The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (Hardcover)

by Natan Sharansky (Author), Ron Dermer (Author), Anatoly Shcharansky (Author) "IN 1975 I was teaching English to a group of dissidents in an apartment in Moscow..." (more)
Key Phrases: fear society, fear societies, moral clarity, Soviet Union, Middle East, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on his autobiography—from Soviet refusenik to Israeli cabinet minister – Sharansky distinguishes between "fear" and "free" societies. He spends a significant amount of time taking on conservative "realists" who prize stability in international relations, as well as liberals who he says fail to distinguish between flawed democracies that struggle to implement human rights and authoritarian or totalitarian states that flout human rights as a matter of course. Sharansky criticizes those who argue that democracy is culturally contingent and therefore unsuited for Muslim societies. Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he mentions documented Israeli human rights abuses, but places the bulk of the blame for the conflict on the dictatorial systems prevalent in Arab societies. He also weighs in on the vexing subject of how to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from the "new anti-Semitism." Such criticism must pass the "3D" test of "[no] demonization, double standards, or delegitimation." Sharansky does not grapple deeply with the current situation in Iraq, but his opinions throughout, honed through years in a Soviet prison and in the corridors of power, feel earned.
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From The Washington Post
In Natan Sharansky's new book, the renowned Soviet dissident turned Israeli cabinet minister makes the tough-love case for Palestinian democracy. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will prevail, he argues, if and only if the Palestinian Authority is transformed into a truly free society where the Palestinian people's natural inclination toward peace can prevail over the manipulations of their hatemongering leaders. Sharansky does not expect that this paradise will arrive overnight as a result of electing a new head of the Palestinian Authority on Jan. 9, 2005. It will take time to extirpate Yasser Arafat's entrenched legacy of hatred, he writes. Elections should be deferred for at least three years; the whole process of true democratization might take "many years, even decades." In the meantime, Israel should avoid what Sharansky sees as the fatal mistake of the Oslo peace process: making one-sided territorial concessions in the illusory hope of shoring up pseudo-moderate Palestinian leaders who rule by undemocratic means.

Skeptics have quipped that Sharansky and his allies are "demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine." Cynics might think that a formula of "no concessions until a free society rises" is a rationalization to justify a policy of "no concessions until hell freezes." The cynic would be wrong, but the skeptic would be right. Sharansky, a former refusenik and Soviet political prisoner, comes off as a man of conviction who brings his own past as a human rights and democracy advocate to today's debates about the Middle East's future. ("The great debate of my youth has returned," he writes.) But for all his sincerity, it is unlikely that Palestine can become a stable, mature democracy with an electorate clamoring for peace anytime soon. This goal will be especially hard to reach if Israel defers making the meaningful concessions on territory and settlements that any democratically elected Palestinian leader will need in order to survive, let alone succeed. Otherwise, it will be impossible to break the iron grip of hatred that Sharansky himself says is choking off the breath of Palestinian freedom.

Sharansky bases his case on two central arguments, both of them dubious. The first is that free societies are always peaceful. "Since all democratic societies strive for peace," he writes, "there is no such thing as a belligerent democracy." Open public debate, he continues, provides the average voter with good information about the unnecessary costs of reckless warmongering. In contrast, the leaders of what Sharansky calls "fear societies," such as the Soviet Union and the Palestinian Authority, exaggerate foreign threats to justify repression at home. Outsiders may fall prey to the illusion that the people in "fear societies" (read: Hamas supporters) are more warlike than their leaders (read: Arafat), and therefore conclude that concessions must be made to keep in power the embattled "moderates" who can resist violent demands from their angry "street." In fact, Sharansky contends, the people get whipped into a frenzy only because of the doubletalk of their leaders, and the only antidote is to promote free speech and democracy.

The reality is far less tidy. True, no two democracies have ever fought a war against each other, but democracies are hardly pacifist: They are just as likely to fight wars as non-democracies, they often start them, and when they do, they win nine times out of 10. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that fully democratic Israel would stay at peace with a partially democratic Palestine, which is the only kind of democracy Palestine is likely to have in the near future. Partially democratic Iraq held the most extreme rejectionist views in the Arab coalition that went to war to try to prevent Israeli statehood in 1948. Partially democratic Pakistan regularly fights democratic India. Indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries, states in the process of democratizing have been, by various measures, between four and 15 times more war-prone than other countries. Finally, while autocracies do sometimes fight democracies, they often live side by side in peace; Sharansky, however, chafes at acknowledging even the obvious national security benefits Israel won by signing the 1978 Camp David peace accords with the Egyptian autocrat Anwar Sadat.

Sharansky's second core argument is just as shaky as his assertion that democracies are consistently peaceful. Like President Bush, Sharansky insists that any nation can become democratic, even if the lack of favorable preconditions makes it seem a long shot. But in fact, preconditions do matter. Statistical research suggests that transitions to democracy normally fail in countries as poor as Palestine, though the Palestinians' relatively high literacy level may partially counterbalance this. Sharansky denies that Arab culture is inherently anti-democratic, arguing rather that it lacks democratic institutions. This is probably correct, but it does not necessarily make the problem any easier to solve. Sharansky also argues that the vast majority of Arabs, including Palestinians, want to live in freedom. Polls of the Iraqi public suggest that this is also probably correct, but if the 70 percent of the population that wants democracy remains unorganized, the Iraqi experience suggests that the 30 percent who want something else will prevail by default.

Sharansky's most egregious blind spot is failing to see how the indignities of occupation and the expansion of Israeli settlements play into the hands of the undemocratic Palestinian hatemongers he abhors. He dwells on Palestinian demagogues' use of double standards in their criticisms of Israel, yet seems unaware that he does much the same thing. Without the slightest sense of either irony or empathy for the Palestinians, he asserts that "If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland as well." Even following a successful Palestinian transition to full democracy, Sharansky would not unambiguously recommend an Israeli withdrawal, saying only that the final status of the West Bank "must be determined through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians."

President Bush and U.S. neoconservatives have proved a receptive audience for Sharansky's arguments, which dovetail with their hope of countering terrorism by spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. After Sharansky lobbied National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the spring of 2002, the goal of fostering Palestinian democracy was placed front and center in Bush's major June 24 speech, which laid the groundwork for the so-called road map back to renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks. And as Arafat lay dying, Sharansky, book in hand, pitched his ideas in person to the president. The affinity seems to run deep; Bush's address spoke of letting liberty "blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza," and Sharansky ends his last chapter by echoing the same phrase. But these enthusiasts for spreading democracy have cut corners on their homework, skipping over what political scientists have recently learned about democratizing states. President Bush needs to expand his reading list beyond this book to find a good answer to Israelis' and Palestinians' problems -- let alone those of Iraq and the larger Middle East.

Reviewed by Jack Snyder
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586482610
• ISBN-13: 978-1586482619
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #298,716 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing Us Through Soviet Eyes, November 22, 2004

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Freedom, sharansky and Dermer proclaim, is rooted in the right to dissent, to walk into the town square and declare one's views without fear of punishment or reprisal. This they say is the basic right, and societies that do not protect that right can never be reliable partners for peace, and that the democracy that hates is much safer than the dictatorship that loves us.

While there is every reason to doubt that freedom will prevail in the Middle East, this book declares unequivocally that the skeptics are wrong. They the believe that tyranny can be consigned to history's dustbin if the free world stays true to its ideals.

Sometimes I think it takes someone who has lived under a regime like the Soviet Union to remind us of what we have. It's not the false promises made by both Kerry and Bush during the last election, it's that we could have such an election at all.

53 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of Freedom, December 23, 2004

By	Ronald W. Satz (Trevose, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Natan Sharansky, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, was the English translator for, and English instructor of, the great Russian physicist, Andre Sakharov. The book is dedicated to Sakharov, "A man who proved that with moral clarity and courage, we can change the world" and who said "Regimes that do not respect the rights of their own people will not respect the rights of their neighbors."

Sharansky spent 9 years in Soviet prison and used this time to reflect on the mechanics of tyranny and how such tyranny might be overthrown. He never gave up hope that the Soviet Union would be dismantled. To keep his mind active he played chess in his head-and never lost a match.

At the time of Stalin there were no known dissidents in the Soviet Union simply because the price for dissent was death. With Stalin's death and with successive, slightly more "liberal" regimes, the price for dissent became long prison terms. This allowed several hundred dissidents to emerge, who were willing to risk prison to speak out. Many of these were Soviet Jews seeking to immigrate to the U.S. or Israel; Sharansky was one of these; recall that at that time, no Soviet citizens were allowed to emigrate from the country.

Sharansky divides the populace of a dictatorship into three classes: true believers of the regime, double-thinkers, and dissidents. True believers are usually part of the regime and have a stake in its survival; double-thinkers, which make up the great bulk of the populace, don't agree with the administration but are afraid to speak up; dissidents represent the minority willing to risk job and family to disagree with the regime. The passive support given by double-thinkers to their masters often misleads outsiders into concluding that all-is-well in such countries; just look at the reports made by American correspondents in the USSR from the period of 30's to the 70's. Likewise, Sharansky says, both Iran and Saudi Arabia are steeped in double-think.

It was President Ronald Reagan who had the moral courage to call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and to seek its end. This, together with the Jackson Amendment (which linked most favored nation trade benefits with the U.S. to the right of emigration) and the Helsinki accords, is what ultimately caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Sharansky was then able to leave prison and immigrate to Israel, where he was reunited with his wife. He then rose through the ranks of government to various ministerial positions.

In the book Sharansky extrapolates from his experiences to the world situation of today. He claims there are two basic types of societies: free and fear. Free societies are democratic and allow dissent; fear societies are dictatorial and do not allow dissent. Examples of free societies are those in the West (like the U.S., England, Israel, Australia, etc.). Examples of fear societies are Communist China, North Korea, Iran, and the 22 Arab countries; Arafat's Palestinian Authority was and still is a fear society. Previously Germany and Japan were fear societies, but after World War II they were changed into free societies. Also, Eastern Europe used to be composed of fear societies, but since the fall of the Iron Curtain, they have joined the free camp.

Sharansky is optimistic from his past experience and from history that the remaining fear societies can be freed; tyranny cannot last. He thus disagrees both with the pessimistic conservative "realists" who stress "stability" above all else and with liberals like Jimmy Carter who are willing to negotiate treaties with dictators regardless of the lack of human rights in their countries. Sharansky claims that democracy is not culturally-contingent (citing the Japanese). The vast majority of people love truth and freedom and "freedom is always a winning hand unless we morally equalize the good with the bad, the lies with the truth, and make treaties and compromises with tyrants." The West should stop doing business with tyrants: they can never be trusted and are only interested in their own survival; they are inherently corrupt and won't keep promises. Israel and the rest of the world should devote its energy to bringing democracy to the Palestinian Arabs, rather than pressuring Israel to make more concessions. Sharansky stresses the power of one's inner freedom (which kept him going while in prison), the power of a free society, and the power of the solidarity of the free world. A coalition of free nations (not the UN) should be formed that would turn the right of dissent as a test for international legitimacy.

Sharansky sees a tie between U.S. security and bringing democracy to the Middle East. Democratic countries don't make war on each other. The U.S. should use all possible leverage-moral, political, and financial-to support democracy around the world. "Once the life of double-think and self-censorship is shed, once the brainwashing stops, once freedom is tasted, no people will ever choose to live in fear again." The conditions for real peace in Palestine include real reforms like dismantling the refugee camps, developing private enterprise, and changing the hate-filled curriculum of Palestinian schools. Of course, dictators will resist all change; to keep their power, they constantly need to mobilize their people against alleged external enemies. But if a coalition of security hawks and human rights activists in the West can be reconstituted, the world's dictators can be defeated.

It is a tribute to Sharansky that President Bush invited him to the White House for a private briefing. The President has read the book and has recommended it to many of his cabinet secretaries and foreign leaders. I'm proud to say that I met Sharansky at a recent meeting of the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, where he signed my copy of the book. I do strongly urge all individuals concerned with foreign policy to read this book. Of course, one minor English quibble might be with Sharansky's use of the term "democracy" when he really means "democratic republic". That's OK; the meaning is clear, regardless.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear and Simple Defense of Democracy, July 9, 2005

By	EddyG (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

No intellectualizing here, just a simple, clear argument for the power of freedom, via democracy, to change our world for the better. Sharansky's personal experience as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union adds tremendous strength and respectability to his argument. He does a superb job of articulating the differences between "free" and "fear" societies and why we need to be reminded of those differences as we fight the War on Terror. In the process, he concisely, but accurately captures the internal weaknesses that threaten to destroy "free" societies as they encounter unprincipled, committed adversaries. The discussion is oftentimes viewed through the struggles of the Cold War, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a refreshingly unsophisticated yet powerful analysis of how a commitment to freedom can change the direction of world events, providing the peace and security we all seek. A necessary read for our times.