Suspicious Alliances

Although the United States and the nations of Europe dedicate millions of dollars every year to the so-called march toward democracy and reform in the Arab World, it seems that these Western benefactors are only striving to establish a democracy of limited dimensions. They seek a democratic movement with restricted freedoms, existing within a framework they themselves sketched in accordance with their own strategic interests in the region, such as safeguarding the security of the occupier state of Israel.

The current situation in Egypt and the rest of the Arab World doubtless poses a problem for America. Recent events recall the American strategy for dealing with the Libyan situation, where the Americans called and continue to call for the fall of that regime. Calls for regime-abandonment were similarly repeated in Egypt until the fall of Mubarak. This strategy has been implemented in a consistent and routine fashion — recall Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier in Haiti and Suharto in Indonesia. What do we learn from these cases? That you support your dictator allies only up to a certain point. Then you force them to step down, you call for an orderly transfer of power, you declare your love for democracy and finally you try to return matters as rapidly as possible to the way they were before. This is precisely what is happening now in Egypt with the Westerners’ declared alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, an alliance designed to immobilize a rising tide of democracy essentially incompatible with the imperialist enterprise.

There has been a clear conflict between two distinct groups in Egypt: on one hand, the protestors calling for democracy; on the other, those of the old strategy who want to re-assert their control. By the latter group I am referring to an alliance between certain powerful religious forces and certain strains of liberalism which would benefit from the presence of an undemocratic regime. Sure, these two factions are contradictory and incompatible, but what are the available opportunities right now for achieving a genuine democracy?

On this note, the American intellectual Noam Chomsky, in one of his analyses of the present situation in the Arab World, has suggested that the powerful forces which control the mechanisms of political transition and change do not wish for genuine democracy. He also suggested that America and Europe are apprehensive about the establishment of democracy in the region, as democracy can lead to genuine independence. And so, Chomsky points out, Americans and Europeans speak about radical Islam, even if their arguments are lacking in sense and justification — consider that America and England were the traditional supporters of radical Islam against the rise of the nationalist movement in the Arab World.

It appears that this exact alliance has returned to rear its head once again. Moreover, it is acting openly and conspicuously, as the old manner of hiding and concealing and playing under the table is no longer possible. There is nothing to prevent such alliances from reigning in democratic revolutions, whether in Egypt or elsewhere, for the sake of American and Western interests in the region.

The future, therefore, comes to us carrying a number of serious fears concerning the nature of such alliances. We are concerned for the course of democracy, as democracy is essentially incompatible with the plotting and enterprising of a West which will fight to preserve circumstances in ways it deems most suitable going forward, and by way of collusion with traditionalist forces which cannot survive within the framework of democracy.