Today’s confusing world–with revolutionary acts erupting from the Middle East to Central Asia–seems not only exciting, but also bursting with promise.
Surely, positive changes must stem from these exhortations to liberty, equality and fraternity, from Georgia to Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan, and from Iraq to Lebanon and Egypt to Saudi Arabia.
But perhaps it’s time to pause and ask an important question: Is this 1989 all over again, or is it 1848 again?
The current “revolutions” in the Eastern bloc, of course, come out of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the countries of the Baltics and Eastern Europe, freed of the Soviet yoke, suddenly found themselves independent. Most by now have joined the West and formalized their new loyalties by joining or preparing to join NATO and the European Union.
Those largely peaceful revolutions (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and others) were born as a decaying Soviet state died from within and new popular movements formed inside the empire, using every possible civil rights action and technique.
A core of the Soviet Union was left under the ancient regime, however, and today, step by step, those republics that stayed are to one degree or another also breaking off.
When formerly Soviet Georgia went through its “Rose Revolution” 16 months ago, electing a young president opposed to Moscow, and when Ukraine did the same in its “Orange Revolution” last fall, those tactics, honed and perfected (and enormously helped by the European Union factions), were widely employed.
Now Kyrgyzstan, the newest eruption on the shaky borders of today’s Russia, has in the last two weeks erupted into violent rioting, overthrowing another of Moscow’s friends, Askar Akayev. With Georgia and Ukraine, this makes three of Moscow’s satellites “gone” in only 16 months–but will the remaining ones also leave the former Soviet orbit?
If you’re old enough or well-versed enough geopolitically to remember the phony ideology underlying Vietnam, you’ll recall that dominos falling inevitably and irrevocably is about as exact a science as alchemy.
The fact is that the countries that have changed leadership with minimal violence, using civil rights techniques, were the ones with the least aggressive governments to overthrow. The ones that are left–Belarus, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan–have highly oppressive governments that will not be overthrown easily.
On the other hand, the next one to watch is little but strategically placed Moldova, which huddles in the south near the Black Sea between Ukraine and Romania. Its 4.5 million people could set off the next revolt because, previously pro-Russian, they are now breaking with Moscow. Moldova’s Communist Party has been transformed into a “pro-Europe alliance,” which wants Russia’s troops out.
Then there is the movement toward democratic change in the Middle East. It started with the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq and extended to demonstrations in Lebanon to get the Syrians out, to municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, and to economic liberalization in Egypt. But while the trend lines look positive at the moment, outside of Lebanon, virtually none of the countries in turmoil has much to fall back on in terms of the institutionalization and civic habits necessary for democratic processes to work.
In all the Islamic countries–including the countries of Central Asia as well as the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East–there is the real danger that these upheavals could end not in workable Western-style democracies, but in Islamic fundamentalist-run states.
That’s where 1848 comes in. If you recall, that year in European history marked the start of a series of republican revolts against virtually every reigning monarchy, shaking the continent to its core. The revolts started in Sicily and spread like wildfire to France, Germany, Italy and across the Austrian Empire.
But Europe was not constitutionally ready for liberal democracy, and every revolt ended in failure and oppression, the liberals vanquished. By 1852, a second Napoleon, Louis, took over France in a coup and had himself declared emperor.
What followed was the rise of communism, rooted in a deeply frustrated Europe but fully manifested in Russia, two world wars and years of rebuilding. Only now is Europe truly rebuilding itself, through the European Union–and it is working today because Europe is impassioned with building the body and institutions of democracy first in the countries it is taking in.
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This is an exciting moment in time–but it is also a dangerous moment. We must take great care not to overreach, lest 2005 become not 1989, but 1848.
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