Condoleezza Rice defines the present global conflict not as a war against terrorism, but as a struggle for democracy. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed discusses the concept In the lecture she delivered at the American University in Cairo a fortnight ago, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was keen to underscore the primacy of freedom and democracy over stability in the Middle East. The dangerous subtext here is that any regime perceived by Washington as non- democratic can and should be ousted regardless of how this will affect stability. Rice said: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability. Now we are taking a different course." Refuting the argument that democracy leads to anarchy, conflict and terrorism, Rice said: "The opposite is the truth. Freedom and democracy constitute the only thinking that has the power to overcome hatred, division and violence." Rice noted that, since 11 September, 2001, the US has shifted from being a status-quo power in the Middle East, whose interests were narrowly defined around oil, to a transforming power whose interests are broadly defined around political and economic reform. She presented the issue as a dichotomy, an either-or situation in which stability and democracy are presented as two antipodal conditions. But that is by no means a given. As it consolidates peoples' aspirations, democracy can strengthen stability and become a means to reduce tension. On the other hand, it could be a factor of destabilisation by giving expression to social discontent, allowing conflicts to intensify and escalate. Actually, before looking into which of the two assumptions is more likely, it is necessary to agree on definitions. For example, how can America's championship of democracy be reconciled with the philosophy behind its Guantanamo Bay prison, which proceeds from the assumption that there are "evil" people who do not deserve the protection of law and that the use of torture is an unavoidable necessity in the war on terror? How can America claim to be upholding democracy when it allows prisoners subject to its jurisdiction to be abused as they were in the Abu Ghraib prison where torture, both physical and moral, and the degradation of human values, were the order of the day? The "law is on vacation" was a slogan raised in Egypt at one time to justify unsavoury practices; it seems the same slogan has been adopted by the self-styled champions of democracy to justify what is going on in Guantanamo today. In the lecture, Secretary Rice said that America's mission "is not a war against terrorism, but a struggle for democracy", which aimed at giving the impression that the war on Iraq was waged for a fundamentally good purpose. The horror aroused by what happened on 11 September, 2001, was not only because of the staggering number of innocent civilians killed in a major operation that targeted the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House, which was spared thanks only to stiff resistance from passengers on board the plane that was to have smashed into it, but by the realisation that it could happen at all and that attacks of a similar or even greater magnitude were likely to happen again. For it is all too clear that unless and until radical changes are brought to world order, terrorism is here to stay. Any hope of eradicating this modern scourge lies in eradicating the causes that engender it. This entails establishing an entirely new world order in which nobody has an interest in resorting to terrorist acts, an order based on equity and justice that responds to the legitimate aspirations of the peoples of the world. A new element in the equation of terrorism is the ominous prospect of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. A social and political environment that discourages the production and proliferation of such weapons is the only effective way of ensuring that such a nightmarish scenario will never materialise. Until recently, it was possible for the Middle East to be a region which played a key role in providing oil to the world and thus solve the difficult equation of responding to the ever increasing energy needs of the world population. It was possible to ignore problems such as the Palestinian problem without provoking intolerable reactions. This is no longer possible. We are now in a new era, the post-9/ 11 era, where things that were once unimaginable can and do happen. Gone are the days when the Middle East could be seen only as the world's main reservoir of oil, or the main arena of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has become a region which, if its political, economic, social and cultural problems are not solved, can witness societal cataclysms that threaten the stability not only of the region but of the entire "globalised" world. To renounce the pursuit of stability on the grounds that it is unable to generate democracy is one thing; to consider the pursuit of democracy as justification for warring on sovereign states quite another. First Afghanistan, then Iraq -- will Iran, following the election of its new hardline president, be the next victim of America's new doctrine? It would seem that the present world order would prefer to liquidate, even to exterminate, whole segments of the world of the poor than to stick to a strategy which would guarantee a lower degree of welfare for all humankind. The present world order is not against war, racism, or persecution. It is not against the perpetuation of a state of conflict, even when it comes to the Middle East, a region that concerns us directly. The definition of democracy as formulated by Rice is critical when it comes to deciding the course of events in the 21st century and an issue worthy of our full attention before things get out of hand.
