Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ukrainian Interior Minister Yurii Lutsenko discussed his government's efforts against corruption and the political prospects of democratic parties in upcoming parliamentary elections.
The U.S. should de-link its concerns about backsliding Russian democracy with other areas of security and economic cooperation with Russia. The U.S. must work closely with the Russians on, for example, halting nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, but these goals should not prevent the U.S. government from promoting democracy and civil society and defending human and civil rights.
Concern in the U.S. for Arab liberals has taken on a desperate edge, as though all this activity were a last ditch attempt to support a political alternative that ballot boxes in the Arab world have proved too fragile to sustain. The Carnegie Endowment's Amr Hamzway comments on the numerous factors that contribute to this misreading of current political trends in the Arab world in a new editorial.
Three speakers, all of whom were in Palestine to observe the recent elections there, discussed this dramatic turning point. Having demanded clean elections, the international commumity is now forced to deal with the consequences. As the experts discussed, Hamas' new position of power will have a range of implications for Palestine's domestic and foreign affairs.
The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections has given rise to much soul searching in Washington about who lost Palestine. The main problem, however, is not U.S. policy but the underlying conditions in the last few months that have led to the victory of Hamas and to the impressive showing by both Shia and Sunni religious parties elsewhere in the region.
Hamas’s recent victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections highlights the deep crisis of secular Arabs. In today’s Arab politics, secular parties have either degenerated into marginal forces with no broad popular support or become gatekeepers of repressive regimes.
Discussion and launch of Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge, edited by Thomas Carothers.