Freedom's on the March

In Pakistan (you know, our great ally in the war on terror):

- A government-led crackdown against the news media and the political opposition intensified here Tuesday, with hundreds of party workers arrested and television stations bracing for raids.

The crackdown came as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, moved to limit the political fallout from his decision three months ago to suspend the nation's chief justice. Critics have accused the president of authoritarianism and said his tactics are an indication of his slipping grip on power.

In Saudi Arabia, another ally:

I'd heard about Saudi Arabia, that the sexes are wholly segregated. From museums to university campuses to restaurants, the genders live corralled existences. One young, hip, U.S.-educated Saudi friend told me that he arranges to meet his female friends in other Arab cities. It's easier to fly to Damascus or Dubai, he shrugged, than to chill out coeducationally at home [...]

I spent my days in Saudi Arabia struggling unhappily between a lifetime of being taught to respect foreign cultures and the realization that this culture judged me a lesser being. I tried to draw parallels: If I went to South Africa during apartheid, would I feel compelled to be polite?

The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.

In Iran, where our continuing belligerent talk has stifled efforts at political reform:

Tehran's jailing of Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year old grandmother who holds dual Iranian-American citizenship, as well as the interrogation of others with similar papers, is evidence that Washington's latest attempt to foist change on Iran is backfiring — as Iranian democracy advocates had warned. The Bush administration had trumpeted its $61.1 million democracy program, including Farsi-language broadcasts into Iran, education and cultural exchanges and $20 million worth of support for "civil society, human rights, democratic reform and related outreach" as an important effort. However, sources tell TIME that several key Iranian reformers had repeatedly warned U.S. officials through back channels that the pro-democracy program was bound to expose them as vulnerable targets for a government crackdown whether they took Washington's funds or not.

Iranian civil rights activists contacted by TIME say that the cases against the Iranian-Americans have fostered the most repressive atmosphere inside Iran in years, making democracy advocates terrified to work or even speak on the telephone. Many are deeply reluctant to leave or re-enter the country, fearing that they will meet the same fate as Esfandiari, who was initially detained while heading to the airport after an eight-day visit to Iran to see her 93-year old mother. She and at least two other Iranian-Americans were charged with espionage. Esfandiari is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mideast Program in Washington. The Wilson Center has strongly denied that she or the center has received any of the Bush administration's funds.

In Cuba!

The continuing hostilities with the US have played into Castro's hands. It was as an embattled nationalist leader of a small island, standing up to an aggressive, neighbouring superpower, that Castro preserved his revolutionary credentials most effectively. The shortcomings of life under his regime were, he argued, attributable mainly to the US embargo. Many swallowed the argument. He knew, too, how to capitalise on the latent anti-Americanism in Latin America, Europe and Canada to give his struggle more universal appeal [...]

In fact, the regime seems to act with zeal to ensure that the embargo continues. When it looks as if the US government might consider ending it, some heavy-handed Cuban act ensues that the status quo prevails. In 1996, when Clinton was keen to initiate rapprochement, the regime shot down two US planes manned by members of a Cuban exile group rescuing those escaping the island on rafts. When, in 2003, an influential cross-party lobby in the US seemed set to dismantle the embargo, the Cuban government promptly incarcerated 75 prisoners of conscience and executed three men who hijacked a tugboat with a view to getting to Miami.

But don't worry, there's good news: turns out the Cold War is over!

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush emphasized as relations between Washington and Moscow fell deeper into an icy chill with Putin's threat to retarget rockets at Europe.

When the best foreign policy move all week is pleading with everybody that the Cold War is over, you know things are pretty bleak.

There's a very good reason for this rise of authoritarianism abroad. The neoconservative project to bully the world has produced an equal and opposite reaction. It's removed any moral authority from the United States to press democratic reforms because we refuse to set a decent example. So it gives allies a safety valve to rule with dictatorial means, or just to reject it since we don't have a real argument to make. It also forces other nations, like Iran, to crack down out of fear that they are being undermined and will be toppled in the name of democracy promotion. So you get a more repressive society while intending to get a less repressive one.

We need to relate to the world in a more honest and a less unilateral way. Unilateralism breeds unilateralism. And it makes this a far less safe world.