On July 17, 2009, the American Ambassador in Tunisia, Robert F. Godec, dined at the beachfront mansion of Mohamed Sakher El Materi, a member of the country’s ruling family. The home displayed Roman columns, frescoes, and a stone lion’s head spouting water into an infinity pool. A live caged tiger on the grounds “consumes four chickens a day,” Godec noted, in a secret cable to Washington. His host’s pet reminded him “of Uday Hussein’s lion cage in Baghdad.”

Illustration by TOM BACHTELL

WikiLeaks published Godec’s report early last December, alongside other acid accounts from the U.S. Embassy about the abuse of power in the court of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the leader of Tunisia for more than two decades. “Whether it’s cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali’s family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants,” Godec wrote. “Corruption . . . is the problem everyone knows about, but no one can publicly acknowledge.”

That ended on December 17th, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a twenty-six-year-old fruit seller, set himself on fire in the central town of Sidi Bouzid. He was protesting the demands for bribes and the abuse that he had endured at the hands of the police. Bouazizi lay in a hospital for more than two weeks, his face wrapped in thick bandages. Anger spread in the streets and online. Ben Ali made an awkward pilgrimage to his bedside, promising reform. On January 4th, Bouazizi died. On January 13th, the state security forces, after having killed dozens of unarmed civilians in the previous week, refused orders to keep shooting. The next day, Ben Ali and his wife fled fist-shaking mobs in the capital, Tunis, by hopping a private jet to Saudi Arabia.

“President of the Country,” a searing Arabic rap song, served as a soundtrack for the revolution. The week before Bouazizi’s death, Hamada Ben Amor, who is twenty-two and goes by the name El Général, used a handheld camera to tape himself singing the song, a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. “Mr. President,” he exclaimed, “your people are dead!” Al Jazeera and various social media picked up the video. The secret police arrested Ben Amor, inflaming his followers, and hastening Ben Ali’s exit.

Since then, diverse protesters have immolated themselves in Egypt, Algeria, and Mauritania. Muammar Qaddafi, in Libya, lamented the role of WikiLeaks, which, he said, “publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos.” But the impact of the disclosures is impossible to measure, and unlikely to have been decisive. Tunisians hardly required the U.S. Embassy to inform them that their government was corrupt.

In any event, the Tunisian case is striking less for its origins than for its outcome. It presents a rare triumph of people power in the Arab world. (Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Cedar Revolution, of 2005, is the only comparable example in recent years, and it was incomplete because it could not overcome Hezbollah’s influence in politics.) Of importance now is how Tunisia’s revolution is interpreted and implemented, within the country and outside it. Ben Ali’s fall may prove to be an isolated event—each unhappy country is unhappy in its own way. Still, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all contain political and demographic ingredients at least as perilous as those that combusted in Tunisia: youthful populations, high unemployment, grotesque inequality, abusive police, reviled leaders, and authoritarian systems that stifle free expression. There is ample reason for the leaders of those countries to worry.

The ascendant Tunisian opposition may fail. Corruption in the country is systemic, and the revolutionaries lack unifying political principles. The exiled founder of the relatively moderate Islamist party, Al-Nahda, seeks to return, raising anxieties in some quarters. There are, however, encouraging models in the Muslim world that could aid and inspire the country’s forthcoming political experiments: Turkey and Indonesia, for example, are gradually forging stability through peaceful, pluralistic politics that include nonviolent religious parties.

When the Bush Administration invaded Iraq, it set back the cause of promoting democracy by tying its ideas to violence and occupation. Yet, in Tunisia, external investments in civil society—programs launched by the United States, European governments, and independent foundations, which were peaceful, gradual, and unrelated to war or invasion—bore fruit. It was Tunisian women (empowered by constitutional rights), labor unions, human-rights campaigners, journalists, and artists who braved gunfire to trigger Ben Ali’s overthrow. These democrats and their institutions survived Ben Ali’s police state in part because outside supporters had promoted their legitimacy and built their capacity. (Egypt has a similar, if beleaguered, anti-authoritarian coalition.)

The objections to pushing democratic reform in the Arab world are by now familiar: it may create instability; it may empower Islamist parties; it may open more space for Iranian mischief by empowering Shiite minorities; it can undermine a legitimate opposition group by making its members appear beholden to Western ideas; and it may deprive the United States and Europe of reliable partners in counterterrorism. Yet the corrosive effects of political and economic exclusion in the region cannot be sustained—among them the legions of pent-up, angry young men, Islamist and otherwise.

President Obama has been cautious about democracy promotion. The Bush Administration proceeded similarly during its chastened second term. A 2008 cable from the WikiLeaks Tunisia file unctuously describes a “warm and open” meeting between the assistant secretary of state, David Welch, and President Ben Ali, during which the dictator deployed a tried-and-true strategy, cultivating Washington’s allegiance by pledging “total” coöperation on counterterrorism, “without inhibitions.” Ben Ali also offered some free analysis: “He opined that the situation in Egypt is ‘explosive,’ ” a note-taker recorded, “adding that sooner or later the Muslim Brotherhood would take over” in Cairo. “He added that Yemen and Saudi Arabia are also facing real problems. Overall, the region is ‘explosive.’ ” Psychologists might call this projection, but Ben Ali had the trend lines right.

The Obama Administration’s policies are likely to have only indirect influence in Tunis. Nonetheless, the White House has a choice: to support Tunisia’s transition toward inclusive democracy or to keep a distance, so as to avoid alienating the Egyptian and Saudi regimes, and to thwart Islamists who might now seek to enter Tunisian politics. The practical rewards for promoting democracy in Arab societies may be uncertain and slow, if they come at all. There are significant risks, particularly if Egypt’s government were to fall to leaders who would abandon any alliance with Washington. But it is the right strategy—in principle and in pursuit of America’s national interests. Tunisians showed that the status quo in Arab politics is not stable. Sometimes, common sense is ample guidance in foreign policy: the United States must invest in populations, not in dictators. At hinge moments in domestic politics, President Obama has shown why words matter. Now is the time to add his measured voice to the fury of El Général’s. ♦