In 1980, when Lech Walesa scrambled over a shipyard fence in Gdansk to lead a strike, no one knew whether that courageous act would ignite protests beyond the Polish city. It did.
The protests helped to fuel a succession of events that eventually led to the historic moment in 1989 when Germans wielded hammers and chisels to topple the Berlin Wall. The liberation of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union followed.
Scarcely more than two weeks ago, tens of thousands of Egyptians swarmed into Cairo’s Tahrir Square and refused to leave until President Hosni Mubarak resigned and the Egyptian government met their demands for free elections and economic reform.
That day came sooner than anyone imagined. On Friday, a day after he delivered a rambling speech in which he refused to step down, Mubarak acknowledged reality: He had lost the country he ruled for three decades.
As Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman delivered the brief announcement of Mubarak’s resignation, exultant crowds chanted, “Egypt is free! Egypt is free!”
Is Cairo is the new Gdansk? Will it lead to the fall of dictatorships around the Arab world? Egypt is the center of the Arab world, because of its size, location and history. A tectonic shift there rumbles across the entire region.
Today, in every Arab country in the Middle East — from Syria to Jordan, Saudi Arabia to Iran — dictators and potentates face a changed world. The world After Mubarak.
The rise of democracy in the Middle East is an exhilarating prospect.
There will be consequences American officials can’t anticipate. There will be developments that Americans will find alarming. The line from deposing a dictator to electing a stable, democratic government isn’t straight.
Democracy doesn’t resolve every political or economic ill, nor does it prevent extremists from gaining — and abusing — power. Democratic movements peacefully toppled the Soviet Union, but also resulted in war in the Balkans. The democratic movement in the Palestinian territories led to free elections in Gaza in 2006 and the disastrous rise to power of Hamas.
Like it or not, much of what happens in Egypt and every other Middle Eastern country is beyond U.S. control. American money and power may influence leaders, may encourage democracy advocates. But the hard work of driving a dictator from power is done on the ground, by the people who have the most to gain: Those who live under the repressive rule of dictators and tyrants. Egyptians proved that on Friday.
Now an even larger mission looms.
Egypt has shrugged off a dictator, but the military is still in control. The Egyptian constitution must be amended to allow for free elections. Political parties and other democratic institutions need time to form and grow and mature. That won’t happen by the fall, when elections are planned. Hang on for a bumpy ride.
We don’t know how Egypt’s revolution will play out. But we are confident that in the long run, more freedom in the Arab world will boost U.S. interests and improve the lives of millions in the Middle East.
We are heartened, too, by what we didn’t hear in Tahrir Square. We didn’t hear millions of protesters denouncing the United States. We didn’t hear them blaming Israel for Egypt’s travails. We didn’t see the Muslim Brotherhood, which favors an Islamic government, dominating the protests.
What we saw was a largely secular, youthful movement calling for economic and political freedom. For jobs. For a chance to speak their minds — and vote — freely.
In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a famous call for political reform in Cairo. She said that for 60 years, the U.S. “pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people … The day is coming when the promise of a fully free and democratic world, once thought impossible, will also seem inevitable. The people of Egypt should be at the forefront of this great journey…”
We hope that journey began in Cairo on Friday.
