After Syria: Jordan and the Democratic Dilemma

With Syria’s ruthless, dictatorial Assad regime eliminated, could Jordan’s monarchy be next? The answer lies in an interesting and quite important question of political philosophy.

During the long US presidential election campaign, a concern began to be voiced regarding the “undemocratic” pronouncements and tendencies of Donald Trump. Whether true or not (we will now see over the coming four years), that concern leads to a central political philosophy issue: what to do about a candidate or party in a democratic election campaign that runs on an anti-democratic platform? No terrorism; no policy extremism; just changing the system to something other than a democracy.

Which leads to Israel’s neighbor with the longest contiguous border: Jordan – a “democratic monarchy.” If that sounds like an oxymoron, well – it is! Would Israel wish Jordan to become a full-fledged democracy? After all, it is extremely rare for democracies to go to war against each other. True, the two countries have a peace treaty, but that would be on firmer ground if Jordan became as democratic as Israel.

Or perhaps not? Here’s where the above dilemma enters the picture.

At the moment, Jordan is a quasi-democracy – or a pseudo-democracy if you want to be a stickler. Of the 138 seats in its lower house parliament, only 30% have an open, contested local election. The rest are chosen by the king. However, as King Abdullah is British educated, he well understands the need for broadening his country’s democracy. Thus, there’s a king-inspired (and ministerial developed) plan on the table to gradually expand the local representative seats in parliament (not the Senate – all its members still to be chosen by the King). The fact that many such lower house representatives would be elected for their extended family (hamula) connections and not for any espoused specific policies is beside the point; many elected representatives around the democratic world are chosen for their good looks, charisma, oratorical skills, and the like.

The ”problems” lie elsewhere – in three related areas. The first: the majority of Jordan’s citizens are of Palestinian extraction; the King is not. A monarchy can be broadly “representative” of its people; ethnically, King Abdullah is not – precisely the problem that Basher Assad had, belonging to Syria’s Alawite minority (a mere 15% of the population).
The second problem: Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel. It is deeply unpopular with a broad swath of the Jordanian population – in large part due to the first problem: most Jordanian citizens have “Palestinian” ancestry or familial ties of one sort or another.

Thus, if Jordan country became truly democratic i.e., all its parliamentary representatives freely elected, such an outcome could well lead to an abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel. At the moment, King Abdullah stands as a bulwark against any such move, as he well understands the economic, security, and diplomatic benefits of the peace treaty (e.g., U.S. aid for Jordan to the tune of about $1 billion dollars annually). His latest moves haven’t been any more popular with his people, to say the least. For example, he helped intercept missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthis at Israel – and even has afforded Israel a land bridge for imports, in lieu of Red Sea shipping that has been under attack by the same Houthis.

The third consequence of complete democratization is even more problematic. With the PLO becoming a party-non-grata in Jordan (after its Black September coup attempt in the early 1970s), the only truly organized movement remaining in Jordan is the Muslim Brotherhood. Were completely free and comprehensive elections held in Jordan, that party would most probably become the largest and perhaps even gain a majority of seats. Imagine both Jordan and Syria run by Islamic “militants”!

This third problem raises the classic democratic dilemma: should an anti-democratic party (in this case, calling for rule by Sharia law) be allowed to run, thereby endangering the democratic process itself? The world has seen this dilemma playing out not so positively in Weimar Germany circa 1933, and in several other democracies since then – some moving in that direction even today (e.g., Orban’s Hungary).

In short, Israel’s future hope that its neighborhood become truly democratic in the future might not turn out the way Israelis would want. As Oscar Wilde once pithily opined: “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Coda: There are some Israelis, on the other hand, who would welcome the Palestinian majority taking over Jordan. Such an outcome would enable Israel to claim that a “Palestinian State” already exists – if not in name, at least in national/political substance. In their eyes, therefore, the West Bank/Judea & Samaria would “legitimately” be part of Israel, as the Palestinians have their own state across the river.

Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily end the conflict; it might even make matters worse for Israel, given that such an irridentist state would surely throw the peace treaty out the window and thus leave Israel once again with enemies on each of its borders. Oscar Wilde redux…