Shadi Hamid wrires:

Governments, even democratic ones, are often ineffective or simply bad. Elections sometimes produce uninspiring results, particularly when a patchwork of parties forms an unwieldy coalition government that struggles to get much of anything done. This doesn’t mean it should be overthrown. Nor should the United States ignore coup attempts staged in the name of bypassing the messiness of democracy. Yet in Tunisia, this is what the Biden administration appears to be doing, revealing the widening gulf between American words and deeds.

On Sunday, Tunisian President Kais Saied, who is supposed to share power with Parliament and a prime minister, suspended the former and dismissed the latter. In case anyone doubted his intentions, Saied addressed the nation while flanked by top military and security officials. On Monday, the army surrounded Parliament and blocked legislators from entering the building. Most Americans probably don’t care that Tunisia is—or, perhaps more precisely, was—the lone success story of the Arab Spring. But the atmospherics of the story might resonate. A president longing to be a strongman is something that we in the United States recently experienced. As a long-standing democracy, America had institutions that rose to the challenge and restrained former President Donald Trump’s authoritarian instincts. Young, fragile democracies are rarely so lucky.

From the very start of his presidency, Joe Biden identified the struggle between democratic and authoritarian governments as the central challenge of both the present and future. As he put it in his first press conference as president: “It is clear, absolutely clear … that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies.” This lofty rhetoric was somewhat surprising, especially for a man who had viewed the 2011 Arab uprisings with evident skepticism. In one memorable moment, just two weeks before the Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak fell amid mass protests, Biden said: “Look, Mubarak has been an ally … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

Believing in the power and possibility of democracy is easy in theory. The problem with democracy in practice is that it is never quite as good as its proponents hope it might be. The same can be said for how the United States responds to breaches of democracy in the Middle East. Despite ostensibly being on the side of popular rule, the White House has so far refused to take sides in Tunisia, instead expressing “concern” over the developments there. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki informed reporters that administration officials were in touch with their Tunisian counterparts “to learn more about the situation, urge calm, and support Tunisian efforts to move forward in line with democratic principles.” (After Egypt’s 2013 coup, it was Psaki who infamously said, “We have determined we are not going to make a determination” about whether to call it a coup.)

In the Middle East, Tunisia’s crisis is the first real test of Biden’s professed commitment to a new democracy doctrine. [Continue reading…]