Natan Sharansky spent nine years of his life as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union, accused of high treason because he fought for human rights. He has spent the past nine years as a politician in Israel, dismissed alternately as a dreamer and a die-hard, because of his implacable insistence on standing up for the same democratic principles which guided him in the gulag.

But this week Sharansky is enjoying a vindication. The man who helped to bring about the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe is the inspiration behind the new wave of democratisation sweeping through the Middle East.

It is more than just a coincidence that Sharansky found himself caught up in the collapse of Soviet rule and now practises politics at the heart of a region undergoing another profound convulsion. The linkage between the two is the narrative thread running through his latest book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.

And “linkage” is the concept at the centre of Sharansky’s story. He has consistently argued that politicians in the free world should link their treatment of authoritarian regimes to those regimes’ treatment of their own people. And he has always maintained that such pressure can not only bring about democratic change, but that the democracies thus created are far better partners for peace than the tyrannies they replace.

In his book, Sharansky explains how he fought with visionary American statesmen, such as Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, to ensure that trade concessions towards the Soviet Union were linked to Moscow’s respect for human rights.

Jackson and his supporters were condemned at the time by the school of foreign policy “realists” led by Henry Kissinger. For the realists, Jackson’s attempt to promote freedom was not just naive but also counter-productive. Not only was America better off developing a more cordial relationship with a stable Soviet leadership, greater liberalisation in the Soviet bloc could only be inhibited by external hectoring.

But, as Sharansky shows, the inherent weakness of tyrannical regimes makes them dependent on Western economic and technical support, giving the free world a powerful lever for change. His demand that democracies link their policies towards his country with respect for human rights led, initially, to his own imprisonment.

But the momentum for change had begun. And it accelerated with the presidency of Ronald Reagan. One of the most moving passages in Sharansky’s book is his account of the effect Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” had on the inmates of the gulag. Reagan’s words were denounced in the West as typical redneck bellicosity. But they were read by Russia’s dissidents as a recognition that their struggle could prevail. As the prisoners tapped out Reagan’s message to each other in morse code, through the prison walls, Sharansky writes, “dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us”.

Thanks to Reagan’s moral clarity, the door of Sharansky’s prison cell swung open in 1986 and he became the first political prisoner to be released by Mikhail Gorbachev. His freedom preceded, indeed helped to lead to, the freedom of millions a few short years later.

Sharansky’s story, if it ended there, would be inspiring enough. But as an Israeli politician he has been arguing for years now that hope in the Middle East depends upon the embrace of democracy. His critics, inside Israel and in the world’s foreign ministries, have derided his analysis as naive, just as Kissinger did, and argued that outside pressure cannot bring democracy to Arab nations just as the realists of the Seventies maintained that it could not advance freedom in the Soviet bloc.

But one man has shown that he understands, and agrees with, Sharansky’s analysis. And, fortunately for Sharansky, the Arab people and the rest of us, that man is also the leader of the free world. George W. Bush spent hours with Sharansky in November discussing their shared ideas. Sharansky’s influence was apparent in Bush’s inauguration speech in January and the actions which have followed.

Bush put the tyrannies of the Middle East on notice that his policy towards the region would be driven by the pursuit of freedom. For regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose oppressive rule has been indulged by America in the past in the interests of “stability”, a new approach was outlined. New that is, for the Middle East. For Natan Sharansky it was a policy reborn – the policy of linkage.

When Egypt arrested leading dissidents last month, the Americans announced that the US economic support on which Cairo depends would not be forthcoming. It is more than just a coincidence of history that last weekend Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak announced that his country’s next presidential election would be contested. It is also no coincidence that the Saudis, sniffing the democratic wind, have moved tentatively towards freer elections. The consequence of American pressure has been wind in the sails of all the region’s democrats, from the new Iraqi Government to those Lebanese pushing for an end to Syrian occupation. And for those Palestinians determined to exit the terrorist cul-de-sac down which Arafat drove them and resume the journey to democracy.

The steps towards freedom that Arab nations have taken are still tentative. But we in the West can continue to help — by supporting today those dissidents pushing for democracy in the Middle East as we once supported Sharansky, Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel. The names of some of these brave men and women, such as the Palestinian Omar Karsou, are listed in Sharansky’s book. In our world turning upside down we can follow no better lead than Sharansky’s.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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