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In Tuesday's New York Times, Paul Krugman seized on the Bali blast to call the war itself into question. Our enemies are smart, said Krugman. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, rests on a fragile economic foundation. Ever since the onset of the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia's economy has been kept afloat, not by its large companies, but by small ventures on the country's periphery — like Bali's tourist industry. By destroying tourism, the terrorists threaten to send Indonesia's economy into freefall, thus turning the populace away from the government and toward the Islamists. On top of that, said Krugman, the Islamist surge in Pakistan hints at radicalization of the world's second-most populous Muslim country. Krugman strains to pin these problems on the administration. He grudgingly admits that America couldn't have prevented the blast in Bali. Yet Krugman uses the Bali bombings to claim that our victory in Afghanistan has done little to weaken the terrorists. And wouldn't things have been better in Pakistan, Krugman asks, if we'd allowed that country to increase its textile exports to America? After that, Krugman moves on to the usual dovish claptrap about the administration's supposedly shifting and contradictory case for an invasion of Iraq. The upshot of Krugman's argument is that if we invade Iraq, we can expect to see a radicalization of the entire Muslim world — not just the Arabs, but even massive and heretofore moderate Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. Attack Iraq and we get a full-blown "clash of civilizations." Krugman doesn't understand (and doesn't want to understand) the all too real reasons why we must invade Iraq. I've already explained why an attack is necessary, and why the seeming confusion of the case against Iraq is no confusion at all. Nor is Krugman right to lay responsibility for the problems in Indonesia or Pakistan at America's door. It's silly to say that a single blast in Bali more than a year after September 11 means that our victory in Afghanistan did nothing to weaken the terrorists. Much more would have happened in the interim had we not disrupted al Qaeda. Bombs in Bali only show how far afield the terrorists had to go to strike back. No doubt our war in Afghanistan and our pursuit of al Qaeda in Pakistan has stirred resentment among some Pakistani's, but Krugman cites this as if to say that we shouldn't have brought down the Taliban to begin with. The upshot of Krugman's policy is that, after having suffered a deadly blow in New York and Washington, we mustn't do anything that could possibly make any Muslim anywhere in the world the least bit angry. Higher textile imports? Maybe. But that's not what handed Pakistan's Islamists their surprising showing. Pakistan is rife with wild rumors about Americans and Jews conspiring to take down the World Trade Center. There are even rumors that America has already used a nuclear weapon on Afghanistan. That sort of paranoia and wounded cultural pride can't be turned around by an increase in textile import quotas. Krugman and the doves are wrong about a lot. They fail to see that we must put a stop to Saddam before he obtains nuclear weapons. Nor do they understand that the fight against al Qaeda cannot be held hostage to Muslim reaction. But the fact that we're forced to fight doesn't mean that a full-scale clash of civilizations is impossible. On the contrary, it is entirely possible. Nor does our need to diffuse the long-term danger of Islamism by democratizing the Islamic world guarantee that democracy will take. And that is our problem. The doves can't see that we have no choice but to fight. Yet they may be more right than the hawks want to admit about the difficult consequences of a war. Before I get to the gloom, it's worth noting that the Indonesian situation isn't quite a bad as Krugman makes it out to be. It's true that the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 provoked some wild propaganda by president Suharto and his Islamist allies. Suharto and the radical Islamists succeeded for a time in turning popular anger over the economic melt-down against a supposed conspiracy by the Vatican, Israel, secular Muslims, and Chinese Indonesian businessmen. In the furor over these accusations, more than 100,000 ethnic Chinese were forced to flee the country. This time, however, if the economy tanks after the implosion of the Indonesian tourist industry, it will be tough to fob the blame off on anyone but the Islamists themselves. Ever since the war on Afghanistan, Indonesia's Islamists have been calling for attacks on American tourists. So the connection between the Bali blasts and Islamism is already cemented in the public mind. And while president Megawati Sukarnoputri has resisted acknowledging that al Qaeda was at work in her country, the government is now open about al Qaeda's presence. Megawati may have been reluctant to take on the Islamists (and their friends from the old Suharto dictatorship) up to now, but this blow at the heart of Indonesia's crucial tourist industry has forced the president's hand. Now she means to see to it that, if the economy tanks, the blame is placed squarely on the shoulders of the Islamists, and not on the Vatican, Israel, the CIA — or her. In short, economic damage from this attack could easily backfire on the Islamists. That's exactly why the Islamists have avoided taking public responsibility for the bombings. (For more, see this important interview with one of our best experts on Indonesia.) Nonetheless, the Bali bombings and the Pakistani election tell a sobering story about the prospects for democracy in the Muslim world. In many ways, Indonesia has been the bright shining hope for Muslim democracy. We're used to thinking of secular Turkey as the model for a democratic Islam. But Turkish secularism has been at an impasse, unable to expand much beyond the urban elite, and hard pressed to hold off Turkey's own Islamist parties. Indonesia, on the other hand, has been split between radical Islamists (who are allied with Suharto's old cronies) and what is arguably the only truly popular and pluralist Muslim democracy movement in the world (a movement allied with Christians, ethnic Chinese, and other minorities). In fact, for a brief time after Suharto's fall, a reform coalition headed by an apparently moderate and pluralist Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, held power in Indonesia. But Wahid was toppled by partisans of the old regime. Then, in the wake of September 11, Megawati's vice president made shockingly militant anti-American statements. And just before the American attack on Afghanistan, one of the most powerful Muslim organizations in the country called for jihad against America. In fact, the call for jihad came from a Muslim leader who had himself gotten his Ph.D. at UCLA. Of course, it would have been silly for us to hold back our attack on Afghanistan for fear of radicalizing Indonesian Muslims. But the fact is, while Indonesia is still fairly moderate as Muslim countries go, our war on al Qaeda did help the radicals get an upper hand in Indonesia. We'll see if, with the bombings on Bali, the Islamists have overplayed that hand. But reaction in the Muslim world following an attack on Saddam is a chance we do take. As we've seen, even the most moderate of Muslim states can turn on a dime, and move toward radicalization. In his extraordinarily important new book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, Kenneth Pollack has an excellent analysis of the possibility of an uprising in "the Arab street" in the wake of an attack on Iraq. Despite the failure of the Arab street to explode after our war on Afghanistan, Pollack concedes that Iraq could be different. His main argument for optimism is the fact that officials in Arab countries seem to be privately encouraging an attack on Saddam. If these Arab rulers don't think that a quick and successful strike at Saddam will ignite their streets, Pollack argues, then we can probably rest easy. That makes the Islamist surge in the recent Pakistani elections all the more disturbing. Sophisticated Pakistani political observers, as well as Western diplomats, had been unanimous in their conviction that the Islamists could never get a foothold among the prosperous middle classes of Pakistan's cities. Yet the fundamentalists made major gains in Islamabad, and in other cities as well. And those absurd rumors about Jewish and American conspiracies to blow up the World Trade Center were apparently rife among the middle classes. So if knowledgeable Muslim observers can underestimate the strength of Islamism among the middle classes, might they also be wrong about the potential for an eruption on "the street" during an invasion of Iraq? Clearly, the (necessary) attack on Saddam has the potential to set off a serious reaction in the Muslim world. Yet the real lesson of the Bali blast and the Pakistani election may be what they say about the aftermath of victory in Iraq. Proponents of democratization in the Muslim world may be right (within limits) to say that a bit of de-stabilization may be just what we need right now in the Muslim world. It's true that the status quo in the Middle East is unproductive and due for a change. But it may simply be wishful thinking to believe that, after all the Middle East's cards have been thrown into the air, they will fall down to earth in good democratic order. If even Indonesia, home of the largest and most moderate democracy movement in the Islamic world, can be radicalized and thrown into economic chaos by the war (and by its own internal divisions), what will happen in a conquered Iraq? And the Pakistani's remind us that voters can use the ballot box to kill democracy by installing an Islamist dictatorship. Most disturbing, even wealth and middle-class status are no guarantee of immunity against Islamism's appeal. There are several deeper problems at work here. For one thing, elections alone do not a democracy make. It took decades for the British to extend the franchise to their whole populace, for example. Without widespread literacy and commitment to democratic principles, a universal franchise can mean the installation of a dictatorship. So a rapid move to elections in a conquered Iraq could easily backfire. And the proponents of democratization in a conquered Iraq will be faced with a fundamental problem. Do they take the Turkish route, and rest democracy on a secular liberalism? If so, they risk losing the larger populace and limiting reform to a small elite (the very danger now faced by Turkey). Or, do they go the Indonesian route and cultivate a moderate and pluralist blend of Islam and democracy. If so, they risk turning power over to an apparently moderate Muslim movement that could be radicalized into Islamism in a twinkling (the danger now facing in Indonesia). Now maybe our conquest in Iraq will create an opening for democracy unlike any yet seen in the Muslim world. Muslims, we are often told, have a special respect for the sword. But that is not a democratic trait. (For more skepticism on the notion of Arab democracy, see the latest on Martin Kramer's blog, Sandstorm.) I am, in short, a reluctant imperialist, worried about Muslim reaction, believing that democracy will come (and probably should come) only very slowly to the Middle East, but also convinced that we have no choice but to replace Saddam and commit ourselves to (very) gradual democratic reform in the region as a whole. — Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. |
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Bali blast and the surprisingly strong showing of Islamists in the recent
Pakistani election are signposts on the hard road ahead for the United
States. Neither the blast nor the balloting tell us that the war is a
mistake. Yet taken together, these two events do suggest that Muslim democracy
is a good way off.
