Over at National Review, Andrew Stuttaford wonders if a good word for leftist blogger Matthew Yglesias risks "damaging his credibility" with the relativist monolith. Yglesias has disputed otherwise welcome news that Saudi Arabia, the quintessential infectiously rotting autocracy, recently held municipal elections. Because Islamists won handily, he describes the event as Riyadh's sleight of hand, giving reformers what they wanted in letter but not spirit.
Stuttaford ought to reserve his praise. Only those willing to help the Saudis wriggle out of liberalization will be duped by the "royal family" purporting to have answered popular demand. The point of Saudi Arabia's elections is, as I wrote to Jonah Goldberg ten days ago, that a repressive dictatorship responded to pressure. Not even a progressive-right interventionist would be surprised if, three months from now, dictator Abdullah snapped his fingers, rescinded the positions and carried on state business as if they'd never existed. Nor should anyone have been surprised that in a monophonic political conversation everybody speaks something akin to Wahhabi.
Stuttaford needn't worry about Yglesias, since Yglesias is actually adding to his leftist credentials; ten days ago he was criticizing the president over the lack of reform among America's 20th-Century allies. Now he's shrugging his shoulders and calling a reform meaningless. Enter the nasty double-game played by those suspicious of America, free will or both: Decry the lack of democracy in the absence of civil society and then dismiss what is encouraged in that vacuum by the act of voting, deriding the whole thing as a fool's errand.
The right's universalists know that foreign democratic candidates can't win in an environment utterly hostile to them — which is why democrats have won masterfully in Afghanistan and, as announced today, Iraq. The value of Saudi Arabia's elections is not who won but that they happened, which means Riyadh rightly fears Washington.
A stronger case for intervention, diplomatic or military, has been made.
ELECTIONS UNDER DESPOTS: When a ballot precedes the freedoms of assembly, expression and rule by consent, it must be gauged in terms of the existing regime's weakness and susceptibility to democratic overthrow — by way of referendum or revolution. Until the head of state can be chosen by a vote, a dictatorship's civil and political trajectories will tell us the most. The Abdullah sitting on Jordan's throne recently pledged to give regional governates a measure of autonomy; it is most certainly a decentralization of his power, however slight. The "Palestinian Authority" recently held an election, won by Yasser Arafat's favorite Mahmoud Abbas, but the frog intended to turn into a "Palestinian State" with enough ambassadorial kisses might as well be ruled by the mafia; there is no indication that the indoctrination of children or coercion of denizens to terrorist causes will abate.
We can be confident through the psychology of a strongman that both Jordan's governates and Abbas' election are gestures intended to please audiences, and would not be made if certain foreign audiences weren't watching. Neither event is satisfactory as an end. In Jordan, however, Jordanians themselves are part of the audience — and so one is hopeful that when Abdullah gives an inch, the people he has in thrall, like the people of South Korea and Taiwan did in the 1980s, take a mile. Washington's charge, if it must use diplomacy, is to continue forcing inches out of dictators.