Like Mubarak, Soeharto Bought Stability through Repression

WASHINGTON, KOMPAS.com - Senior White House officials are studying scores of global revolutions and political transitions for trends that might help Egypt plot an orderly and permanent shift to democratic rule.

A senior official told AFP that President Barack Obama’s foreign policy braintrust had surveyed transitions in Asia, Europe and South America, as it assesses Egypt’s future after the sudden fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

The search for historical precedent comes as some US commentators fearfully handicap the odds of the Muslim Brotherhood staging a takeover in Egypt and use Iran’s Islamic Republic as an omen. But officials and analysts say that power transfers in places as diverse as Indonesia, Chile and South Korea may be more apt, as Egypt’s military mulls a new power paradigm.

“Every country is unique, and one analogy can be dangerous,” said Michael McFaul, National Security Council director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs, who, in academic life, was an expert on democratic political transitions.

With that said, McFaul said that a historical overview of past political transitions could provide context for Egypt’s challenge. Officials have studied how nations edge away from autocratic rule and navigate a crucial interim period of establishing democratic constitutions, elections and institutions. Their conclusions have clearly informed US rhetoric on the need for an orderly and “irreversible” transition in Egypt.

A bulging six-inch-high binder currently sits on the West Wing desk of Tom Donilon, who commissioned the review, and has Obama’s ear on foreign policy as his National Security Advisor. But with uncertainty reigning in Egypt, it remains unclear whether the military will stomach the kind of democratic evolution much of the rest of the world wants to see.

And is it stretching a point to suggest that Egypt’s social networked, youth-driven revolt, laced with 30 years of thwarted aspirations under Mubarak, will absorb advice from abroad or absorb lessons of the past? Thomas Carothers, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it was valid to seek lessons from history “as long as we assume that Egypt is not going to be Indonesia, is not going to be Iran.”

Indonesia though is a particularly appealing example for Washington as a Muslim-majority nation which embraced democracy after ousting dictator General Soeharto — who like Mubarak bought stability through repression. Obama, who bonded with Indonesia in four years there as a boy, views the emerging Asian giant as a political model after it turned from the “rule of an iron fist to the rule of the people.”

In Jakarta in November, Obama praised Indonesia’s elected presidency and legislature, checks and balances and dynamic civil society — a framework Washington would love to see Egypt emulate. But the world’s largest Muslim majority democracy is not the sole model.

“The cases that I think are most useful are in the late 1980s — in the Philippines, South Korea and Chile,” a senior official said.