Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

So far, two Arab governments have fallen. Libya is crucial. Gaddaffi has responded much more brutally than either Ben Ali or Mubarak. It will be a terrible message to other dictators if this means he stays in office. There needs to be another message: that he cannot now go into a comfortable retirement. There need to be consequences for his actions. I am fairly indifferent to whether it is the Milosevic option (trial at The Hague), the Saddam option (trial in Libya) or the Mussolini option (that the mob should manage things themselves).

But revolution needs to be the fallback position. Revolutions rarely work in the medium term. The French, Russian and Iranian revolutions, for example, replaced dreadful governments with something even worse. The more violent a revolution is, the less likely it is to produce an improvement in government. Once it is established that the people can overthrow governments it gets very tempting for the losers of free and fair election to take to the streets, undermining both democracy and development.

It is far better that governments should reform internally. As Paul Wolfowitz said today on Sky News, "I still believe that if Mubarak had started to reform ten years ago he could have left office as a hero and not as a goat".

Perhaps the experience of seeing what happens when we mistake stagnation for stability will cause the West to look again at its strategy. Obama should never have abandoned the Bush Freedom Agenda.

But can we realistically hope that any Arab countries will reform? Well, yes we can, and some have been doing so. Jordan began on this path in 2005 and only reversed course in 2009. Egypt also appeared to begin the process in 2005, though this was probably not serious, even when George Bush was still in power. Kuwait, Morocco and Lebanon are all rated as 'partially free' by Freedom House, whereas all other Arab countries, along with Iran, are 'not free'.

Kuwait has been undergoing a steady process of reform. In 1998 naturalised citizens were given the vote for the first time. In 2005 women got the vote. These are significant changes. They do not go far enough. For example, citizens need to be naturalised for 30 years to vote. More than half the country's citizens cannot vote, and only one third of the population are citizens. The principle, however, has been established. Naturalised citizens can now vote, and reducing the waiting period is probably a smaller step than conceding the principle in the first place. If Kuwait wishes to be accepted as a democratic constitutional monarchy, the royal family will need to withdraw from politics.

Morocco too, seems to have the potential for gradual transition to freedom and democracy. If I were advising the king, I would suggest establishing meaningful local government with real democratic control. Follow that with radical devolution and then a democratically elected parliament and a ceremonial monarch.