Lesson #1 for anyone seeking to spread democracy in the Middle East is to expect the election of a political party that either supports terrorism or is opposed to democracy or both. Such an eventuality is bound to happen sometime. Last week it happened when the terrorist Hamas movement won a narrow but clear majority in the Palestinian parliament.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is quoted in yesterday's New York Times as admitting that the Bush administration had underestimated the electoral support for Hamas. That may be true. But the administration has always conceded that an anti-democratic or terrorist party might win somewhere sometime. And those critics of U.S. policy are either innocent or disingenuous when they treat the Hamas victory as a defeat for America's naïve promotion of democracy.
A policy that relied on the "right" parties always winning elections would indeed have been defeated—and it would indeed be naïve. Democracy promotion, like democratic theory in general, has to cope with the election of parties that are hostile to liberty, peace, their neighbors and a lot of other good things. The victory of Hamas is not a defeat but a test for democracy, its promotion, and its promoter-in-chief, George W. Bush.
They would all fail that test if they now conspired to keep Hamas out of power. Terrorist movements, Islamic fundamentalists, and secular radical parties such as the B'aath party would then draw the conclusion that there was little point in committing themselves to democratic rules if they were never allowed to win power. They would then be immune from the restraining effects of democracy such as the need to pay attention to the wishes of the voters. Their resort to terrorism would be unchecked.
Also, if Hamas were cheated, governments opposed by parties like Hamas would know that they could be as corrupt and despotic as they wished without losing their grip on power. The U.S. and/or the "international community" would quietly approve their suppression of elected opponents.
Yet "throwing the rascals out" is the most important power the voters possess in a democracy. Ordinary voters are like the English poet Philip Larkin who once remarked wryly that he didn't always get what he wanted but at least he didn't get what he didn't want. One unmistakable benefit of the recent Palestinian election is that the voters have dismissed the vicious, corrupt and despotic Fatah government that had, with international help, misgoverned them for so long. Good for them.
What, however, will be the consequences of a Hamas government? From a U.S. standpoint, that is a problem for foreign policy in general rather than for democracy promotion—the problem of a government that actively supports terrorism against one or several neighboring states.
To be sure, that is a major problem, but not an unprecedented one. The outgoing Fatah government in the Palestinian Authority condoned and even encouraged the waging of terrorism against Israel in several ways: by failing to suppress armed terrorist groups, whether Hamas or its own Al Aqsa Brigades, for instance, and by awarding pensions to the families of "suicide bombers."
Fatah played the same double game as Sinn Fein-IRA in Northern Ireland. Hamas and Al Aqsa (like the IRA) fired the rockets or primed the bombs while Fatah (like Sinn Fein) won elections and negotiated with the U.S. and Israel. With Hamas in power, that duplicity is no longer operative.
By calling for a coalition government with Fatah (without success), Hamas has signified that it recognizes it now has a problem of its own. How can an official Hamas government enjoy the privileges of near-statehood, the subsidies of the European Union, and a profitable economic relationship with Israel if it continues to commit terrorist atrocities in an anti-Israel war?
The short answer is that it cannot—at least if the U.S., the European Union, and the "international community" are even moderately true to their professed principles. Three instances of what they should do in future:
1. If terrorists belonging to the party that now governs the P.A. shoot rockets into Israel, then other states should support Israel's retaliation as being justifiable under international law.
2. If Hamas pays the families of suicide bombers, then the European Union, the U.S. and others should cut off their generous financial aid to the P.A. Last year aid from the EU (the P.A.'s biggest donor) alone amounted to more than $600 million.
3. And if a Hamas government asks for the resumption of such aid, then one condition should be its clear and irrevocable pledge to end terror.
With a current unemployment rate of 22 per cent in the P.A. even with high levels of aid, such tough conditions would give Hamas every incentive to scale back its terror agenda and to commit itself to a (relatively) peaceful politics. And if Hamas refused to abandon terror, then it would condemn the voters of the P.A. both to perpetual impoverishment and endless war—and in all likelihood condemn itself to losing the next election. After all, the P.A.'s voters now know that they can choose their masters.
But would Hamas hand over power merely because it had lost an election? That is the third problem facing democracy and its boosters. With little or no tradition of constitutional democracy, Middle East governments have in the past rigged elections, dismissed judges, and torn up constitutions in order to stay in power. How can the right of voters to throw the rascals out be firmly secured?
Turkey—the first and longest-lasting democracy in Islamic world—has given us the answer. Owing to its great national leader, Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish armed forces are in effect the guardians of his secular Western constitution. They act as a sort of armed Supreme Court. If governments influenced by Islamist parties threaten the Constitution, they intervene, rule for a while to restore the status quo, and then return to their barracks. They have done so twice since the Second World War.
European politicians currently insist on weakening this constitutional role to make Turkey democratically fit for admission to the EU. Rather they should study its lesson for Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other potential Mideast democracies—namely, that they need a strong army to guard new democratic constitutions against governments and parties that support democracy only when they are winning.
Is a democracy guarded by the army not an imperfect democracy? No more so than one guarded by a Supreme Court as in the U.S. And a far greater danger to democracy (and peace, and liberty) than either is the likely cowardice of the European Union, the "international community," and perhaps even the U.S. State Department when faced with an initial refusal of the Hamas government to change its terrorist ways.
For the voters in the P.A., as in Northern Ireland, would quickly sense that there was no serious cost to supporting terrorism. It could co-exist comfortably with democracy. Hamas would then be merely the first of many terrorist parties elected by the democracy that was supposed to be the antidote to terrorism.
Mr. O'Sullivan is editor at lrge of National Review. He is currently writing a book on Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul. He is a member of Benador Associates.
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