hinterlands. The meaning of the vote is not transparent, then. On the other hand, these confounding factors exemplify the dilemmas of Egypt’s few liberals (and of its secular but illiberal Leftist and Nasserite parties as well). So is a genuinely liberal democratizing wave sweeping the Middle East, or did the fall of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali simply reveal to all of those oppressed or disappointed by a failed Middle Eastern system that the existing powers were vulnerable? Arab Spring, or Arab Street? Time will tell. IFRAME: about:blank New on The Corner. . . [logo_corner_2012_square.jpg] Nordlinger: The Top Job IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Fcorner%2F290085%2Ftop-job-jay-nordlinger&layout=button_cou nt&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=20 Comments (0) [page_2012_lopez_square.jpg] Lopez: Under Fire from Abortion Advocates, Komen Issues an Apology ... IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Fcorner%2F290084%2Funder-fire-abortion-advocates-komen-issu es-apology-kathryn-jean-lopez&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&widt h=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=20 Comments (0) [wpid-Joan202.jpg] Foster: You Should Find the Anti-Komen Backlash Disgusting, Even If You're Pro-Choice IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Fcorner%2F290083%2Fyou-should-find-anti-komen-backlash-disg usting-even-if-youre-pro-choice-daniel-foster&layout=button_count&show_ faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=20 Comments (0) Advertisement Log In to Post a Comment COMMENTS 3 EXPAND [arrow-down.gif] Approved commenter JasonC 03/21/11 14:46 77% of the Egyptian population firmly supports a political reform and get it because it is the majority, and Mr Kurtz takes it as evidence *against* democracy. He can't face what the word means, apparently. No, Mr. Kurtz, "democracy" does not consist in everyone agreeing with you. It is sensible to worry about how *liberal* - or respecting of indivdual rights - or about how pro western - any next political configuration in Egypt might be. But to worry that it isn't democratic because not enough people freely voted the way Mr. Kurtz wanted them to, is Orwellian nonsense. Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse Approved commenter Martin McPhillips 03/21/11 19:55 This is an exceptionally clear analysis (perhaps lost today amid the Libyan furor) based on historical outcomes in post-WWII Egypt and the current influence of the dominant political factions. It looks like a deal is coming between the military faction and the Muslim Brotherhood where the military will trade its secularism for a continuing strong hand over the government and the Brotherhood will prescribe the Islamist ideology for both the military and Egyptian society at large. Both factions are socialist in an end-stage socialist economy, so sharia will come in handy to batten down expectations. The potential for a liberal democracy in Egypt (which is what Westerners mean when they use "democracy" as a naked term) is about zero. But there will be more voting; that much is probably true. Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse Rich Rostrom 03/21/11 22:32 I don't believe the overwhelming support for this referendum represents support for the Moslem Brotherhood, even though the MB pushed these amendments and many of the reformers were opposed. The content of the amendments is stuff that the reformers want, and doesn't overtly favor the MB. Presidential term limits, for instance. Offered the chance to have this stuff now, rather a theoretical better deal at some future date, Egyptians took it. To the extent that the MB is scheming to exploit the early-elections clause, well, that means the MB gamed the amending process. Here in the U.S. cleverly phrased initiatives and referendums have been sold to the people in some states. The complaint that the referendum means too-early elections is a just a bit of a whine. The elections won't be for several months. The proper response isn't to squeak that there's not enough time, it's to roll up the sleeves and get organized. Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse Add a Comment Already Registered? Log In Here. Your Name * ______________________________ Your E-mail * ______________________________ The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. IFRAME: http://api.solvemedia.com/papi/challenge.noscript?k=I-QvGXJ3h4STpgfQ6-E dIZLVZwrVB295 ________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ Your Comment * _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Preview * Designates a required field. © National Review Online 2012 All Rights Reserved. Subscriptions NR / Print NR / Digital Gift Subscriptions [icon_gift_B.jpg] NR / Print NR / Digital NR Apps iPhone/iPad Android NRO Apps iPhone Support Us Donate Media Kit Contact ____________________ Search NRO NRO Articles | Article RSS | Author Directory [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] Subscribe to National Review [print.png] Print [desktop.png] Digital [ios.png] iOS [icon_android.png] Android [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] [display_UK_300x120_01-23-12.jpg] [kudlow_nro_300x250_20120103.jpg] NRO Live Blog Feed [page_2012_lopez_square.jpg] Under Fire from Abortion Advocates, Komen Issues an Apology …: . . . The Corner [page_2012_leef_square.jpg] Another Useless Federal Report: Peter Wood writes here about a new . . . Phi Beta Cons [page_2012_geraghty_square.jpg] The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Lost City: This is the . . . The Campaign Spot [logo_davidcalling_2010_square.jpg] Netanyahu’s Existential Choice: I wouldn’t like to be in Bibi . . . David Calling [page_2012_whelan_square_0.jpg] This Day In Liberal Judicial Activism—February 3: 1988—By a vote . . . Bench Memos [logo_right-field_2012_square.jpg] The Worst Penalty Kick Ever?: Amid all of the terrible . . . Right Field [logo_home-front_2012_square.jpg] Re: Will America Ever Be Ready for the Truth about . . . The Home Front [page_2010_salam_square_0.jpg] Will Wilkinson on the Outrage Manufacturing Industry: While manufacturing employment . . . The Agenda [page_2010_payne_square.jpg] Obama’s Gas Guzzler Goes Unsold: How fitting. The gas-guzzling, earth-pawing 2005 . . . Planet Gore [pic_social_020112_GGG.jpg] An Interview with Marco Rubio: Rising Republican star Marco Rubio, . . . Kudlow’s Money Politics [spacer.gif] Most Viewed on NRO [pic_homie_020212_A_0.jpg] Jonah Goldberg: A Movie for All Time IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F228088%2Fmovie-all-time%2Fjonah-goldberg&layout =button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&h eight=20 Comments (44) [pic_social_021212_J.jpg] NRO Symposium: What Florida Means IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289818%2Fwhat-florida-means-nro-symposium&layou t=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light& height=20 Comments (56) [page_2012_steyn_square.jpg] Mark Steyn: Re: What is Wrong with This Guy? IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Fcorner%2F289859%2Fre-what-wrong-guy-mark-steyn&layout=butt on_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&height =20 Comments (198) [pic_social_021212_H.jpg] Jim Geraghty: Five Lessons from the Sunshine State IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289823%2Ffive-lessons-sunshine-state-jim-geragh ty&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorschem e=light&height=20 Comments (37) [page_2012_goldberg_square.jpg] Jonah Goldberg: What is Wrong With This Guy? IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Fcorner%2F289833%2Fwhat-wrong-guy-jonah-goldberg&layout=but ton_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&heigh t=20 Comments (226) [page_2012_200_malkin_square.jpg] Michelle Malkin: First, They Came for the Catholics IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289803%2Ffirst-they-came-catholics-michelle-mal kin&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorsche me=light&height=20 Comments (37) [pic_social_020112_F.jpg] Victor Davis Hanson: A Campaign Dictionary IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289783%2Fcampaign-dictionary-victor-davis-hanso n&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme =light&height=20 Comments (12) [pic_homie_flat_020212_B.jpg] Levin & Ponnuru: Romney vs. Obamacare IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289907%2Fromney-vs-obamacare-yuval-levin&layout =button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colorscheme=light&h eight=20 Comments (83) [pic_giant_020212_D.jpg] Andrew C. McCarthy: Big-Government Republicans IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.national review.com%2Farticles%2F289905%2Fbig-government-republicans-andrew-c-mc carthy&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&colors cheme=light&height=20 Comments (83) [spacer.gif] Connect with NRO [facebook.png] [twitter.png] [email.png] [youtube.png] [rss.png] [display_steyn_12-07-11C.jpg] [shockwarning300x250.jpg] [ffc_waronisraeljoinus_300.jpg] [StFrancis_NatlReviewAd.jpg] [sms_reli_lib_300x250.jpg] © National Review Online 2012. All Rights Reserved. Home | Search | NR / Digital | Donate | Media Kit | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Log In Quantcast