Hamas Upset in Palestinian Elections Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Latest count has Hamas at 76, Fatah at 43.  For more on what this means, look here. 

I applaud Bush for saying:  "I have made it very clear that a political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal."  I have always thought the Administration's refusal to deal with Arafat was sound policy with good results.  But now virtually everything needs to be rethought. 

This will prompt heavy introspection on democracy promotion, support given to nascent democratic governments and movements, the role of extremist organizations in democratic settings and virtually everything else about the region.  We will feel the reverberations of the ballots cast for years to come.  More later.

Comments

[Greg Priddy]

"Even if democracy were achieved in the Middle East, what kind of governments would it produce? Would they cooperate with the United States on important policy objectives besides curbing terrorism, such as advancing the Arab-Israeli peace process, maintaining security in the Persian Gulf, and ensuring steady supplies of oil? No one can predict the course a new democracy will take, but based on public opinion surveys and recent elections in the Arab world, the advent of democracy there seems likely to produce new Islamist governments that would be much less willing to cooperate with the United States than are the current authoritarian rulers." -- F. Gregory Gause, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005.

He's sounding kind of prescient today, eh?

[J Thomas]

September/October 2005?

Prescient?

What do we know now that we didn't know then?

What have we seen one way or another about cooperation with the USA by new islamist governments?

[Dan Kervick]

This will prompt heavy introspection on democracy promotion ...

I can't wait for the introspective process to begin. Perhaps you should begin by toning down the name of the website. Democracy Slingshot? Depleted Democracy Arsenal? Democracy Ballyhoo?

[Judah]

So, as the Republicans are trying to tear down FDR's domestic legacy, Dan here wants to do the same to his foreign policy one?

[Dan Kervick]

My comment was more prediction than recommendation Judah. My guess is that the Hamas victory is going to take a lot of steam out of the democracy promotion rhetoric from the neoconservatives on the Republican side, and the Truman Democrats or Muscular Wilsonians on the Democratic side. Now that it looks like democracy doesn't always automatically benefit the US and Israel, they will start looking into Plan B. I just wonder how long the grandiose labels can stick as the rhetoric of democratization becomes increasignly hedged and qualified.

Personally, I think democratization is a fine thing, and continue to hope for, and look forward to the gradual democratization of the world, both within states and communities, and in the larger area of global governance. But I also continue to think our chief challenge is the work for peace and security in the here and now, the promotion of global prosperity, and the institutional binding together of states into cooperative networks that serve to diminish the motives for violence and aggression. This is a kind of unglamorous maintenance and engineering work that cannot wait for states to become democracies first. We don't need a Grand Alliance of Democracies. Basic peace and security work, and the care of economic health should be at the top of the agenda.

Democratization is beneficial, but not a panacaea. As the world's experience with the United States the past few years has shown, democratic states are perfectly capable of adopting a belligerant posture, when their publics are animated by fear, nostalgic chauvinism, and the desire for control, supremacy or vengeance.

And I for one do not believe the reigning security dogma of our age - that the greatest threats come from failed states and stateless terrorist organizations. The main threats to peace continue to lie in competition among stable, powerful states - and in the absence of global governance. Even if every state was a democracy, those democracies would still have conflicting interests, and would be engaged in struggles over resources, wealth and influence. And many of these states are very heavily armed. If we collectively blow ourselves up in the century to come, it's not going to be some terrorist with a suitcase nuke who does it, or some crazed warlord in an impoverished failed state basket case. It will be the result of war between large states.

[J Thomas]

Dan, while it appears to me that you're right all the way down the line on this one, it seems unstrategic. Who are you speaking for, that this line of thinking benefits?

It doesn't benefit our defense industry to talk about big enemies this year. We aren't ready to talk war with china yet, they're still lending us oodles of money to spend on our defense industry. So we have to use international terrorists as a stopgap until the china threat is ready.

It doesn't benefit Democrats to talk like this. It's a non-starter of a political plank.

I look at your talk and I try to think -- who benefits? Who gains if people see that you're right? And I can't see a single interest group who benefits by pushing your line of thought. Perhaps that's why no one but you has brought it up? A lone voice, preaching in the wilderness....

[Matthew Shugart]

Before even thinking about whether to scale back democracy promotion because democracy may produce the "wrong" winners, let's make sure we first make electoral-system design a more prominent part of democracy promotion.

Hamas had a huge manufactured majority (58% of the seats on 43% or less of the votes), and such an outcome was entirely predictable, given the electoral system used.

For their own reasons, the electoral systems chosen in Afghanistan and esepcially Iraq--two cases where American influence was considerably stronger than in Palestine--were also poor fits.

[J Thomas]

Matthew Shugart, what objection do you have to their electoral system, apart from Hamas winning? Didn't Fatah set it up that way specifically because they thought it would favor them instead of Hamas?

[kamil]

There are certain things in life related to smoking that simply cannot :)
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