Joe Schlesinger: A little patience, please, for the Arab Spring

If there was one thing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agreed on in their foreign policy debate on Monday it was that the Arab Spring has raised a great deal of hope for the cause of world democracy.

Where they differed, though, was that while Obama saw the situation as the glass of democracy filling up, Romney saw it as leaking fast.

Iran may be the best example. The Republican challenger saw the persistence of its nuclear ambitions as an indictment of the last four years of Obama diplomacy; whereas the president went out of his way to portray Iran as still dangerous but increasingly crippled by Western economic sanctions.

Obama might well have also pointed to the increasing troubles of the Bashar al-Assad regime in neighbouring Syria — Iran's cat's paw in the Middle East — as another example of Tehran's diminished role in the region.

But given the extent of the slaughter there that might have been too unfeeling an argument to make in an election debate.

What both Obama and Romney were trying to deal with was the sense of disappointment within the U.S. electorate — and shared throughout much of the West — with the rising chaos in some of the new democracies of the Middle East compounded by the murderousness of the civil war in Syria.

Add in the backsliding of the new democracies from the former Soviet empire, particularly Vladimir Putin's Russia, and the world is faced with a puzzling question. How could so much promise in so many places — from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Arab Spring — have gone so awry so quickly?

History's lessons

The closest thing to an answer may be found not by looking at Russia, Libya or the new Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, but by taking a look back at the history of Western democracies. They didn't exactly grow up overnight.

Take the French Revolution in 1789. With the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy, freedom beckoned.

But political squabbling quickly put an end to democracy and it was overtaken by the Reign of Terror in which tens of thousands were executed, usually by having their heads chopped off.

Then a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to that first republic by staging a coup and marching off to war with the rest of Europe.

A decade later Napoleon was defeated at the battle of Waterloo and packed off into exile. But that was hardly the end of French democracy's existential problems.

Altogether, since the Revolution, the French have had two emperors, three kings and five republics.

France is now a great democracy. But getting there was neither quick nor easy.

Suffrage gained

Ah, you might say, that's the French. The British did it differently. Their democracy goes back 800 years to the Magna Carta. Well, not quite.

The Magna Carta was indeed a great document. It set limits on the powers of English kings and remains the underpinning of many of our rights to this day.

However, the ink was hardly dry on the parchment before King John — the Vladimir Putin of his day — turned around and declared it null and void.

As for the first English parliament, the "mother of all parliaments," born in 1265, it was hardly a truly democratic institution.

For the next 600 years the only Britons who had the right to vote were the nobility or the prosperous. It was only in 1918 that all men over 21, regardless of what was in their wallets, were granted suffrage. Women had to wait another decade.

In Canada, at the time of Confederation, voting was restricted to white males with property. It wasn't until 1960 that the last major barrier fell when all aboriginals were given the vote.

So, yes, you Arab Spring watchers, democracies do take time to develop.

But that doesn't mean that the Syrians, Russians, Chinese and others will have to wait centuries to enjoy freedom.

Change comes faster, much faster these days in just about every corner of the world, driven by modern communications technology.

The message is spread by bloggers in Russia or Iran denouncing their autocratic rulers, Syrians with smartphones posting videos on the internet of government atrocities, or simply young people in Cairo or Moscow being summoned by Tweets to anti-government demonstrations.

Trumpets of freedom

True, some of the current demonstrations in Muslim countries are driven not by a yearning for democracy but by rage at the West for insults to Islam. But violence in the name of religion is hardly unique to Muslims.

Europe suffered millions of deaths in religious conflicts from the crusades 900 years ago to the living memory of Northern Ireland's Troubles. 

In Europe then, as in Muslim countries today, the fury has always been about more than just religion.

Whether it's Belfast, Beirut or Baghdad, the spark has so often been about lack of respect and power.

Muslims see how their societies have fallen behind since the glory days of Islam and blame Western powers for their predicament. In many instances, with justification.

Now, though, societies that progress left behind are being transformed by the spread of technology, urbanization, education and globalization. And that has led to escalating demands in countries the world over for a better life, not just a more prosperous one but a freer one too.

They will not have democracy tomorrow. It may take many years. But it won't take centuries as it has in the past. The trumpets of freedom from cyberspace are simply too strong to be stilled.