Context matters, and so does U.S. support

I gave a talk yesterday at West Virginia University’s Law School on U.S. policy towards democracy-seeking rebellions.  The star attraction at the conference was Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works:  The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.  Some of you will have seen my tweets summarizing her talk, which I won’t try to reproduce here.  Suffice it to say that she provides hard statistical evidence that nonviolent civil resistance really does work, even against the most repressive regimes, and she gives a coherent rationale for why.  She also notes that foreign monetary assistance does not appear to work well.

I was asked to address the U.S. policy response, in particular to the Arab Spring.  Here are my speaking notes, which of course do not represent exactly what I said:

West Virginia University

 November 10, 2011

1.  While I am an admirer of Dr. Chenoweth’s quantitative methodology, I am going to rely today on the much less impressive techniques of the historian and diplomat:  stories, I would call them, rather than “cases.”

2.  Arab spring is far from over yet, but I’ll try to focus on the transition phase:  that is, the phase after a regime falls and before a new one has yet emerged.

3.  I am thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of what Dr. Chenoweth calls civic resistance in the earlier phase.

4.  But things get much more complicated when that resistance has to turn into something more constructive.

5.  There are three cases already in the transition phase, more or less:  Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.  Each is quite different.

6.  In Tunisia, the autocrat left the scene quickly and the regime was pushed aside fairly easily.  First elections have already been held and there is a clear roadmap ahead.  A classic, fairly smooth case, with no sign of counter-revolution on the horizon.  Good chance of consolidating a democratic regime.

7.  In Egypt, the autocrat also left pretty quickly, but the regime was not pushed aside easily and the protesters called on the army to manage the transition.  It is doing so, but in a way that consolidates its control over some aspects of governance (security, foreign policy) and a big piece of the economy.  I’d say much less likelihood of success in the transition.  Might be rather like Serbia, where a similar deal was made with the security forces and the transition has been slow and halting as a result.

8.  In Libya, there was a violent revolution that has the advantage of having swept the old regime away completely, with foreign help.  There has been good leadership, decent planning and ample resources.  I give the Libyans a decent chance at success in consolidating a democracy, albeit less probability than Tunisia.

9.  What of Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, all of which are still in progress?

10.  Yemen has turned violent, even if the protesters themselves have stuck with nonviolence.  The odds of successful transition to democracy seem to be small, because the opposition to Saleh most likely to take power is the violent one, which is no more inclined to democracy than he is.

11.  Syria could be headed in the same direction, though there is still some hope of keeping it on a nonviolent course.  That’s vital for success.  Violence will lead to sectarian and ethnic breakdown (similar to Iraq) that will be difficult to overcome.

12.  Bahrain is an odd case.  The protesters have been nonviolent, but the crackdown was effective, unlike Syria and Yemen.  A lot depends on the Bassiouni commission report:  will it revive nonviolent resistance, or will the regime be able to keep the lid on?

13.  What of the other monarchies:  Morocco and Jordan?  Saudi Arabia and Oman?

14.  These four, each in its own way, is attempting to preempt resistance with reform, albeit minimal reform in the case of Riyadh.  So far, they are largely succeeding.

15.  I do think the monarchies have some advantage in this respect:  not because they are somehow nicer, but because their legitimacy is understood not to derive from elections but rather from heredity.

16.  It is much harder for a republic to claim that there is no need to change who is in power in order to reform the system.

17.  But that does not mean the monarchies will succeed forever.  The fact that all Saudi Arabia experts agree that it can’t happen there, that the succession is ensured, is a clear earlier indicator that it may well happen there.

18.  If I were advising the Saudis and the other monarchies, I would suggest they get ahead of the curve and stay ahead, by taking truly meaningful steps to redistribute power and ensure that their security services are shifting from protecting the rulers to protecting the ruled.

19.  If there is one mistake common to all the Arab Spring successes so far—and also to those places where rebellion is still in progress—it is the use of regime violence against the population.

20.  These guys need to learn that legitimacy comes from the people, who will be much more inclined to confer it on those who protect them than on those who attack them.

21.  We should also be thinking about how we can encourage security sector reform in advance of rebellion and revolution—it would be far cheaper and more effective than doing it after the fact.

22.  America should certainly be supporting those who demonstrate nonviolently for their rights, but I confess to doubts that it should be done through embassies.

23.  Robert Ford, our ambassador in Syria who has bravely gone to “observe” demonstrations, is the exception that proves the rule.

24.  The rule is that embassies need to stay on good terms with the host government, even if it is an autocracy.  They cannot be implicated in support to revolutionaries.

25.  Assistance to democracy and human rights advocates should flow not through embassies but through nongovernmental organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute as well as non-American counterparts.

26.  The more these can be made distinct from our official representation, the better.

27.  America is condemned to spreading democracy.  If you really believe that all people are created equal, you have no choice but to sympathize with those who claim their rights.  But the specific modalities for when and how to do it depend a great deal on context.

PS:  In answer to a question, I said yes it can happen in Iran, but American efforts to support it there are problematic because of our fraught relationship with Tehran, which includes both concern about nuclear weapons and attempts to foment ethnic strife inside Iran.  In the end, I think Obama got the reaction to the Green Movement about right in the end:  rhetorical support without repainting it red, white and blue.