Democracy or Hypocrisy?
Bush’s Agenda for the Middle East

Bush and his foreign policy team have shown an incipient, albeit unsurprising case of split personality: ‘Bush the realist’ actively cultivates warm relations with ‘friendly tyrants’ in many parts of the world, while ‘Bush the neo-Reaganite’ makes ringing calls for a vigorous new democracy campaign in the Middle East. How the administration resolves this uncomfortable dualism is central not only to the future of the war on terrorism but also to the shape and character of Bush’s foreign policy as a whole.¹ – Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

In a wide-ranging foreign policy speech,  US President George W. Bush described his vision of how democracy could unfold in the Middle East once Iraq has been stabilized. The speech was made before the National Endowment for Democracy created by the Congress in the Reagan administration. Bush directly compared what he called a new “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East ” to Ronald Reagan’s 1982 declaration in England that Soviet communism had failed, and to American efforts to spread democracy in Asia after World War II.

Bush preached democracy in the Middle East on the same day he was signing a $87.5 billion package approved by Congress for Iraq and Afghanistan – the bulk of which would be directed towards funding US military operations supporting the occupation of both countries.² Also, the speech came at a time when American troops suffered the largest number of military casualties in Iraq since occupation started last spring.³ The so-called “Ramadan offensive” undertaken by the Iraqi resistance has seen three US helicopters shot down, around 30 attacks per day, and an estimated 60 occupation soldiers killed in increasingly sophisticated ambushes in the past two weeks alone.

CIA estimates suggest that a growing number of Iraqis see insurgents as a legitimate form of resistance to occupation and are coming to believe that the guerilla campaign can drive out US forces. Many Iraqis, including the supposedly docile Shi’ite community, have no support for the US-created Governing Council. Guerilla attacks against all foreign outposts in Iraq made many US allies reluctant to send troops, as Japan postponed plans to send troops to Iraq and South Korea reduced the forces it pledged to send to less than a third of those required by the US .⁴ This has left the US to independently bare the brunt of maintaining security in Iraq.

In light of the mounting difficulties that the Bush administration faces in the Middle East, Bush’s speech, if taken at face value and word-for-word, tried to convey a positive message of change and transformation to the highly skeptical and increasingly hostile Muslim audience. When compared to his previous overtly militaristic and aggressive speeches and declarations, his new speech was carefully tailored to strike a sensitive cord among the oppressed people of the Middle East . More importantly, Bush made an implicit recognition of the past wrongs of US foreign policy with regards to his country’s support for authoritarian regimes in the region. He explained that “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.” Another positive development came when he acknowledged that an attitude of “cultural condescension” towards Islam prevailed in foreign policy circles and admitted that Islam does not represent an impediment to development: “These are not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of economic and political doctrine.” 

On the other hand, the speech was filled with many comments that signaled a return to traditional foreign policy concerns, and raised questions with regards to the sincerity and coherence of his previous claims. At the same time he scorned Iran and Syria for their lack of democracy, he praised steps towards democracy in other authoritarian states such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia . Ironically, the governments praised by President Bush are not only among the most resistant to democratic change but also happen to be some of the most critical American allies. 

The supposedly anti-US government of Iran happens to be led by a democratically elected president in a country with the most vibrant civil society in the Middle East . Surprisingly, whereas the people of the Middle East remain oppressed by many pro-US governments, Bush singled out Iran and Syria when he said: “Iraqi democracy will succeed – and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus  to Tehran  – that freedom can be the future of every nation.” In addition, he lumped Syria ’s leaders with Saddam, saying they had promised a restoration of ancient glories but instead left “a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.”⁵

In this regard, it is reasonable to ask: Why Iran and Syria ? Why should they be singled out for transformation? Why consider “military dictatorship” and “theocratic rule” a “straight, smooth highway to nowhere” when most Middle Eastern governments can get by with it as long as they serve US interests? If “evil” regimes cannot “hold back freedom forever,” then why do the US and Israel continue to hold back freedom from the Iraqi and Palestinian people? If President Bush considers Yasser Arafat (the only freely elected leader in the Arab World) the “main obstacle to peace and the success of the Palestinian people,” then what does Sharon  ’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza  seem to him? The answer to those questions lies in understanding the dynamics of US foreign policy after September 11^th and assessing the changes – if any – that happened with regards to the US outlook towards the Middle East . In this regard, one must go beyond the increasingly publicized fairytale notion of a tidal wave of democracy being spearheaded by messianic US neoconservatives in a region long known for its resistance to change.

Democracies or Dictatorships – Which Work Better For the US in the Middle East?

Despite constant assertions that “democracy” and “freedom” are worth dying for as an end in themselves, both concepts were used when convenient as a means to justify intervention in countries hostile to the US. In US thinking, the declared goal of establishing “freedom” and “democracy” should never supercede or dictate strategic concerns, but rather it should be used as a means to justify and reinforce the latter. In fact, in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute one month and a half before he ordered an invasion of Iraq , President Bush repeatedly recycled clichés of “freedom” and “democracy” in an attempt to offer a broader justification for military action than the weapons he asserted that Saddam Hussein had amassed.⁶

The Bush administration faces two conflicting imperatives: The need to fight Islamism worldwide has entailed that the US set aside its democratic rhetoric and seek closer cooperation with authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East and Asia . On the other hand, many US decision-makers have realized that it is precisely the lack of democracy in Muslim countries and the US alliance with oppressive autocracies that fuel the cause of the Islamists.⁷

In an attempt to reconcile those conflicting goals, the US administration’s approach to regional reform after September 11^th followed two distinct lines – one hard and one soft.⁸ The hard-line approach was directed against countries with governments hostile to the US . The removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was primarily motivated by US security concerns relating to oil and Israel , but was nevertheless also aimed at destabilizing other hostile regimes in both Syria and Iran . The soft line approach was directed against Arab governments with whom the US enjoys friendly relations such as Egypt , Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Morocco and the Gulf States. For those countries, the US officially sought gradual transformation and step-by-step democratization through more diplomatic engagement but without seeking to destabilize incumbent regimes or shake their strange hold on power in any significant way.

In fact, most US efforts in the latter regard eventually went to failed projects aimed at snail-paced institutional reform or to socially irrelevant NGO’s championing human rights or women’s rights.⁹ In turn, pro-US regimes used the convenient excuse of “fighting terrorism” to tighten their grip on power and continued to arrest, detain, and torture thousands of members of opposition groups in their own countries. Many of those regimes were emboldened by the US’ abridging of its own domestic civil liberties after September 11^th through the large scale detention of immigrants, closed deportation hearings, and the declaration of even some US citizens as “enemy combatants” with no right to counsel or to contest the designation.¹⁰ The US ’ arbitrary imprisonment, torture and extra-judicial killing of captives within the cages of Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan sent a message to pro-US regimes that such practices are indeed acceptable.¹¹

From Theory to Practice – The Real Aims of the Bush Administration

Judging from the experience of the Muslim World not only for the past several decades, but since September 11^th, it is clear that notions such as human rights, democracy, peace, freedom, accountability and economic opportunities are used to pursue strategic interests and serve the purpose of imposing Western domination. For many decades, the US found itself supporting royal autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf Emirates, pre-revolutionary Iran, and the military autocrats in Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan, because they served as a bulwark against leftist, nationalist or Islamist currents hostile to Washington and/or acted as guarantors of Israel’s security and the smooth flow of oil to the West.¹²

During the Cold War, the US constantly allied itself with regional strongmen –Mohamed Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, and then, when faced with the “threat” of revolutionary Iran , the US allied itself with Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s.¹³ Since 1979, the Carter Doctrine preached keeping outside powers from controlling the flow of oil by establishing military bases in various Arab Gulf states – a feature which signaled the beginning of direct US control of the region’s vital resources and, in turn, paved the way for bin Laden’s war against US hegemony in the Middle East. 

In Algeria , for 10 years now, one of the world’s ugliest civil wars is supposedly being fought between “Islamists” and “security forces.” The war is estimated to have killed nearly 200,000 people – mostly civilians. Over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of Algeria’s security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including torture, extra-judicial executions of women as well as men, and the horrible act of throat-cutting of babies. Yet the US has provided financial assistance to the Algerian military and promised to train members of its security forces by US military personnel. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East , announced that Washington  “has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism.”¹⁴ 

After September 11^th, al-Qaeda captives held at overseas CIA interrogation centers – which are completely off-limits to reporters, lawyers, and outside agencies – were routinely beaten, tortured and deprived of sleep by US Army Special Forces before interrogation. It is estimated that approximately 100 suspects have been transferred to US allies for further interrogation, most notably to Saudi Arabia and Morocco , whose brutal torture methods have been amply documented in the State Department’s own annual human rights reports.¹⁵ More recently, the case of an al-Qaeda suspect, a Syrian-born Canadian arrested in transit in New York and “deported” to Syria, where he was severely tortured after spending over a year in custody, illustrates that Washington could talk democracy while its security services cooperate with Syria’s brutal secret police.¹⁶

The most glaring case of US security interests superceding its calls for democracy lies in Pakistan , where President Pervez Musharraf seized power in a 1999 military coup, tightened his authoritarian grip on power, and instituted a series of anti-democratic constitutional amendments. In recognition of the Pakistani leader’s critical supporting role in the “war on terrorism,” the Bush administration showered Musharraf with praise and attention, waived various economic sanctions, assembled a handsome aid package that exceeded $600 million in 2002, and restarted US-Pakistani military cooperation.

In Central Asia , the US ’ need for military bases and other forms of security arrangements led the US to forge closer relations with the totalitarian leaders of Uzbekistan , Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan .¹⁷ Even Saparmurat Niyazov, the totalitarian megalomaniac running Turkmenistan , received a friendly visit from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in April 2002. Given Kazakhstan ’s significant oil and gas reserves and President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s close cooperation with the US on security and economic matters, there was no US pressure of any sort on Kazakhstan ’s leader to institute democratic reforms. Instead, President Nazarbayev used his links with Washington  to tighten his dictatorial grip on power.

Conclusions

Recent US democracy rhetoric reflects the sense of confusion and paralysis that US security policy has been facing since the Iraq war. The inability to appreciate the complexities of Middle Eastern politics and to reconcile the conflicting imperatives of security and democracy in the region will continue to haunt the US for years to come. 

The US ’ continued occupation of Iraq , its unconditional support for the Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza, its long-established tradition of supporting “friendly tyrants” in the Middle East and Asia , undermines US credibility as an honest advocate of change. The US must also realize that continuing to exclude and marginalize Islamist groups in the Middle East and/or support Arab regimes that do so will inevitably doom democracy by silencing a voice that reflects the aspirations of an important segment of the public.¹⁸ 

The Bush administration must understand that if democracy were to actually flourish in the region, the results might not necessarily serve US security interests or bring to power forces amiable to the US . One has only to note how Turkey ’s elected parliament rejected the US request to invade Iraq from its territory on the eve of the most recent Gulf War. One could safely assume that if Jordan or Saudi Arabia had left such matters to a freely elected legislature, the same would have happened.¹⁹ As long as the dual injustices of occupation and dictatorship are upheld by the US , the Muslim World will never listen to messages emanating from Washington .

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision- making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.

1 Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2003) 2 David E. Sanger, “Bush Asks Lands in Mideast to Try Democratic Ways,” New York Times November 7, 2003 3 Dana Bash, et al. “Deaths Mount in Bloody Week for Troops in Iraq ,” CNN.com November 8, 2003 4 Tony Karon, “Iraq: Shock and Awe II” Time.com November 13th, 2003 5 David E. Sanger, “Bush Asks Lands in Mideast to Try Democratic Ways,” New York Times November 7, 2003 6 Marina Ottaway, et al. “Democratic Mirage in the Middle East,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace October 2002 7 Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2003) 8 Thomas Carothers, “Is Gradualism Possible? Choosing a Strategy for Promoting Democracy in the Middle East .” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace June 2003 9 Marina Ottaway, “Thinking Big: Democratizing the Middle East.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 10 Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror,” Foreign Affairs January/February 2003 11 Yamin Zakaria, “The Axis of Hypocrisy,” Jihad Unspun November 8, 2003 12 Tony Karon, “If Bush is Serious About Arab Democracy….” Time.com November 7, 2003 13 Joseph McMillan et al. “Toward A New Regional Security Architecture,” The Washington Quarterly Summer 2003  14 Robert Fisk, “The Double Standards: Dubious Morality and Duplicity of This Fight Against Terror,” The Independent January 4, 2003   15 Eyal Press, “In Torture We Trust?” Nation March 31, 2003 16 Tony Karon, “If Bush is Serious About Arab Democracy….” Time.com November 7, 2003 17 Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror,” Foreign Affairs January/February 2003 18 Marina Ottaway, et al. “Democratic Mirage in the Middle East,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace October 2002 19 Tony Karon, “If Bush is Serious About Arab Democracy….” Time.com November 7, 2003

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