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Optimists can’t endorse free elections in Arab world – as everyone should – without acknowledging the risk that accompanies a free expression of views Buried away inside today’s Guardian there’s a touching insight into the impact of the WikiLeaks cables on countries such as Tunisia and Egypt , the giant of the Arab world whose fate now hangs in the balance. The article suggests that when I fretted at the time about the asymmetry of the leaked diplomatic cables, the fact that we were all reading US material but not equivalent data from far shadier states, I got it back to front by concentrating on producers, not consumers. In their new book on the WikiLeaks affair, one of a flood heading our way, my colleagues David Leigh and Luke Harding note the varied response to the pre-Christmas publication in the Guardian, New York Times and other mainstream media then dealing with Julian Assange. On the kneejerk left some people felt the cables failed to reveal enough misconduct by US diplomats and therefore must have been censored. On the American right, populist politicians such as Sarah Palin denounced the leaks in extravagant terms as a major crime, virtually inciting Assange’s assassination in some cases. My own response was closer to what Leigh and Harding dismiss as the “metropolitan yawn from bien pensants who felt they knew it all”. Fair enough, we did feel that and that most people who read broadsheets newspapers or listen to Radio 4 must have thought leaks a bit over-hyped. That’s modern media for you. Where we were wrong, suggests today’s extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy (I’ve not yet paid my £9.99 or £6.99 for an online Guardian bargain), is in underestimating “the hunger for the cables in countries that didn’t have fully functioning democracies or the sort of free expression enjoyed in London, Paris or New York”. In consequence the Guardian’s leaks team took a flood of calls from editors and journalists around the world asking what the 300m-word cache said about their own country; not easy for colleagues sifting a mountain of cables in friendly competition with a vastly better staffed parallel trawl by the New York Times – I’m told that our lot emerged creditably. We still can’t draw solid conclusions about this kind of data journalism – trawling the internet for stuff – is going to affect the wider world long-term any more than we can confidently evaluate the convulsions now shaking the Arab world. Will the long-suffering people of these countries, rotting victims of a decaying Ottoman empire for centuries before the western European imperialists moved into the region in the 19th century, emerge with better, more accountable governments? Or slide into new autocracies like the cruel and increasingly incompetent theocracy in Iran? I suppose I should add Iraq too at this point for fairness, though that outcome too is uncertain. Since it’s always best to try and be optimistic, we may one day look back on the past decade – especially the events now unfolding – as the one when Islam in the Arab world (the two are politically and socially inseparable) finally embraced the modern world as more successful Muslim states such as Indonesia and Malaysia have now done. I don’t share Simon Jenkins’s well-defined pessimism, that all this is none of our business and that – from Kosovo to Kabul — the west (east too) does more harm than good by our interventions. Great powers have great responsibilities, as China is discovering and Britain (America’s “deputy sheriff”, as a senior British official put it this week) knows because it used to be a great power. We do good, we do bad, but either way we have interests. In the Middle East they are acute because the region still holds two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves (half the gas) which makes our faltering economies function and help China’s and India’s race ahead. Thus three of the past five global recessions have followed a geopolitical shock in the Middle East and even the bankers’ crash of 2007-9 became serious only in late 2008 after Lehman Brothers crashed but also after oil prices doubled to $148 dollars a barrel in a year. With characteristic calm, today’s Daily Mail predicts a £90 petrol tank for Mondeo Man in 2011. Oil is one just one factor. Immigration across the Med, crime, religious fanaticism (much of it funded by oil-rich Saudi Arabia) Iran’s nuclear ambitions, footloose capital from oil-sodden Gulf States which help – or hurt – our economies, the list is a long one. Watching Cairo’s crowds on TV you can be forgiven for being both cheered and fearful. Yesterday the pro-Mubarak goons were out on the street, menacing anti-government protesters. We should not be surprised by that, it’s part of the familiar pattern. I’ve seen it at first hand myself in Asia and Latin America. It does not mean that the regime will survive, only that it is fighting to rescue what it can for the Chinese-style military-industrial-political complex which enjoys most of Egypt’s growing economic wealth. The ace in its hand is stability and security – few people want chaos and disorder to engulf their country. Which of us would? The Egyptian army – backbone of the state – is the key. Such a law and order agenda can be manipulated and probably is, both in Egypt and in other Arab countries facing unrest like Jordan – and those still held down. The outcome in Tunisia, where WikiLeaks helped focus a simmering resentment (as the US ambassador noted in his cables), is far from clear. Leigh and Harding note that some Tunisians gave America brownie points for candour about the old regime — conspicuously absent from analysis by France, the ex-colonial power. No surprise there then! But the White House has to decide when it has to jump ship to maintain stability – it has now abandoned Hosni Mubarak – which is too expedient to ever look attractive. But optimists can’t endorse free elections – as everyone should — without acknowledging the risk that accompanies a free expression of views. Egypt’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood seems to be accepted as a major player in society. Does that mean that Egyptians would vote for them – or treat them as most British Catholics treat their own theological leaders, to be listened to but not governed by? Listening to some evasive answers by a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman on Radio 4′s Today a few minutes ago I was not encouraged about his views on a religious council adjudicating on the laws of the state, the Shia Iranian model. We’re not against Israel, we are against injustice, he also said, which sounds better. But did I hear him say “if a lady like Margaret Thatcher ruled over Egypt we would support her”? I did. Steady on there, chaps. But that’s the thing about free elections, people get to elect who they want. Maggie or — dare I say it — even the Muslim Brotherhood. WikiLeaks The US embassy cables United States US foreign policy US national security Egypt Middle East Tunisia Michael White guardian.co.uk