Is 2011 the new 1989?

1989 is remembered, among other things, as the year the Berlin wall came down. It was the year the Cold War ended, the year of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the year of the Baltic Way for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 1989 was a year that marked a transformation for the world.

Will 2011 be remembered as the same kind of transformational year that 1989 is remembered as?

This question continued to circulate the panel of speakers at Freedom House's (FH) presentation about the Arab Spring last week. Arch Puddington, Vice President for Research at FH, stated that he has every reason to hope this will be the case. He cited Tunisia and Egypt as two cases that support his hope.  Until 2011, Tunisia was regarded as one of the least free countries in one of the worst regions and now the country has moved up from FH's Not Free category to the Partly Free category, holding the same ranking as Colombia and the Philippines. The FH rankings take into account the political rights and civil liberties of a country in addition to their status as an electoral democracy. Despite the complexities Egypt faces, Mr. Puddington noted the positive improvements in freedom of expression, the new elections and their constitution-in-progress as reasons to believe it is experiencing positive change.

Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, agreed that 2011 and 1989 were both years of great international change; however, it is too early to tell whether these newly freed countries will become democracies or not. Mr. Kagan asserted that the successes of the 1989 uprisings were directly related to the country and its type of government that was most powerful at the time; in 1989 it was the U.S. and democracy. While the U.S. is still a dominant player in the world, its position of power is no longer enough to persuade the 'new' countries to become democracies. The way in which the U.S. reacts to these uprisings and the way it deals with these newly freed countries will be an important factor in determining their success or failure (in other words, their democratization or lack thereof).

The speakers also discussed the issue of backsliding - countries which have had successful uprisings but become incapable of maintaining their newfound freedom and begin to slip back into their old ways. Daniel Brumberg, Professor at Georgetown University and Senior Advisor for the U.S. Institute of Peace, mentioned that the group of emerging democracies is being tugged in different directions; they don't want to be bullied, and yet they want to be on good terms with both sides. Mr. Kagan stated that throughout this ongoing tug of war the U.S. has been inconsistent, hypocritical and ultimately, unreliable. The U.S. will support a country's leader one day then find a way to remove them from office the next, such as in Guatemala in 1954, in Ecuador in 1961, and in the Philippines in 1986. It seems unlikely that countries would be lining up today to befriend the U.S.

How would the outlook on the future in 1990 have been as compared to today?

Mr. Puddington noted that an assessment of the situation in 1990 would probably have been more optimistic than the one given today in 2012 because everyone in 1990 wanted those societies to succeed and embrace democracy. Mr. Puddington added that today many countries are rooting for the failure of countries such as Libya and Burma because they don't want to see democracy be a success in any additional countries, which is what happened for example, in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania after the 1989 uprisings.

The speakers at the FH presentation seemed hopeful about the futures of the states involved in the Arab Spring; however, they were careful not to be overly optimistic. They, like the rest of us, are not blind to the failures of the past or to the countries that participated in the 1989 revolutions and are still considered Not Free according to FH's rankings. The U.S.'s support and involvement with these countries is crucial. As one of the speakers Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, said, "We need to rethink how we are going to engage them going forward. We need to be conscious of the international landscape and how the U.S. government and advocacy groups focus on mobilizing". Although the number of free countries in the world has been slowly increasing, the U.S. needs to monitor and support their progress to prevent backsliding.

Countries with the lowest rankings on Freedom House's Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties: Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.