Reflecting on the Cold War in Statecraft, Margaret Thatcher writes, “it is always true that the world that is can best be understood by those conversant with the world that was.” None are more conversant with the realities of the Cold War, or more adept at drawing out its lessons for today, than those who saw it–not just lived through it, but actually saw it for what it was–from the inside. In light of how few such individuals are, when they speak, it’s worth listening.

I recently had the chance to ask one of those people, Natan Sharansky, about what may be today’s most important political question: the prospects for democracy in the Arab and Muslim world. The former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, currently minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, is working on a book about the need to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. (Full disclosure: I’ve been assisting with research on the book.) We sat down in his quiet Jerusalem home one day during the Passover holiday to talk about it.

Sharansky’s opinions about contemporary Arab dictatorships are rooted deeply in his dissident experience. He believes that all people want freedom, understood first and foremost as the ability to express one’s opinions without fear. This freedom is the essence of democracy, he says, and if given the choice, all people will choose it. Under the right circumstances, he adds, everyone can attain it.

But it’s not up to them alone. Beyond wishing and waiting for democracies to emerge, Sharansky says the West has an obligation to actively promote them. As a human-rights activist in the 1970s, he learned firsthand that when Western officials tried to befriend the USSR rather than pressure it to reform, they only made it easier for the regime to continue being its brutal self at home and a menace abroad.

“When I argue today that Israel’s partners in the Arab world are dissidents,” he says,

those in my government laugh. ‘Where do you see dissidents in the Palestinian Authority?’ And I say, ‘Where did you see dissidents in Stalin’s Russia? You didn’t, because he was killing all of them. But you did see dissidents in Brezhnev’s Russia–why? Because the pressure from the West was very great, so the price Brezhnev would have to pay for killing dissidents was high.
It is true that today there are no dissidents among the Palestinians, because every time there are, Arafat kills or persecutes them. Even in Egypt things are this way. And in Syria Assad recently put another 14 dissidents in prison. So the question is always, what is the price? If these dictators can afford to kill all of the dissidents, the West is not putting enough of a price on that behavior.

But what if the lack of dissidents in the Arab world reflects something more enduring: What if Arab or Muslim political culture is intrinsically inimical to democracy?

Sharansky says we’ve heard similar claims about other now-democratic nations. “The argument is traditionally that those who don’t have democracy are incapable of it, because their history or their culture is different. That was the argument about the Soviet Union and that’s what I hear all the time about the Arab world.” But not only does this view relegate Arabs and Muslims to a position of cultural and political inferiority, it ignores the basic desire of every human being to lead a normal life. “Too often we in the West are trying to convince ourselves that there are people who prefer to be suicide bombers, there are people who prefer not to give a normal education to their children…confusing fully the policy of the dictators with the situation of the people who are under them.”

Even if the desire exists, though, why, aside from purely humanitarian concerns, should the free world work to encourage it? After all, Israel may soon start down the path of Sharon’s disengagement plan, unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza and parts of the West Bank and effectively telling the Palestinians to go their own way. Sharansky has come out vocally against this plan, which Likud voters also rejected in a referendum Sunday. In Sharanksy’s view, disengagement is simply not a long-term solution to Israel’s predicament.

He says:

When we in the government decided that unfortunately we have no partner in peace among the Palestinians and have to make a one-sided disengagement, my argument was that we can dream about disengagement but we can’t just say to them, do whatever you want. Because of the nature of their regime, they will turn any concession into a terrorist war against us.
The hope, at the very beginning of 1993, was that it was good that Arafat was a dictator because he would control Hamas. But this became ridiculous, since Arafat as a dictator did everything to make his people hate us more. Every piece of property and every tool you gave him he turned into a tool for hating us. He used his autonomy to promote hatred, and that is what he will continue to do now.

In other words, it’s not merely decent and honorable to promote democracy–it’s necessary for the security of the free world. Dictators are always looking for reasons to go to war, and the West is their preferred excuse. While no country will become a democracy overnight, Sharansky thinks there are steps the United States and other free nations can take to start the process.

Sharansky says:

Western leaders say, democratic reform is very important but you can’t ignore our extremely important economic interests. I remember that when, after the Gulf War, I was raising this question, I said that the United States saved two countries, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and had a chance to demand Saudi reform…. Now I understand you can’t demand that a country automatically be democratic, but you can start by raising questions about the conditions–about freedom of immigration, or permission for groups of people who think differently to enter Saudi Arabia (starting with Jews, for example, who are officially not allowed). And what was the answer I got? The answer was that Saudi Arabia is not about democracy, it’s about the stability of the West, and that’s why we have to support them. Ten years later, this stability brought all the financial and ideological support to September 11.

Although dictators are certainly to blame, then, for the sorry state of political affairs in the Middle East, we should understand that “we in the West are active allies of those dictators by not becoming the real allies of dissident voices…. Whatever our immediate interests are in keeping the status quo, in the long run these dictatorships are the biggest threat to us.”

But if Arab and Muslim dictatorships pose such a danger to the free world, why is it that democratic Israel gets so much flak in some Western circles, while in comparison her non-democratic neighbors get so little?

First, Sharansky says, many well-meaning people place short-term stability in the region above the long-term importance of democracy. “They desire to see the situation stable–and Israel, they believe, is the source of all the conflicts. There’s also no way to put pressure on terrorist groups; it’s much easier to put pressure on a democracy, so they demand that Israel behave.”

Another factor is the Left’s ideological war against the West:

Today, if you look at those fighting for the rights of women and gays and clean nature against pollution, they are ready to see as their allies the most awful regimes. Those people are now suffering from us, they think, so we have to take care of our own problems first.
Unfortunately, there was always a lack of moral clarity on the Left. Those concerned with human rights were ready to play it down. There were social democrats who wanted to see the Soviet Union as a stable partner of the U.S. Their desire to find allies and to fight the evils of the West was so strong that some–not all–of them were ready to ignore the awful nature of the Soviet Union.

Finally, Sharansky says, anti-Semitism is a real and growing problem:

When some people say don’t confuse anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel, I say of course there is disagreement about some political issues–about the fence, about the settlements–and that’s legitimate. But if you’re using the same methods as those who criticize Jews qua Jews–demonization, delegitimization, and double standards, the classic tools used against the Jews and those so often used now against Israel–this is the old anti-Semitism in new clothes.
No doubt there are double standards in how international laws are applied to Israel and how they are applied to other countries…. The fact that Israel is accused of human rights violations in the U.N. more than all the dictators in the world together is evidence that international laws are used differently against Israel than all other countries.

What cause, then, does Sharansky find for hope? Here again he looks to experience. A democratic Middle East “seems like a dream now,” but so too did democracy once seem like a dream–at least to many–for the Soviet Union.

“In 1969, when my friend Andrei Amalrik wrote Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?,” predicting that the USSR would collapse, “Western intellectuals…thought he was a courageous but crazy guy.” But to Sharansky and others on the inside, it was clear that the regime was untenable, and that with enough pressure from both inside and out it would someday cave in.

Today there are Arab and Muslim dissidents who believe the same about the regimes in which they live. It’s up to the West to listen to them, support them, believe in their strength, and exert real pressure on the governments that oppress them. We beneficiaries of freedom have an outstanding propensity to take it for granted and forget what’s necessary to preserve it. Fortunately there are men like Natan Sharansky to remind us.

–Rachel Zabarkes Friedman is an NR associate editor.