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| Volume XI,
Fall 2004, Number 3 |
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| Dilemmas of
Democratization in the Middle East: The "Forward
Strategy of Freedom" |
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| Daniel
Neep |
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|
Mr. Neep is head of the
Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Royal
United Services Institute for Defence and Security
Studies (RUSI), www.rusi.org. (This paper develops
arguments first articulated in "Echoes of War:
Implications for State, Society and Democracy in the
Middle East," Chapter 3 in War in Iraq: Combat &
Consequence, ed. Jonathan Eyal, RUSI Whitehall Paper
59, April 2003; and "Forward Strategies of Freedom in
the Middle East," RUSI Newsbrief, Vol. 23, No.
12, December 2003.) For a printable pdf version of this
article, click here.
Although
rumors that Washington's flagship Greater Middle East
Initiative would be aborted before it had even come
forth into the world proved unfounded, there is still
the distinct possibility that the policy will be
stillborn when it is unveiled at the G8 Summit in June
in no small part due to successive fiascos in Iraq,
including the fallout from the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal. Despite this obvious setback, however, the
initiative's ideological midwives are unlikely to admit
defeat back in Washington. This particular modality may
have failed, but the notion of the democratization of
the Middle East has been receiving more attention than
ever before from politicians, policy makers and the
media. The reason for this has been well documented: the
Bush administration has adopted the mantra of
democratization as an answer to the many problems it
faces in the region and has deployed the arguments in
favor of Middle East democracy with increasing
regularity in its articulated statements of foreign
policy. President Bush himself outlined his
administration's position on democracy in the region
during an address given at the twentieth anniversary of
the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, and
he subsequently devoted a major portion of his only
speech during his visit to the UK to the same subject.
Not simply a knee-jerk reaction to the problems in Iraq,
as some in Europe might argue, these two speeches served
to crystallize much of the deep thinking done by the
administration over the last two-and-a-half years and
need to be taken seriously as they shed light on a key
element of U.S. thinking.
Perhaps more important,
the constant use of this rhetoric is filtering through
to the level of actual policy. In an effort to overcome
the challenges posed by the events of September 11,
2001, to mitigate the failure of the global war on
terrorism, to eradicate transnational terrorist
networks, and to manage the fallout from the war in
Iraq, U.S. policy makers have increasingly found it
expedient to cite the lack of democracy in the Middle
East as both the reason for policy failures in the past
and the justification for policies being implemented in
the present. Of course, the motif of democracy is not a
new one in American foreign-policy discourse. It has
been there in a variety of guises for decades, more
often than not serving as an ideological cover for the
traditional Realpolitik of international
politics. Yet everything suggests that we are not simply
witnessing a reassertion of the old commitment to
democracy that will be ditched as soon as convenient.
Democratization has emerged as a central component of
U.S. thinking in the reassessment of its security
perceptions in the post-9/11 environment and looks to be
a central factor for some time to come.
Just as
the idea of democratization is not new to the thinkers
behind U.S. foreign policy, so too is it not new to the
body of academic writing that informs and feeds into
that thinking. Indeed, the roots of the Bush
administration's understanding of how democracy can
function in the Middle East can be traced in the wider
Western academic discourse on democratization in the
region over the last couple of decades. These academic
writings should not be considered as pure or objective,
an unadulterated distillation of higher thinking that
can be dipped into in order to provide a scientific
basis for government policy. The focus of academic
writing has shifted over the decades in response to, or
in parallel with, political developments, though it does
not necessarily follow them mimetically. Even in
academia, it must be wryly admitted, there exists a
degree of relative autonomy.
This paper seeks to
examine in some detail what is novel in the newfound
U.S. commitment to democratization and to analyze some
of the modalities whereby the forward strategy of
freedom will be translated into a realistic strategy of
policy.
NEW DIRECTIONS IN U.S. FOREIGN
POLICY
Democracy has always had its place in
American foreign policy. The cri de coeur of
freedom has long provided Washington with justification
to battle political enemies across the globe who
typically invoked that same right to freedom and
self-determination in favor of their own cause. The
traditional commitment to freedom was usually
instrumental in nature, adopted as a way to provide an
ideological basis for America's sometimes grubby
Realpolitik. Honored more often in the breach than the
observance, this lip service to freedom and democracy
understandably rankled those who had hoped the United
States would live up to its own lofty ideals.
Consequently, there is much skepticism in the
Middle East and in Europe that things are any different
this time round. Indeed, Bush's explicit analogy of his
vision for a democratic Middle East and Reagan's vision
for a world without communism for many undermines rather
than strengthens his position. Bush was referring to a
speech Reagan made in 1982, when he said the "day of
Soviet tyranny was passing, that freedom had a momentum
which would not be halted."1 Bush noted that,
at the time, observers dismissed Reagan's words as
"simplistic and naive, and even dangerous." One
newspaper editorial was quoted as saying, "It seems hard
to be a sophisticated European and also an admirer of
Ronald Reagan." But, whereas Bush obviously drew comfort
from the fact his predecessor was with time proven
correct in his assessment of the eventual collapse of
the Soviet Union, most European audiences would infer a
more negative reference to Washington's promotion of
liberty as a correlate of its prosecution of the Cold
War against its number-one strategic competitor. The
discursive trope of democracy was here used in an
instrumental fashion, a tactic in a wider strategy to
achieve a specific set of political objectives, rather
than for its own sake or for the sake of a certain set
of principles.
Ironically, U.S. policy in the
Middle East, especially the Gulf, has often served to
reinforce this European perception. In this region above
all others, Washington was willing to sacrifice its
promotion of democracy in exchange for the security
promised by regimes that would maintain the production
of petroleum, provide a buffer against the expansion of
Soviet influence and, after 1979, prevent the emergence
of more states hostile to U.S. interests, like
revolutionary Iran. Unsurprisingly, it was in the Middle
East, perhaps more than everywhere else, that this
inconsistency stoked the fires of public frustration and
fed the overwhelming anti-American sentiment that has
been sweeping over the region since the
mid-1990s.
Bush did not simply distance himself
from this short-sighted approach, but effected a
fundamental rupture with past policy in speaking of
"decades of failed policy in the Middle East," when the
United States and other countries were
willing to make a bargain, to tolerate
oppression for the sake of stability. Long-standing
ties often led us to overlook the faults of local
elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or
make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems
festered and ideologies of violence took
hold.2 In the earlier speech, he
noted:
Sixty years of Western nations excusing
and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle
East did nothing to make us safe because in the long
run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of
liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place
where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a
place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready
for export. And with the spread of weapons that can
bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our
friends, it would be reckless to accept the status
quo.3 The reasons for this
radical break from America's old and rather spurious
democratic commitments to its newfound fervor for
democratization can, naturally enough, be found in the
reassessment of U.S. international security policy
following the events of 9/11. The idea that democracy
and security were somehow linked was also by no means
revolutionary. But until 9/11 they had been embodied in
the assumption that democracies did not wage war against
one another, a notion around which a sizable body of
international relations literature had accumulated. With
the abrupt realization that the main threat to America's
security was no longer rogue states but sub-state actors
engaged in terrorist activity, the linkage between
security and democracy was radically reformulated.
Policy planners came to believe it was no coincidence
that the perpetrators of 9/11 and numerous subsequent
incidents originated in countries which brooked little,
if any, participation in the political affairs of the
nation. Policy planners also came to believe that
America's role in supporting illiberal regimes in the
region was indirectly to blame. Had these individuals
had the political space to blow off steam at home, they
would not have felt the need to blow up buildings in the
West. Democracy, so the argument went, would provide an
escape valve for some of the mounting and explosive
political pressures building up in the Middle East
before they reached a critical mass. It might also serve
to lessen anti-American sentiment by removing the
grounds for criticism of U.S. foreign policy on the
grounds of hypocrisy.
Arguments like these
naturally appealed most to the more liberal policy
makers and are valuable for bringing the skeptical
Europeans, not to mention the Arabs, back on side. But,
perhaps more important, the end of the Mephistophelean
pact with repressive regimes in the region also served
the rather less liberal policy objectives supported by
some key strands of U.S. thinking after 9/11, which bear
a distinct resemblance to the instrumentalist use of
"democracy" by the Reagan administration.
In
addition to symbolizing the displacement of the pre-9/11
security paradigm, America's new-wave championing of
democratization is fed by more immediate concerns.
Although the idea of a democratic Iraq was most notably
pushed by neoconservative thinkers prior to the war as
the keystone of a new regional-security architecture, it
is likely to linger in U.S. policy on Iraq even after
the neoconservative influence dies away. Democracy in
Iraq is a phrase wonderfully rich in policy meanings. It
allows the United States to bestow retroactive
legitimacy on the Iraq War, provides political cover for
the United States to remain in the country, and offers a
ready-made reason for the United States to withdraw when
its job is done. It is difficult to argue that Iraqis
were truly better off under Saddam Hussein, that the
United States should completely withdraw before
establishing a viable pluralist democratic structure, or
that the Unitd States should remain in the country after
a stable political structure has been set up.
Admittedly, the Bush administration does seem to be
pushing the point slightly too strongly. Even a
sympathetic observer would raise an eyebrow at Bush's
suggestion that violence in Iraq continues because
"terrorists . . . view the rise of democracy in Iraq as
a powerful threat to their ambitions"4 rather
than a combination of anti-U.S. sentiment, nationalism,
criminality, economic or ethnic entrepreneurialism, or
sheer desperation. Nevertheless, Washington's present
commitment to democracy the so-called forward strategy
of freedom in the Middle East can be found in the
immediate concerns of its adventure in Iraq and the
long-term implications of its security perceptions,
which were radically redrawn by the events of September
11, 2001.
THE ROOTS OF U.S. POLICY ON MIDDLE
EAST DEMOCRACY
Trends in academic writing on
democracy and democratization in the Middle East tend to
develop in tandem with U.S. policy towards the region,
at times influencing administration thinking and at
times being influenced by the main thrust of government
policy. During the Cold War, when "freedom" was the
watchword of the United States in every region apart
from the Middle East, where it was happy to exchange
liberty for stability, academic production focused on
the reasons for what was typically known as "Middle
Eastern exceptionalism." Many scholars in the early
1980s maintained that the Middle East and North Africa
were somehow intrinsically resistant to democratic
imperatives, most often citing the incompatible natures
of Islam and democracy. In various guises, culture was
seen as the problem: whether it was an innate Arab
predilection to authoritarianism and social conformity,
the historical triumph of a body of finite truths passed
down from generation to generation over the principles
of critical and rational thinking, or the orthodox Sunni
emphasis on obeying those in power, the assumed
exceptionalism of the Middle East had the rather
convenient benefit of not challenging America's policy
in the region. After all, if the region were impervious
to democracy, then the only choice the United States had
was to accommodate Middle East regimes, however
oppressive.
This line softened as the 1980s
progressed, with scholars developing an interest in the
increasingly apparent emergence of indigenous groups
that seemed to act in a manner which would qualify them
as belonging to what was known in the West as "civil
society." For Western academics, these groups provided
an essential buffer between the state and the individual
and were identified as a fundamental component of
democratic society, an embryonic force in favor of
democracy and the basis for an entrepreneurial class
independent of the state elite such as those found in
the West. Following the collapse of communism, the focus
on civil society developed further, and its importance
became something of an orthodoxy. The assumption was
made that civil society was a prerequisite to
democratization rather than a by-product, or at least
the product of a particular combination of historical
circumstances. Furthermore, suspicions emerged as time
went by that the increasing significance of civil
society in the eyes of the West was at least in part
disguised ideological prescription, a mechanism to
spread the democratic liberalism of free-market
economics to the Middle East after its perceived rampant
success in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Certain factors peculiar to the Middle East
facilitated the process by which civil society (and the
whole question of internal political dynamics rather
than an ossified political culture) rose to a position
of significance in academic analysis of the region. The
Middle East witnessed an unusual period of relative calm
at the international level following the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq's expansionist tendencies were contained until the
late 1990s; prospects for the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict looked for a time to be positive and, even when
they began to darken, the conflict did not spill over
into a wider regional confrontation; the Syria-enforced
peace in Lebanon held; and in the late 1990s, there was
even a significant degree of dιtente between Iran and
some of the Gulf states. This marked decrease in
conflict at the state level was guaranteed by what came
to be known (rather inadequately) as the Pax
Americana.
With American influence retarding
any drive towards conflict at the international level in
the 1990s, policy makers and academics were by default
obliged to look elsewhere for objects of analysis. The
divide between governments and public opinion in the
Middle East was more than sufficient to fill the
vacancy. It seemed that for many analysts public opinion
in the Arab world had simply been created ex
nihilo at some point in the previous twelve years.
As the 1990s progressed, the Arab street increasingly
agitated against the overwhelming influence of the
United States in the region, its mishandling of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the way their
governments were so squarely allied with the global
superpower, whose agenda was unacceptable in most of the
Arab world. It is true to say that levels of political
consciousness in the Arab world (especially in the Gulf)
increased as a result of the information revolution. The
importance of the "al-Jazeera factor" has been
well documented the phenomenon whereby an explosion of
satellite TV channels beaming pictures of Palestinian
misery into homes on a daily basis served as political
education for a previously rather unaware population.
But the Arab street did not spring up from nowhere in
the rest of the region; it had been active since the
colonial era. On occasions in the past when Arab public
opinion had supported pro-independence movements (either
on the soil of the nation, against the colonial
oppressor and its agents, or in exile), it had been
dismissed as irrelevant or as having been stirred up and
provoked by radical elements. In an abrupt volte face,
public opinion was harnessed in favor of U.S.
foreign-policy objectives first in its apparent
willingness to constitute the familiar entities of civil
society, then as a louder and more authentic indigenous
constituency for the policy of democratization the
United States was pushing in the region. Once again,
policy makers and academics found themselves in a
curiously symbiotic relationship, feeding off and into
one another's thinking.
TRANSLATING THEORY
INTO REALITY
If we accept the proposition that
the United States is indeed serious about encouraging
democracy in the Middle East, rather than cynically
invoking reform in an attempt to exert leverage over
states in the region, what prescription does the forward
strategy of freedom offer for going about this daunting
task? The first change the West can make, Bush tells us,
is to reassess its own preconceived notions about the
region, to rid ourselves of our "skepticism about the
capacity or even the desire of Middle Eastern peoples
for self-government."5 This is a reasonable
starting point and a welcome rejection of the notion of
Middle Eastern exceptionalism. U.S. policy thinkers now
seem to accept the universalism implicit in the
principles of democracy.
Peoples of the Middle East share a high
civilization, a religion of personal responsibility,
and a need for freedom as deep as our own. It is not
realism to suppose that one-fifth of humanity is
unsuited to liberty; it is pessimism and
condescension, and we should have none of
it.6 In these few lines Bush not
only effects a break with the undercurrents of thought
that believed democracy and the Middle East to be
incompatible, but also rejects the notion that the West
and the Middle East are doomed to be forever opposed.
The "clash of civilizations" thesis is here ditched
without ceremony. We can also infer that the absence of
Middle Eastern exceptionalism removes the West's excuses
for criticizing repressive regimes in the region. As a
consequence, the United States has already begun to
exert pressure in public and in private on regimes whose
political systems remain tightly closed. It will
continue to do so in the future. As we have seen at
various points over the past couple of years, such
pressure is not confined to the usual suspects like
Iran. It has also targeted countries whose pro-Western
leanings traditionally guaranteed them diplomatic
immunity from the prosecution of the agenda for
political reform.
Secondly, the Bush
administration accords civil society a major role as
evidence of and motor for reform.
Successful societies allow room for
healthy civic institutions for political parties and
labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast
media. . . . Successful societies privatize their
economies and secure the rights of property. They
prohibit and punish official corruption, and invest in
the health and education of their
people.7 Here the European Union
and United States can continue to have a concrete impact
by channeling financial aid to support civil-society
initiatives from think tanks and research centers to
human-rights lobbyists, private NGOs and independent
charities.
Finally, the forward strategy of
freedom seems to suggest that U.S. policy will reflect
America's predilection for conceiving political and
economic freedoms as proceeding hand in hand. Positive
economic incentives could be offered to countries that
are successful in implementing political reforms and
sanctions imposed to punish those countries that refuse
to open up the avenues of political participation.
Carrots as well as sticks would therefore be deployed.
REALITY STRIKES BACK
The three
modalities of encouraging domestic reform outlined above
hit some formidable hurdles when translated into
reality. The first step is to challenge the assumption
that outsiders can play a direct role in encouraging
reform. Will U.S. pressure help or hinder the process of
democratization? The involvement of an external power
especially the United States, which has lost any moral
standing in the eyes of most Arabs following its
uncritical support for Israeli repression of the
Palestinians, its invasion of Iraq and the abuse of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib will complicate an already
exceedingly difficult and often volatile situation. The
difficulties involved in kick-starting the post-war
process of political reconstruction in Iraq have
demonstrated this point amply. The fact that Washington
is the dominant force behind discussions over the future
shape of the country's political and constitutional
framework means that groups whose support base is
primarily contingent on their opposition to superpower
machinations may find the cost of participation too high
to bear. Some groups, such as Muqtada Al-Sadr and his
supporters, realize they can generate greater political
capital by remaining outside the U.S.-sponsored
Governing Council and the Interim Government than they
can from being on the inside. The perception that
Washington is dictating the agenda and delimiting the
sovereignty of the Interim Government has, for many
Arabs, effectively discredited the process of
implementing a liberal, pluralist political system in
Iraq.
In short, there may indeed be situations
in which Washington can play no useful direct role in
encouraging reform, in which case the best alternative
goal might be to do no harm. There are in fact many
instances in which American pressure can prove at best
ineffectual and at worst counterproductive. The Iranian
regime has always seen Washington's heavy-handed support
for democracy as an attempt to undermine the regime as a
whole. Even before the United States finally lost
patience with Iranian reformists in July 2002, American
support for the modernizers often seemed to have the
effect of reversing the gains they had made, as
hardliners found in that support ammunition to attack
their opponents.
Furthermore, reliance on civil
society to push for reform from within raises a host of
practical and theoretical issues that need to be
addressed. There is a real concern that the United
States will seek out bodies that conform to its own idea
of what constitutes civil society, rather than
organizations that are effectual and rooted in the local
milieu. The mosque, for example, is often an important
hub for activities often considered the preserve of
civil society in the West, but it seems unlikely that
the United States would be interested in channeling
funds to centers of religion, even if they could find a
mosque willing to accept American cash. There is a
danger that what will actually be created is an
artificial layer of organizations that would not and
could not exist without Western benefactors, run by a
corps of so-called civil-society professionals. The
significance of civil society in Western political
development was to create a political space for
individuals and aggregated individuals to pursue special
interests. The creation of political space is the
important thing, not necessarily the presence of
minority advocacy groups.
The idea of offering
economic incentives for political reform is distinctly
reminiscent of the EU preference for "constructive
engagement," which seeks to draw wayward regimes into
the fold by first enticing them into the structures of
European capitalism. As the (often American) critics of
constructive engagement rightly point out, the policy
did not do much to improve the position of reformists in
Iran. (As its defenders point out, at least it did not
do anything to shore up the power of the hardliners.)
Washington's Greater Middle East Initiative in its
latest, most watered down incarnation, at least seems
distinctly familiar to many Europeans. The European
Union has for nearly a decade been involved in its own
effort to link economic progress with gradual yet
meaningful political reform in its Euro-Mediterranean
process. The impact of the Barcelona process, as it is
more commonly known, on the economies of North Africa
and the Eastern Mediterranean has been subjected to
criticism on a number of counts, such as that it puts an
undue emphasis on macroeconomics, fosters uneven
development and polarizes the local political economy.
More significantly, it has also been criticized for its
complete failure to deliver progress in the fields of
political reform or human rights. Europeans remain
skeptical that any U.S.-led initiative would be able to
avoid the same pitfalls as the Barcelona
process.
THE REASSERTION OF THE STATE AFTER
SEPTEMBER 11
One seemingly illogical and
inherently contradictory aspect of the newfound U.S.
favor for democracy in the Middle East post-9/11 is its
agitation in favor of the authority and power of the
state, even as it calls for the greater empowerment of
society in formal and informal channels of political
participation. This illogic is created by an ideological
inability to understand the "gray areas" within which
both states and societies tend to co-exist, in which the
state is neither totally authoritarian nor the society
completely free. In sum, Washington seems to have lost
any ability to analyze the region except in terms of a
monolithic state versus a monolithic society.
The Bush administration sees no pressing need to
disaggregate states, to recognize the fact that even
non-democratic governments are more aptly described as
systems rather than regimes and house divergent
opinions, competing interpretations and internal power
struggles, rather than comprising one monolithic bloc.
(It might be thought that this kind of internal dynamic
should come as little surprise to an administration
famously characterized by its own internecine battles
between rival departments and ideological factions
inside departments.)
In the short term, the Bush
administration's refusal to perceive Middle Eastern
states as having any greater depth or complexity than
that of the official government line could reap some
benefits for the United States. Its zero-tolerance
attitude to interference in Iraqi affairs in the wake of
the war has undoubtedly dissuaded even the most
hard-line Iranian factions from seeking to exert undue
levels of covert influence, eliminating one complication
in an area where there are already more than sufficient
rival agendas. Paradoxically, America's rigidity in
other areas may actually make it easier for regimes that
find their ability to respond to U.S. requests
constrained by concerns over domestic opinion:
governments can use American intransigence as a cover
under which they can excuse meeting those requests. Less
room for ambiguity at the international level may make
difficult decisions a little less difficult to bear for
besieged regimes. In the short term, at the very least,
states friendly to the United States will find
additional support for their efforts to consolidate
their positions vis-ΰ-vis those threats perceived to be
rooted in the domestic population. The name of the war
on terrorism can be invoked to cover clamp-downs that
may have a more political motivation than safeguarding
the welfare and security of the nation. Domestically as
well as internationally, the authority of state actors
will be reinforced.
The difficulty lies in the
way this reassertion of the state fits in with America's
commitment to democratization. Political scientists
frequently note that democracy cannot be installed from
the top down; the push for a political system in which
genuine participation is possible must begin at the
grass-roots level. The primacy of the state to which
increased and sustained U.S. involvement in the Middle
East will lead may actually make it more difficult for
publics to exert pressure for reform from within. With
the power of the state reinforced in at least the short
term, the implementation of measures of political reform
will be more dependent on the good will of elites rather
than public pressure.
This is not necessarily
cause for concern. The smaller states of the Gulf, for
example, have made considerable progress in adopting
more participatory forms of governance, but this
progress comes as a result of changes in the
international political and strategic environments
rather than as a response to domestic demands for
democracy. Largely insulated from internal pressure by
virtue of their rentier economies,8 the
smaller Gulf states have begun the process of reform
with one eye on the increased stability of the region
(including the gradual rapprochement between the GCC and
Iran) and the other eye on the benefits that the United
States grants its allies particularly allies with
stable political systems (in U.S. strategic thinking,
small democratic states are inherently stable and
therefore better bets for long-term planning).
REFORM VS. DEMOCRATIZATION
The policy
of "democratization" espoused by the United States is
something of a misnomer. It would be more accurate to
speak of "political reform." Washington envisages not so
much a free-wheeling, pluralist, vociferous democracy as
a carefully controlled process of expanding political
participation. Bush has noted that Western democracy did
not come overnight and has emphasized the need for a
gradualist approach to participation, which will no
doubt reassure vested interests in the region. Top-down
political reform is, understandably, a prospect with
which Middle Eastern regimes are much more comfortable
than the idea of instantaneous democratization. Reform
allows them to control the speed of change, to ensure
the "right" people are winners in the new political
economy and, above all, to allow business to continue as
usual behind the scenes. This might be viewed as an
indictment of Bush's lofty speeches of "forward
strategies of freedom in the Middle East," but this
would be a harsh assessment. In reality, a gradualist,
evolutionary approach is not necessarily any different
from the way European or American political systems have
evolved over the centuries.
Supporting political
reform also provides a mechanism to exorcise the
familiar problem of "the Islamist dilemma," the specter
usually summoned to argue against the expansion of
democracy or elections in the Arab world. Should free
and fair elections be held in the Middle East tomorrow,
it would be likely that radical religious forces would
win a sweeping victory in many countries. This is in
part a result of the failure of secular Arab nationalist
regimes to deliver on their promises and in part a
reassertion of perceived Middle Eastern cultural
authenticity after an onslaught of Western usually
American influence. There is the creeping fear that
even those Islamist parties that accept pluralist
participation in elections might abandon the ballot box
for theocratic rule after winning, in a manner analogous
to that by which Nazis rose to power in Germany. U.S.
policy makers have as yet found no real answer to this
potential hazard. Even Noah Feldman, whose thinking on
Islam and democracy seems to be consonant with current
trends in U.S. foreign policy, fails to address the
problem fully in his After Jihad: America and the
Struggle for Islamic Democracy and retreats under
the cover of asserting that the road to real democracy
might be difficult, but it will be worth it in the end.
Political reform avoids the pitfalls of the Islamist
dilemma by limiting the right to participate in politics
to those who the governing elite feels are safe enough
to take part.
The democracy card is immensely
useful for the United States to play. It has a number of
different values, meanings and significances that can be
used to fit a variety of policy objectives. It provides
an ideological cover for its Iraq project, a response to
the challenge embodied in 9/11, an instrument with which
to exert leverage on uncooperative regimes, and an
excuse to reward countries that make efforts in the
right direction. But the importance of democracy is also
essential in responding to bigger questions than mere
foreign-policy dilemmas. A commitment to democracy can
be supported by a wide cross-section of the American
political elite: it plays a key role in rallying support
for Bush's vision of the role America should play in the
world. Democracy offers an ideal opportunity to reach a
national consensus over U.S. foreign policy. It is a
policy supported by old-school realists who have no time
for the liberal critique of U.S. superpower status and
approve of Bush's assumption that America has the right
and responsibility to own and use power. It is also
supported by those more critical of American hegemony
who just might be persuaded that the one time America
should flex its muscles is in pursuit of good old
liberal values like democracy. When all these factors
are considered together, it seems likely that the
commitment to "democratization" aka political reform
will be part of Bush's foreign policy (and even a
potential Kerry presidency) for some time to
come.
In the near term, implementing the forward
strategy of freedom in its pristine form will be all but
impossible in the current political climate. The United
States would be well advised to prioritize the more
immediate challenges of coping with the anger that the
mere mention of America elicits across the Middle East.
Re-engagement in the Middle East peace process as soon
as possible after the November presidential elections is
essential. Although the Arab "street" is not likely to
rise up and overthrow those governments in the region
that are allies of the United States, it is impossible
for those in government to ignore the ties that bind
them to the societies they rule. In the present climate,
no Arab government is now in a position to support any
initiative from Washington, even if it has unspoken
support at home. As the fate of the Greater Middle East
Initiative illustrates, the political climate means that
ambitious regional policies are almost automatically
doomed to failure at the moment. Such grand plans are
redolent of neoconservative notions of redrawing the
security architecture of the Middle East. Any major
project pushed by Washington right now will smack of the
imperialist America that the Arab world sees in the
occupation of Iraq.
This doesn't mean the United
States can do nothing. What it does mean is that the
scale, scope and ambition of its plans need to be reined
in and rethought. Remembering that small is beautiful,
Washington needs to adopt not a headline-grabbing
campaign to "democratize the Middle East" but a policy
of promoting political reform or "good governance" in
European parlance by the back door. This is not simply
about channeling thousands of dollars to civil-society
groups purporting to represent society but in reality
representing themselves. Good governance can be
fruitfully encouraged at the government-to-government
level too. The issue of security governance in the
Middle East has traditionally been avoided by the West
(with the notable exceptions of the Palestinian
Authority and Iraq), but it could well provide the
"missing link" between the seemingly conflicting
imperatives of security and democracy. Transforming
security systems so that they operate in a manner more
consistent with democratic norms and principles of good
governance is a vast area. It encompasses issues as
diverse as civilian control of the military (and
political control of those civil authorities), the
provision of an adequate constitutional and legal
framework for the armed forces, parliamentary oversight,
the involvement of the public (including media, civil
society, et cetera), budget transparency, enshrining the
rule of law, and safeguarding human rights. As a recent
paper on the issue points out,9 the various
principles behind security governance could be couched
in terms readily understandable to the different
security communities in the Middle East. For the defense
community, reform means an end to budgetary waste, an
increase in efficiency and a reduction of escalating
arms races through greater transparency. For the
human-rights community, an accountable security sector
is a prerequisite for the rule of law. For the
development community, bad governance in the security
sector is a drain on energy and resources better spent
elsewhere.
The key factors in the field of
security governance and, for that matter, in any other
area of encouraging political reform in the Middle East
are to couch it in language that makes sense to people
in the region, to work in a framework of partnership
rather than a framework of thinly veiled threats and
blatant pressure, and to work with the longer term in
mind. Unfortunately, adopting such an approach is likely
to win President Bush few headlines and hence few votes
back at home. As invariably seems to be the case, U.S.
policy in the Middle East is about domestic politics
rather than what is best for the
region.
1 President Bush's speech at
the Royal Banqueting House in London, hosted by RUSI and
IISS, November 19, 2003.
2
Ibid.
3 President Bush's speech at the
Twentieth Anniversary of the National Endowment for
Democracy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington DC,
November 6, 2003.
4 President Bush,
November 19, 2003, op. cit.
5
Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 President
Bush, November 6, 2003, op. cit.
8
Bahrain is an exception to this generalization; its
political reforms seem to be as motivated by the desire
to avoid intra-communal conflict between Sunnis and Shia
as they are by external pressure.
9 Fred
Tanner, Security Governance: The Difficult Task of
Security Democratisation in the Mediterranean,
EuroMeSCo Briefs 4, May 2003. |
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