By Rachel Avraham
In his first year in office, US President-Elect Joe Biden plans to hold a global summit of democracies that will include all the nations in the free world. According to the Times of India, “The Summit will prioritize results by galvanizing significant new country commitments in three areas: (1) fighting corruption; (2) defending against authoritarianism, including election security; (3) advancing human rights in their own nations and abroad.”
Jake Sullivan, a senior policy advisor to the Biden campaign, proclaimed that Biden will “put values and democracies back at the center of US foreign policy,” rallying “like-minded democratic nations in common purpose to push back against authoritarian competitors and also to construct and build the kind of long-term durable solutions for the challenges that afflict us all.”
Al Jazeera reported that in the Middle East, this means that America under Biden will move further away from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies, for “America will no longer leave its values at the cloakroom to sell weapons or buy oil.” This means that he will support journalists, activists, and dissidents in all authoritarian countries, even if their regime is secular and an ally of the US.
This Biden policy greatly worries former Israeli Communication Minister Ayoob Kara: “This policy is like the Arab Spring, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc. If Biden supports this, then he will want there to be democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” which will lead to the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups taking over these countries.
“There is no way to make democracy in the Arab world because the culture is different from the West,” Kara proclaimed. “Biden must understand that if he goes along with this process, only the Islamists will win any election. They have the right organizations, and no one fights them. We could find ourselves in an Islamist dictatorship, where people will fight over who is more extremist.”
Kara claimed that both the Egyptian and Saudi governments are concerned about Biden’s election and that everyone in the Middle East understands them, for such policies promoted by Biden can cause a “sea of extremism to flourish in the Middle East. That will influence other states, like Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan, etc. We do not need extremism. We need a civil leadership and not a religious leadership.”
Therefore, he believes that a democratic Middle East is a pipe dream that will never be realized, yet a Western leader who tries to turn it into a reality will create a nightmare for everyone in this region, who is opposed to radical Islam. Thus, Kara claimed that instead of having enlightened secular despots that sign peace agreements with Israel or contemplate doing so, we will find ourselves living under more Islamist dictatorships.
