First Stirrings of Democracy in the Middle East

[Beet]

So, the neo-cons are on high again.

It remains to be seen however whether this high is temporary or permanent. So far, democracy has not been consolidated in a single new state.

Lebanon has "conducted several successful elections" prior to this, so a Syrian pullout at this point would be a nationalistic victory (for mainly Israel and some Lebanese) more than democratic one.

Also, these events are the cumulation of a build-up of events separate from Iraq.

Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 encouraged some Lebanese groups to demand that Syria withdraw its forces as well.

The passage of UNSCR 1559 in early October 2004 - a resolution calling for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and end its interference in Lebanese affairs - further emboldened Lebanese groups opposed to Syria's presence in Lebanon.

So, people are misleadingly connecting this with Iraq more than with the Israeli pullout in 2000 and the UN stand, as well as just the fact of Hariri's position switchover which occured in light of these above conditions. It is these latter things which mostly contributed to the events in Lebanon.

[Beet]

Beet, if it wasn't for U.S. pressure, Syria would've continued ignoring all calls to withdraw from Lebanon.

Syria is vulnerable to pressure tactics - case in point: 1999, when Turkey got tired of Syrian support for the PKK and mobilized its military along the Syrian border. Now, I was in graduate school at the time, and one of my teachers was retired ex-military, and he was an expert on Turkey. He told me that, yes, Turkey WOULD have invaded Syria if Syria hadn't buckled and expelled the PKK leader and others. By itself, Turkey would've crushed Syria. Add in the Israelis, who were gleefully mobilizing themselves at that time to Syria's south, and Syria was toast. And Syria knew it.

2005: The Turks, although not as pro-U.S., are still there. The Israelis are still there. Jordan has now become pro-U.S. The U.S. has forces to their east now, in addition to whatever power the U.S. can throw at them from the Mediterranean. Hell, even the French have forces in the Mediterranean. Syria is in a box, and as the U.S. increasingly turns over direct war-fighting inside Iraq to the Iraqis (not there yet, but getting there), it has more power and more bandwidth to spare for Syria. Syria, through its support for the Iraqi rebels, has earned the enmity of the U.S.

And Lebanon's previous elections have not been free and fair - Freedom House ratings.

The neo-cons may overstate the case sometimes, but they're more right than wrong about the big picture. Yes, democracy ain't totally secure yet - but now, in 2005, we're actually talking about trying to secure democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Lebanon. In 2000, could you have imagined that at all?

WMS,

Syria is certainly vulnerable to pressure form the outside, and the level of U.S. pressure on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon is certainly a major variable in the balance of events in that country. The main pressures on Syria however are based mainly on various domestic and immediate developments within Lebanon, secondarily on international pressures from other countries, of which the U.S. is one, and with very little connection to the goings-on in Iraq. The Freedom House report notes that opposition to Syrian occupation began to build domestically in 2000 and 2001. Recently it was again revived by domestic factors.

The main point is that many of the heralded events advancing democracy in the region have been long separate from the neocons' strategy of trying to build a democracy in Iraq. The Gulf states had been moving towards democracy by 2000, and Arafat was going to pass away no matter what. The new "states" have had experiments with democracy have so far achieved only limited success, as democracies under the U.S. military, but not necessarily able to survive on their own. The Afghanistan government for example controls actually very little of the country. The Iraq 'government' of course commands no sovereignty over the country by traditional definitions, and it is still unknown when it may assume that responsibility. Yes, this can be seen as progress from the past, but for the large part it is still an experiment and will likely remain so for the forseeable future.