He spends a significant amount of time taking on conservative "realists" who prize stability in international relations, as well as liberals who he says fail to distinguish between flawed democracies that struggle to implement human rights and authoritarian or totalitarian states that flout human rights as a matter of course.

Sharansky criticizes those who argue that democracy is culturally contingent and therefore unsuited for Muslim societies. Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he mentions documented Israeli human rights abuses, but places the bulk of the blame for the conflict on the dictatorial systems prevalent in Arab societies. He also weighs in on the vexing subject of how to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from the "new anti-Semitism." Such criticism must pass the "3D" test of "[no] demonization, double standards, or delegitimation." Sharansky does not grapple deeply with the current situation in Iraq, but his opinions throughout, honed through years in a Soviet prison and in the corridors of power, feel earned.

From The Washington Post: "In Natan Sharansky's new book, the renowned Soviet dissident turned Israeli cabinet minister makes the tough-love case for Palestinian democracy. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will prevail, he argues, if and only if the Palestinian Authority is transformed into a truly free society where the Palestinian people's natural inclination toward peace can prevail over the manipulations of their hatemongering leaders. Sharansky does not expect that this paradise will arrive overnight as a result of electing a new head of the Palestinian Authority on Jan. 9, 2005. It will take time to extirpate Yasser Arafat's entrenched legacy of hatred, he writes. Elections should be deferred for at least three years; the whole process of true democratization might take "many years, even decades." In the meantime, Israel should avoid what Sharansky sees as the fatal mistake of the Oslo peace process: making one-sided territorial concessions in the illusory hope of shoring up pseudo-moderate Palestinian leaders who rule by undemocratic means."

Skeptics have quipped that Sharansky and his allies are "demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine." Cynics might think that a formula of "no concessions until a free society rises" is a rationalization to justify a policy of "no concessions until hell freezes." The cynic would be wrong, but the skeptic would be right. Sharansky, a former refusenik and Soviet political prisoner, comes off as a man of conviction who brings his own past as a human rights and democracy advocate to today's debates about the Middle East's future. ("The great debate of my youth has returned," he writes.) But for all his sincerity, it is unlikely that Palestine can become a stable, mature democracy with an electorate clamoring for peace anytime soon. This goal will be especially hard to reach if Israel defers making the meaningful concessions on territory and settlements that any democratically elected Palestinian leader will need in order to survive, let alone succeed. Otherwise, it will be impossible to break the iron grip of hatred that Sharansky himself says is choking off the breath of Palestinian freedom.

Sharansky bases his case on two central arguments, both of them dubious. The first is that free societies are always peaceful. "Since all democratic societies strive for peace," he writes, "there is no such thing as a belligerent democracy." Open public debate, he continues, provides the average voter with good information about the unnecessary costs of reckless warmongering. In contrast, the leaders of what Sharansky calls "fear societies," such as the Soviet Union and the Palestinian Authority,...

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