Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the color revolutions in many parts of the former Soviet Union, the Western media has been trapped in a particular viewpoint of these revolts.
As long as anti-government protests and demonstrations take place, the media and public always posit the end result will be democracy.
Western countries are full of worries that the Muslim Brotherhood might dominate Egyptian politics and this revolution might result in an authoritarian theocracy. But Western media and politicians are still more willing to believe and expect the end result of this revolution to be democracy, which is exactly one of the reasons why US President Barack Obama has placed the Egyptian revolution on a par with the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Some Middle East experts in the West used to be highly pessimistic about the prospects of democratization in the region due to the deeply rooted autocratic traditions, the popularity of family politics and military politics, and the threat of Islamism.
For example, the late American international relations theorist Samuel Huntington considered the Middle East region as an exception to his so-called third wave of democratization.
The strongly pro-Israeli Middle East expert Bernard Lewis believes that Islam rarely includes elements conducive to democracy. In light of these worries, it may be too soon to assume that the new wave of revolutions will necessarily result in democracy.
Given the dominant capacity of Western discourse power, in many developing countries including China, most ordinary people and even some of the intellectual elite and media are also convinced of the democratic nature of Middle East changes.
As demonstrated by many revolutions in human history, revolution is an important way to bury old systems and establish new ones. But there are many revolutionary results and democracy is only one possible outcome.
In modern history, particularly in colonial and semi-colonial countries which had extremely complex nature and composition of revolutions, there have been revolutions that ended up with authoritarian restoration, military dictatorships or theocratic regimes.
Although some revolutions took democracy as a goal, under the influence of a variety of complex factors, they were not necessarily oriented toward democracy.
Protesters on the streets of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia may have been openly calling for democracy and free elections. But they lack independent leadership and clear values and concepts.
To a large extent, these are grass-roots revolutions in which the young made use of new information media including networks and microblogging to express discontent and protest against existing governments through populist politics. But based on historical experience, the direction of such revolutions can be easily manipulated and changed.
For example, recent media reports have revealed that one important reason for Hosni Mubarak's resignation is that he tried to make his son, who did not serve in the military, the next president. This broke the practice that contemporary Egyptian senior political leaders have all been senior military leaders.
This led to dissatisfaction from the military and caused the military to turn against Mubarak. This was one important reason for the success of the Egyptian revolution.
Although this is an unconfirmed speculation, given the current status of the military, Egyptian change seems to be developing along the direction of stratocracy, which reveals the possibility of a return to old ways. Therefore, even if Egypt achieved a degree of democratic expansion in the future, it might not be in line with Western goals.
The belief that these revolutions will result in Western-style democracy reflects thestrategic concerns of the US and others to guide various revolutions into the Western track. If this fails, they will return to cultivating allies and maintaining real national interests, which has been the usual practice of the US.
The author is deputy director of the Middle East Studies Institute at the Shanghai International Studies University.
Source: Global Times
