The day after Biden says Mubarak isn’t a dictator, the dictator Mubarak turns off the Internet all over Egypt. Not good.
You don’t make your friend Joe Biden look very good when - the day after he said you’re not a dictator - you turn off the entire Internet throughout Egypt.
Of course the U.S. has a tough hand to play. Mubarak has pursued a reasonably responsible policy toward Israel, no doubt at some cost to his popularity. As was the case in Iran, the alternative to a corrupt autocracy could easily prove to be a corrupt, theocratic, anti-American autocracy. But the short-term gains from propping up one of “our sonsofbitches” have to be weighed against the long-term costs of further alienating those Egyptians who agree with Americans in disliking tyranny.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
One can't help getting an eerie reminder of Jimmy Carter calling the Shah of Iran his "friend" in 1978…
I used to naively wonder why the U.S. could not manage a foreign policy, which was more in line with our ideals, and more sympathetic to frustrated democratic aspirations in the developing world. Now, I wonder, during popular uprisings abroad, whether I shouldn't be taking notes and trying to learn how it's done.
Bruce, you know the folks in DC and in bunkers across the country are looking at how its done as well.
It doesn't make Joe Biden look very good when he denies Mubarak is a dictator. He doesn't need any help from Mubarak to look stupid doing that.
Joe Biden doesn't need help from anybody looking stupid doing anything
Brett, Bux: Please, please, just for a minute, try to control your leg reflexes. If Dick Cheney were still Vice-President, do you think he'd be calling the head of a regime that has carried an enormous amount of water for the U.S. a dictator? Of course Mubarak's a dictator - or, at least, the presiding figure in a tyranny - in fact. But diplomacy consists largely of not saying true things.
I'll ditto MK - (not that I'm sock-puppety, despite the similar initials)
No US ally will be labeled a dictator by a government official, ever.
Perhaps Biden's best tack would have been to zip it. Did he blurt it out, or was it a response to a question?
@ Mobius MK
Biden appears to have a personality defect that forces him to say things that make him look foolish. On the other hand, Mark MK is right that a large part of diplomacy seems to consist of not speaking inconvenient truths, if not outwardly denying them.
And just for the record, Biden said, "I would not refer to him [Mubarak] as a dictator." That's rather different from denying that Mubarak is a dictator.
(Mark): "…the alternative to a corrupt autocracy could easily prove to be a corrupt, theocratic, anti-American autocracy. But the short-term gains from propping up one of “our sonsofbitches” have to be weighed against the long-term costs of further alienating those Egyptians who agree with Americans in disliking tyranny."
Trite but true. National alliances normally mix immediate interest, long term interest, and ideology.
Note the passive voice: "have to be weighed". Did Professor Kleiman take a similarly analytical and dispassionate view of US support for dictators during Republican administrations, I wonder. I will be back in six years to see if Professor Kleiman responds with equal dispassion and passivity when President Palin similarly holds a US response in reserve when another dictatorial US ally totters.