The leftist origins of neo-conservatism are frequently exaggerated but Joshua Muravchik is one of those neo-cons who really did cut his teeth in the radical left scene before heading rightwards – he was a member of the Young People's Socialist League who has ended up at the American Enterprise Institute. It is perhaps not so surprising then,in his overview of the current state of neo-conservatism, for Commentary Magazine, which is a must-read defence of neo-conservative foreign policy (“the only game in town”), he addresses the old question of revolution from above or below.

Francis Fukuyama has explained his disaffection from neoconservatism on the grounds that, in contrast to his own, “Marxist” approach to democratization, his former friends and allies had behaved like “Leninists.” By this he means to separate his analysis in The End of History and the Last Man (1992) from the policies to which that analysis seminally contributed. In writing about the “end of history,” Fukuyama now says, he was only attempting to discover the historical laws that, sooner or later, would lead all nations to democracy. But just as Lenin took matters into his own hands when he tired of waiting for Marx’s predicted revolution, so had the neoconservatives tried, fatally, to force the pace of democratization.

Muravchik argues against Fukuyama by showing that many of the advanced democracies reached that stage not due to some historically inevitable process but as a result of intervention – sometimes military. “It turns out that we are all “Leninists,” he says. Fascinating though such a discussion is (and who could argue with the writer’s point?) it is disappointing that Muravchik does not go further into this analogy and address what is surely the fundamental question facing both neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists in the wake of the Iraq disaster, namely what if interventions in favour of democracy in the Middle East end up producing something even worse than the status quo?

Let’s put Iraq aside for the minute, as the choice between leaving a mass-murderer in charge and the past few years of mass-murder by other means, is perhaps a little to extreme as an example. Let us, instead, take the case of Egypt – a country ruled by the kind of dictator whose supression of democracy typifies the ‘our son of a bitch’ strategy of the cold war which neo-cons and ‘liberal hawks’ rejected and indeed blamed for creating the ‘swamp’ out of which violent Islamism has mutated.

All supporters of democracy would agree that it would be a positive step for Hosni Mubarak to hold free and fair elections in Egypt. Yet most observers would say that there would be a very real chance that such a process could end with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood coming to power. From what we know of the Brotherhood, there is every chance that sharia law would be imposed on Egypt and that Israel would ‘gain’ another belligerent neighbour. As well as having to deal with Hezbollah, Israel would have a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egyptian army lined up against them. The consequences for the broader struggle against terrorism would also be profound. Suddenly Mubarek might not seem such a bad S.O.B after all.

Democracy in Egypt might be a very short-lived affair which consisted simply of the transfer from a relatively bog-standard dictator to an Islamist theocracy. The same could perhaps be said of Syria while who knows what horror could emerge from a free vote in Saudia Arabia?

To return to the Leninist theme – is this not the fundamental problem with leaping ahead of the historic process and pushing for the goal? The real, Soviet, Leninists were able to ensure they got their goal because they could impose a communist dictatorship on the countries they occupied and defend it by force of arms and through terror. A ‘Leninist’ intervention for democracy, by it’s very nature, is not able to use such tactics and runs the risk of ending up with the wrong result – another, possibly worse, dictatorship. If you think I am being alarmist or unneccesarily pessimistic, think back to the eve of the invasion of Iraq – how many people talked about the jihadists as being the real enemy? How much faith did we have the strength of secular democratic forces? The biggest intelligence failure in Iraq was the under-estimation of the jihadist enemy and the over-estimation of the strength of our democratic allies. A heavy price has been paid for those misjudgements.

But, to return to Muravchik’s leftist analogy, of course the choice is not really between sitting back and passively observing the ‘historically inevitable’ process of democratisation eventually taking place in the Middle East or through direct intervention forcing a Great Leap Forward on the region. The Marxist approach, in practice, was associated not only with Leninist insurrection (which later became Stalinist invasion and imposition) but also informed social democracy and democratic socialism, a politics which was about neither passivity or sudden interventions but engaging in the process of change to direct it towards a desired goal. If the neo-cons (and liberal interventionists) are looking for a model from the left’s past to assist their formulation of a strategy for democratisation then surely the strongest tradition of the democratic left is worth considering?

What would a progressive, reformist approach to democratisation entail in practice? Well, rather than making unrealisable and potentially dangerous demands on the region’s current political elite (ultra-leftism anyone?), it would involve direct solidarity with the region’s supporters of liberal democracy. Unlike the Leninist model of interantional solidarity (see Comintern) it would involve listening as much as acting. Surely a wise and productive approach to complex issues such as change in Egypt, Syria or Iran, would start off with dialogue with our best friends in those countries asking them exactly how we can help them, what kind of external pressure the United States and its allies can place on the regimes in order to best help our allies. Strengthening the democratic, secular forces in the region – just as in the cold war we assisted East European dissidents – would enable a policy to emerge which had the best chance of avoiding the swamp being replaced by an even more stinky quagmire. We should help our friends be ready for the moment when democracy truly is on the agenda.

The problem for neo-conservatives is the best friends of the United States – the most trusted supporters of secular democracy in the region – are not the kind of people who would simply nod along to the agenda of the Republican right. Look at Iraq – the most reliable partners in the project to bring democracy to that country are the Kurds who are represented by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – a member of the Socialist International – led by the impressive democratic socialist Barham Salih. In Baghdad, if you are looking for secular activists, fiercely anti-Ba’athist and reassuringly anti-Islamist, then you will end up at the door of the Iraqi Communist Party and the trade union movement.

Across the region there are liberal intellectuals, democratic student movements, women’s organisations, oppressed ethnic and religious minorities and trade unions all of which have a direct interest in supporting democracy and opposing Islamism – they should be natural allies.

Whether or not the policy makers in Washington or the neo-con theorists begin to recognise that the best hopes for democracy in the Middle East are the constituencies traditionally associated with the left, there is no reason why liberal-interventionists and democratic socialists cannot start to put such solidarity into practice now. It is time we raised our game.