A presentation made by Martin Kramer at the book launch of Reuel Marc Gerecht’s The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East, November 7, 2011. Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

Reuel is an old friend, a fellow student of the same teachers, so I’m delighted that he’s added another contribution to the shelf. But I know I was invited to dissent, so let’s begin.

Reuel’s thesis is that we should be glad to see the old authoritarian order implode, because it could never evolve; and we shouldn’t fear the inevitable triumph of Islamism through the ballot box, because this new order can evolve—eventually in the right direction.

Now I agree that the old order couldn’t evolve—Reuel is quite right. The old regimes can only perpetuate themselves, for some amount of time, until they weaken and someone figures out how to topple them. Of course, this isn’t an entirely new revelation. You can find it in Ibn Khaldun.

I also agree that the Islamists are going to have their moment. If Palestine and Turkey and Tunisia put Islamists in power through the ballot, you can bet it will happen in Egypt and Libya and Syria, when that day comes. So we have to weather this change, and do what little we can to forestall a worst-case scenario. I suppose that in order to do that, we also have to be seen as embracing change. If I were writing speeches for Barack Obama, I too would compare the makers of the “Arab Spring” to Boston’s patriots and Rosa Parks. And I suppose we have to say, as a State Department official said the other day, that if Egyptian elections are free and fair, and the Muslim Brotherhood wins, the United States will be, quote, “satisfied.”

But this is where I part with Reuel. I wouldn’t really be “satisfied” at all, but Reuel would. In fact, his book might have been subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Islamists.” What is it about former intel hands that they have this I-know-something-you-don’t approach to Islamists? I’m thinking about Graham Fuller, ex-CIA, Alastair Crooke, ex-MI6, Ephraim Halevy, ex-Mossad—each of them in his own quirky way tells us we can get what we want from Islamists, if we talk to them, stroke them, maybe even pay them off. Of course, this has a long history going back to the early Cold War. We used the Islamists against the Soviets, and many thought we should use them against Al Qaeda. Reuel is ex-CIA, and half the time, I thought he was winking at me, telling me: don’t worry, we’ve got their number. If Islamists win elections, it’ll be all right, because we’ve planted this democracy chip in their brains, they can’t get it out, and they’ll end up coming to Papa. (He even writes at one point that they have America in their bloodstream.)

Well, we shall see. Here’s a quote: “We are going to have a republic, a democracy. Every group is emphasizing the words ‘democratic’ and ‘republic’ as much as ‘Islamic.’”

That wasn’t said this year in Tunisia or Egypt. It was said in February 1979 by an Iranian revolutionary at a rally at Princeton University, where I heard it myself—I recently went back to the Daily Princetonian to see if I remembered it correctly. Reuel is wrong when he writes that “there was never any deception on the part of Khomeini.” There was a massive deception campaign, and it worked. I think we’re again witnessing campaigns of deception, and they’re working again.

Can movements that don’t practice democracy internally, that believe they answer to a power above the will of the people, that divide humanity between believers and unbelievers, build and sustain democracy? In saying yes, Reuel has written a very American book—a flattering paean to the power of an American idea. All I can say is, I hope he’s right. But let’s acknowledge that, however Americans try, they always seem to come up with some variation on modernization theory, which says the world wants what Americans want, in the way Americans want it. And let’s admit that this almost always sets up America for a fall.

Let me end, as I should, with a comment on the implications for Israel. Reuel has a passage that left me bewildered, coming as it does from an old intel hand: “Some Muslim autocracies have signed peace treaties with Israel. They may not guarantee all that much, but the signed paper does exist.”

Well, if that’s all you have to say about Israel’s relations with Egypt and Jordan, you aren’t an insider. The political, security, and intelligence relations with Egypt and Jordan have been intense and game-changing for Israel. There were no public expressions of warmth, but under Mubarak, no mobs stormed the Israeli embassy either. Israelis aren’t so daft as to think that some “evolution” of Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood is going to produce an improvement on what Israel had.

Reuel writes that “Israel’s security will be lasting only when Muslim peoples, not their ever-less popular governments, accept the Jewish homeland.” I don’t know what “lasting” means, but I do know that whether it’s governments or peoples, this acceptance is a function of Israeli power to defeat them. The governments appreciated that power. How does Reuel think Muslim peoples are going to reach the same understanding? Will Israel have to defeat them too? Will it have to do to Islamism what it did to Arab nationalism in 1967?

I’m also perplexed by his polisci Tom Friedman–style bromide, that “democracies eventually bring lasting peace, dictatorships don’t.” That was fine when the set of democracies included the United States and its dependencies. I believe the Middle East, with the Muslim Brotherhood setting the tone, is destined to disprove this slogan. That is, if Israel’s wars in 2006 and 2008—with those Arabs who’d cast the most ballots, Lebanese and Palestinians—didn’t disprove it already. Only Israel’s power, and fear of it, guarantees the peace. Whether Israel’s adversaries do or don’t drop ballots in boxes doesn’t make the slightest difference.

And the idea, in the afterword, that the Hashemite monarchy should turn over power to the Palestinians, is bizarre—because there’s no exploration whatsoever of its implications. We’re simply told that we must be consistent. As Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” We’re being pushed here to a foolish consistency. But if we’re going to be consistent, why not be so in the way Middle Easterners expect? That is, you reward your friends and punish your enemies. That’s how you win and keep friends. Given American values, standing by dictators might not always be advisable. But given American interests, neither is the overthrow of every single U.S. friend, ally, and proxy.

So we’re indebted to Reuel for a provocative book, which I enjoyed from beginning to end. I hope it sells well, gets him his fifteen minutes, and then disappears without a trace. No need to thank me, Reuel. What are friends for?