welcome back here are the main stories we're covering today on our t.v. egypt the former president hosni mubarak arrives for his a trial of cairo six months after mass protests force him from power you're now looking at live pictures from inside the courtroom where the trial will be held there also demonstrators and supporters gathering outside of the courtroom and we will be bringing you a live pictures throughout the day here on our t.v. well mubarak is accused of causing the deaths of nearly eight hundred fifty people

during a family's revolution. the u.s. swallows selfmade a bitter pill to avert the devastating default but experts say there's little hope for efficiency economic recovery in the long term committed to conflicts around the world of washington is left with limited resources to address the needs of americans. out of moscow once again scalds up the you want to target the syrian regime urging for options of push the warring sides towards dialogue to end the escalating violence in the country well this comes as dozens more protesters were reportedly killed on tuesday following more than one hundred deaths over the weekend. and coming up next is a cross talk with peter lavelle to stay with us for. living in new the latest in science and technology from the realm of rush limbaugh the

future coverage. can. you. follow in welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle is outside democracy promotion an oxymoron what is america's track record in the arab world and is invoking security interest over democracy the greatest haven for tyrants. to discuss democracy promotion i'm joined by katie alley in paris he is a writer and filmmaker and i will risk with we go to jeff purdue he is a post-doctoral fellow and avarice with university and author of american foreign policy and postwar reconstruction comparing japan and iraq and in durham we crossed

to bruce general so he is a professor of public policy and political science at duke university and another member of our cross talk e-mail and a hug or a gentleman crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want to take i'd like to go to you first in paris over the last two weeks. were saying events that we've never seen before in the arab world i liken it to the end of the soviet union it is a world history or storage moment as we're doing this program events are unfolding extremely almost out of control in egypt so i ask you what is america's track record in promoting democracy and expression is hot area right now in north africa and i'd like to name a few places. egypt lebanon jordan where there is democracy but it's not recognize hamas hizbullah so it's a mixed game it's the democracy is on the march it's not recognized at least by the united states and its allies and then the united states has been

a huge impediment to democracy in the arab world since its inception since independence so what is its track record. its track record is very negative as many serious american historian submit themselves through of the cold war period when the begin to me was communism the united states not just in the middle east but also in south america was prepared to tolerate tyrants to the butchers of their people because it serves their interests with the end of the cold war. humanitarianism became one of the ideological pillars except in those countries where it wasn't convenient so we've seen in the middle east in particular multi-tool dictatorship in egypt which appears to be collapsing as we speak which has been there for the last twenty five to thirty years we have seen regimes over twenty years in the mass rugby in countries tunis and morocco.

we've seen the toleration of a completely authoritarian brutal monarchy in saudi arabia jordan itself has been reduced to the status of an israeli american protectorate and iraq has been occupied. by the occupation of iraq and very little to do with democracy or see it have a great deal to do with the establishment if us again only now we have a waiver for of world sweeping the arab world you talk about it was reminiscent of the fall of the soviet union i'm not so sure because that the mass involvement in that by and large was limited it reminds me more of the wave of revolutions that took place in europe in eight hundred forty eight revolutions for democracy eight hundred forty eight or to revolutions against autocracy democratic revolutions

trying to find a different way of governments and that's that is what we are seeing very courageously. very interesting there's lots to do a lot i do and you know eighteen forty eight are interesting but it was a strong reaction eight hundred forty eight jeff if i can go to you a few days ago hillary clinton the u.s. secretary of state came out and said that a country like egypt a great country she said egypt needs more democratic reform isn't that a bit rich after thirty years of paying off the egyptians in the sum of sixty billion dollars basically without any kind of accountability i mean again you know and if i can expand upon that when watching c.n.n. and b.b.c. they're just cheering this on when those governments were all at the very pillars of supporting this very horrible regime and people that knew anything about the regime just knew how terrible it was and now we're turning around saying we're so happy what's happening it's the hypocrisy is just outrageous. i wouldn't say so i

think that's when you talk about democracy promotion you need to adopt the world especially if i would say you need to look at it from a political perspective dispensable values let's see norms carried by democracy and perspective or moral let's say. material interests or security interests or economic interests and what i'm trying to say here is that. during the cold war and even after that it's there is still seem to be there seems to be a paradox in supporting let's say be friendly to non-democratic regimes while at the same time promoting democracy in these the same very countries. through various programs of democracy assistance usually implemented by american governments and the governments of the organizations i think that if you look at this from and you take into consideration that you deal with two different time scales one instead economy and the security where you need to address very immediate concerns or

issues if you want to and the only one is more in the longer run where you tend to what you want to do is to try to see values and norms democracy values and norms in this case and you hope that these will be shared by this every society invention the political society of this not a critic regime it's little by little you know you could argue and i think what we as is little by little gets democracy assistance program started fruits and whatever was did we see that it did all that we see that at all in tunisia i mean i think on a free radical level i'm going to ask you what you're talking about but my goodness i mean you know it was not too long ago that ben ali was you know he was a guest in the white house and he's called a great friend of the united states ok i mean really i mean it's still a bit rich if i can use that term again right here bruce if i can go to you i mean all of america's friends i mean these are can i just say something all right go ahead finish it i want to go to something very quickly go ahead if bin ali you've

been ali was still such a big friend of the united states or from you know western world generally speaking you probably if it was all about supporting. authoritarian regimes in the name of security interests or economic interests then you wouldn't be in the bike you would be in washington and going to parties ok let's say that well that seems to be the ultimate safe haven for. so you probably other dictators going there as well bruce if i can go to you i mean you can you have a dual policy like that i think in theory it sounds very nice but if you look at weeki leaks and you look at these other sources of information i mean the united states was it's going to be just stay with the people you know either stay with the devil you know work a and that's exactly what they did with anita and then they turn around and their entire democracy project blows up on them in lebanon though it's again against the will of the people there clearly i don't care what people think about hezbollah it is a popular. political party in the country it's up for the people to decide and not

again hillary clinton dictating what kind of democracy she people should have because everything the united states has done in that region the last forty years is just create extremism. yeah you look i think you're again if i had some good points i'm not sure if i agree with the way that you're portraying i mean there's no question you know that the united states hasn't lived up to this great espousal have always been for democracy you know the reality for any country whether it's today or historically you know has had a balance off the principles you stand for the security interests that you have and the like you know and what we've been seeing i think is as as as your previous guest was saying was part of what's happening in egypt and to sort of support it was happening in tunisia was in fact fed you know by this development of civil society by n.g.o.s and not just america and many indigenous many european as well that helped to develop the networks you know the same time you're right that the united states was sort of still keeping our support with as it was often said you know they may be s.o.b but there are s.o.v.

and the problem is there's this old expression you know those who make reform impossible make revolution inevitable you know and you certainly say you see that playing out. this wasn't predicted by experts everybody knew egypt was unstable but there's not an expert out there a journalist academic intelligence person whatever who said that things were going to really blow up in tunisia and egypt now and i think that we really have to see where they go people are demanding i think three things they're demanding greater freedom both for their individual lives and for ability to affect their government their protests against massive corruption the mubarak regime the ben ali regime and they want to canonic opportunity this is mostly you know young males out there who want to offer tunis and their allies the reality is that you know you mentioned hizbullah as well has a lot of popular support in certain segments of lebanon there's no question about it. you know the notion that somehow they're going to represent all the people

they're not going to impose themselves and i'm not quite confident about that either in the same is true you know from us what you originally wanted selection. other bases speaking to the corruption of the palestinian authority you know the injustice is the economic problems that were there but then when they began to rule they ruled with an iron fist of their own were pressing their own people so what we criticize with united states is doing we shouldn't sort of make out is some you know glorifying force a lot of these other groups they've got their flaws as well ok take a fine go to you i mean still at the same time i mean what is the reputation of the united states as we go through this a drug raid transition here i mean do the people in the region look at the americans as being done thomas jefferson you know i mean great supporters of of democracy out there supporting their dictators for so many dick decades. well not in the arab world and certainly not in south america where you were also had a wave of democracy over the last ten to fifteen years which is brought new

governments and new social movements and to power changing the relationship of forces they are quite decisively if i can just sort of come back to one point it's not a question of whether we like as a polo whether we like or agree with every doctrine called hamas or i.q. lies and that's not the point the point is permitting the people in that region can decide what happens when hamas won the elections in palestine sanctions were imposed on it its money was stopped and the west refused to recognize a democratic election because they were hoping to push the p.l.o. through and we now know why with the publication of the palestinian papers for the pipe p.l.o. leadership which was in the pocket of the united states and now we know also be israelis to such a disgusting extent that it's horrified people in the arab world and so they actively promote it and clyde's to defend

a corrupt palestinian leadership against hamas even though hamas had one then they tried to destroy hamas as they did hezbollah by encouraging resurging or a romantic i wish you were going to go to a short break after a short break we'll continue our discussion on exporting democracy stay with. us to listen to this in the good guy reaches the flock from all over the world and if you said to yourself. this time are to go to the on the rich. or the quds force. still gets people like. her an ancient tribe likes to save its

culture. where claims are protected in the first ten dollars on official nature reserve. bush a close up on the marquee. for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers on the. welcome back to rostock i'm curious about remind you we're talking about the so-called democracy industry. ok. but first let's see what democracy means to russians democracy for all democratic values as spreading all over the world some countries adopt them wrong terry and

others there simply are imposed by the outside forces the public opinion agency look at us and ask russians what democracy means to them so tonight percent as a common prosperity thirty percent as freedom of speech order and stability thirty percent many regard democracy as a low fullness and direct elections so the latest events in tunisia make us wonder if west so-called democracy industry does really. or its own interests. right jeff and i think are you one of the things that happened you know when one of the reasons why ben ali was such a big friend of the americans in the west in general and any and we can look at what's going on in egypt and other countries in the region is because they're a staunch allies on the war against terror ok and that's always top of mind here and in the deep the nonsense that spewed out about here is terror and that's

terribly you know just terrifying publics in western media and it does it all of the time and there these people are you know they may not be you know thomas jeffersons but you know they can they're still going to be on our side isn't this really being. shown is a complete exaggeration now because these tyrants created. a fundamentalist group of people that may be inclined to terrorism and things like that i mean the lack of a supporting our own ideals and values have actually created these so-called threats against us. walking we're talking about two different historical structures as well the immediacy of the cold war or let's say. what the united states needed to do during the cold war was to contain the west in the u.s.s.r. in the region and hands you know starting to cut all some of the less than friendly regime or well thought of the not democratic regimes in the case of bin ali and what's going on in egypt right now i think we should look at this from

a more modern perspective if you keep talking about the past and how bad it was and so on and we never we don't know i'm talking about today i'm going about george bush's war on terror and it seems like obama is except that it is well know i'm talking about what's going on today got the cold war. ok so well in this case i would say that there is a clear progression in the obama administration about democracy promotion and the discourse is not linked anymore to the war on terror of course you still have references to what is called a democracy these theory and the fact that democracies don't go to war with each other. not would it mean that these emerging democracies in the middle east would be friendly to the united states are things like this case history might not be in favor of the united states and what we might see is the image and so for of some different models of democracy which will not be the liberal democratic model which we know in the west with an emphasis of on elections essentially and creating

procedures and structures favoring elections between competing elites favoring individual freedoms going on trying to say here is that they receive this very contested as a concept there is more than one type of democracy and that's in order to sort of guess the outcome of democracy it is essential to look at the realities affecting the temperature and put them with eyes in nations where democracy is taking roots and look at you know the realities there and how democracy can adapt if you want to and we have competing models we talk a lot about islamic law islam democracy. so would that mean that we live in well i mean or i mean jeff i mean you're right i mean this again it's very academic but i mean under eight years of bush and then in under two years of obama we still see american understanding of democracy and i got to go to bruce here on this one to protect american national interests ok it's a cover it's a cover for sure it's

a cover to protect american interests that's why you know it can it's galling that hillary clinton will come out and say we need more democracy in egypt right when she say that when she became secretary of state why couldn't a secretary of state said that twenty five or thirty years ago. if you can see the difference between obama and bush you know they're not really looking close i'm not . here to reconsider they're not now washington to the region ok i think that raised more or less the same one hundred eighty degrees but but but there are significant differences but i come back to a point that tariq ali made because it's an important point you know during the cold war one of the huge mistakes that the united states made as we has we kind of worked with or against this of the so-called third world was we lump everything together as communism and marx that is marxism and we didn't see the way that nationalism and local factors in culture and all those things entered and so in brazil i've been back and forth quite a few times i mean for you know for the president of brazil who came into office

feared as a great leftist to have emerged with eighty percent popularity in his own country when he leaves office you know most leaders around the world would die for that sort of popularity and he demonstrated luba demonstrated. that he was program sealion interests and he was prepared to work for them and not always agree with the united states and elsewhere and the challenge we face i think in the arab and islamic world is very similar ok there are elements in my view you know. jihadist extremist groups that frankly don't have the interests of the people you know the best measure people are all on their minds but with the united states needs to do do is to figure out how to have relations with different forms of political islam i think in both tunisia and egypt ultimately you know whether it's the muslim brotherhood in egypt or some of the political islam parties that have been trying to stamp out by the dictator tunisia they're going to emerge as part of the mix and we really need to figure out ways you know to work with them because in neither tunisia or egypt are these uprisings that this point at least anti-american this is

not iran one nine hundred seventy eight strewn on the street it may well go in that direction if the u.s. to some of the things you're saying that that that it's doing the right now i think the obama administration you know is trying it's a very tricky balance and you can find you know contradict. it's in a fine but they're trying you know as they have since the president came into office when he went to cairo and he gave a speech what an awful lot of stuff going on there that doesn't make the headlines but there's been working with civil society groups and other groups in egypt and elsewhere to try to develop you know their ability to to be quite of the political process and that's where you get the balance right but to say that it's all just about you know standing with all dictators i think right now this administrator is trying to change it and change it in a way that leads to things that are really in the interest of the people because the united states can't control everything that happens in these countries in one direction or any other lot of forty's or they can influence because of their power

and leaders take i mean you had your head you had your head around i was wondering if you if you were bored by a conversation or you were exasperated and you know i'm not true no where are those . differences where others see differences i basically see essential continue to be between the bush and obama administrations both domestically and in terms of foreign policy i don't think all that much is changed to put them all into music and the rest critique in terms of what is concretely being done in different parts of the world in a family is found which we have mentioned obama is actually escalated the war there have been more drone attacks on pakistan during the obama years than in the entire eight years of the previous administration so wants to preserve a balance and not to be taken in. by the rhetoric which is being thrown around i

think essentially what is going on in the middle east today is a stream lean port and if mubarak falls it will be a heavy blow for the united states regardless of who takes over because egypt is absolutely central to u.s. policy in the. region in order to keep these rallies happy we haven't discussed this stage for some reason is our cry important the united states it backs it through thick and thin and often american interests get in tangled up with what we see is really security increase in the region and that is one reason why their region in many many of its intellectuals and civil society groups have been screwed on happy that palestine is the one colonial issue from the last century and it remains resolved now in terms of political islam there is flarm has all the colors of the rainbow you can find every current within the make world we united

states is perfectly happy working with these missing turkey who are staunch supporters of nato and have been a central pillar of nato i don't think the muslim brotherhood in either region apart from this year will be all that different but what will be different if the demonstrators succeed in toppling mubarak is that egypt will for the first time in years be able egyptians will be able to decide on who they want to elect and that is a stream lee important and the choice there is much much more different than the choice you have in europe center left center right democrats republicans in the u.s. very little divides them in egypt the gulf between the dictatorship and the people challenging it is huge so it's a very exciting prospect and of course it might well affect u.s. relations with egypt if for instance just on one issue there decide to open the border with gas savings and not going to now because i could be trampled exactly in

of jet i mean i i didn't want to go deeper on israel because well first of all your program on that is this week already but i mean again i mean here in the course of two weeks we have this these events playing out in egypt we. events with lebanon i mean the entire security arrangement in the united states pursued over the last four decades in the greater middle east is in shambles now if in fact instead it was that really at the center of american foreign policy interests in the region israel's security it may now be the least secure it's been in a very long time and it's because democracy is the idea and and people took it upon themselves i agree with what we heard earlier it's not anti-american yet we'll see where it goes but when we do hear what the people have to say we could have a very very volatile and we always say volatile of the greater middle east if these changes are actually come to fruition true or something that we would call democracy you know the question is that it's not necessarily the case that the

united states and i say should not be putting all our eggs in the mubarak basket there's no question about that and it's not necessarily the case that a new regime would be anti-american ok it really depends how this plays out what the forces are it work and the like but i think that this notion that there's just continuity is kind of if people that i say sometimes are only reading the right hand pages of a book a lot of what i'm hearing is just reading the left hand pages. the reality is that the reality is that you know this is ministration to the bush administration basically gave the israelis a lot of blank checks ok britney has had some problems is ok. but it's really ok we have to stop on this point gentlemen ok many thanks to my guest today in paris and in wales and in durham and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time in remember crosstalk.

home.