Time for a Freedom Doctrine
Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Today, everyone and his cousin supports the “freedom agenda.” Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons who dared challenge the notion that Arabs — as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans — were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another example of U.S. imperialism.
Now it seems everyone, even the left, is enthusiastic for Arab democracy. Fine. Fellow travelers are welcome. But simply being in favor of freedom is not enough. We need foreign policy principles to ensure democracy for the long run.
No need to reinvent the wheel. After World War II, Western Europe was newly freed but in ruin — and in play. The democracy we favored for the continent faced internal and external threats from communist totalitarians. So the United States adopted the Truman Doctrine, which declared America’s intention to defend these newly free nations. This meant not just protecting allies at the periphery, but supporting democratic elements within Western Europe against powerful and determined domestic communist parties.
As the states of the Arab Middle East throw off decades of dictatorship, their democratic future faces a major threat from the new totalitarianism: Islamism. As in Soviet days, the threat is both internal and external. Iran, a mini-version of the old Soviet Union, has its own allies and satellites — Syria, Lebanon and Gaza — and agents operating throughout the region to extend Islamist influence. That's precisely why, in this revolutionary moment, Iran boasts of an Islamist wave sweeping the Arab world.
Our foreign policy must be guided by long-range practical principles: a Freedom Doctrine composed of the following elements:
1. The United States supports democracy throughout the Middle East. It will use its influence to help democrats everywhere throw off dictatorial rule.
2. Democracy is more than just elections. It requires a free press, the rule of law, the freedom to organize, the establishment of independent political parties and the peaceful transfer of power. The transition to democracy and initial elections must allow time for these institutions to establish themselves.
3. The only U.S. interest in the internal governance of these new democracies is to help protect them against totalitarians, foreign and domestic. The recent Hezbollah coup in Lebanon and the Hamas dictatorship in Gaza dramatically demonstrate how anti-democratic elements that achieve power democratically can destroy the very democracy that empowered them.
4. Therefore, it will be U.S. policy to oppose the inclusion of totalitarian parties in any government in newly liberated Arab states.
We may not have the power to prevent this. So be it. The Muslim Brotherhood may today be so relatively strong in Egypt, for example, that a seat at the table is inevitable. But under no circumstances should a presidential spokesman say, as did Robert Gibbs, that the new order “has to include a whole host of important nonsecular actors.” Why gratuitously legitimize Islamists? Instead, Americans should be urgently supporting secular democratic parties in Egypt and elsewhere with training, resources and diplomacy.
We should be clear-eyed about our preferred outcome — real democracies governed by committed democrats — and develop policies to see this through. A freedom doctrine is a freedom agenda given direction by guiding principles. Truman did it. So can we.
