By Thomas Carothers
The Bush push for democratic change in the Middle East was flawed from the start—both by an uncertain commitment from all parts of the U.S. government and by conflicting imperatives deriving from other U.S. interests. Now, the process must be decontaminated, repositioned, recalibrated—and resold to U.S. voters.
As the U.S. presidential campaign unfolds, the appropriate place for democracy promotion in U.S. policy has emerged as a central issue. With President Bush having so greatly raised the visibility of the democracy issue—both by casting the war in Iraq as a democratizing mission and rooting the “war on terrorism” in a global “freedom agenda”—democracy promotion is now an unavoidable part of any serious foreign policy debate.
Democracy promotion achieved significant bipartisan support within the U.S. policy community and public from the late 1980s to the early years of this decade, but that consensus has shattered. The Republican Party is riven by disputes between realists determined to pull Washington back from transformative goals abroad and neoconservatives still ferociously attached to these ideas. The Democratic Party faces divisions between proponents and skeptics of liberal internationalism. Moreover, in a recent U.S. poll, fewer than half the persons polled (45 percent) agreed with the proposition that the United States should promote democracy abroad, including just 35 percent of registered Democrats versus 64 percent of registered Republicans.
U.S. debates over the appropriate role of democracy in U.S. foreign policy often take place at the level of symbols, myths and other abstractions, with strikingly little reference to the actual record and capabilities of the United States in this domain. If the emergent debates over post-Bush policies are to be more fruitful, it is crucial they be grounded in a secure knowledge base about the Bush period. Behind the resplendent rhetoric, what has Bush policy on democracy consisted of in actual practice? What effects has Bush policy had on democracy around the world? Then looking forward to the next administration, what place can and should democracy promotion play in U.S. policy?
Democracy Promotion in Bush Foreign Policy
Identifying the precise role or place of democracy promotion in U.S. policy is always difficult. Any administration’s approach to democracy is inevitably an amalgam of highly varied policies and programs toward dozens of countries and is often marked by one or two high-profile, exceptional country cases that dominate external perceptions. In addition, the rhetoric typically surrounding democracy promotion causes some observers to confuse words with deeds. These obstacles are very much present with the current administration. The Bush policy is marked by extravagant pro-democracy rhetoric, a singular exceptional case—Iraq—that absorbs the lion’s share of public attention and many varied policies in other parts of the world.
The Bush administration highlights the Middle East as the center of its democracy promotion efforts, in both the ousting of authoritarian regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and their replacement by elected governments and pressures for political reform on some of America’s autocratic allies in the region. Yet the Bush push for democratic change in the Middle East was deeply torn from the start both by an uncertain commitment to it from all parts of the U.S. government and by conflicting imperatives deriving from other U.S. interests.
Although the Bush administration now characterizes its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as democratizing missions, in both cases the motivations for intervention and ongoing commitment are much more complex, with security objectives playing a more central role. The efforts to push friendly autocratic Arab allies toward greater political reform have been halfhearted at best. The administration exerted the greatest pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, but he paid no price (other than a delay of free trade agreement negotiations) for defying the administration’s plea for free and fair elections in 2005 and subsequently cracking down on the political opposition.
Most U.S. autocratic allies in the region have felt no significant pressure. These efforts were inhibited from the start by the continued need for close cooperation from these governments on several fronts, including antiterrorism, access to oil and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, many U.S. officials feared that decisive moves toward greater political openness would empower Islamists. Discouraging developments in the region—from the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections to the deterioration of the situation in Iraq and the emboldening of Iran—have effectively quashed the Bush push for democracy in the region.
Beyond the Middle East, the main lines of Bush policy have been substantially realist. Toward China and Russia, Bush officials have publicly regretted backsliding on political freedom without derailing security and economic cooperation. In prosecuting the “war on terrorism,” the administration has embraced various nondemocratic governments outside the Middle East as well, particularly Pakistan and Ethiopia. Finally, with the upswing in energy prices, the administration has cultivated cozy relations with energy-rich autocrats such as Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev.
Nevertheless there are some pro-democratic elements to the Bush administration foreign policy beyond the Middle East. In several dozen countries, from Indonesia, Nepal and Armenia to Peru, Mozambique and Guatemala, the United States has supported modest measures to help advance democratic transitions that are moving ahead or restart transitions that have stalled. These efforts usually entail a mix of diplomatic steps (such as pro-democratic advice or jawboning) and democracy assistance, including aid to support free and fair elections, the reform of state institutions and civil society development. This quiet, usually long-term support for democracy is not a Bush innovation but generally a continuation of previous administrations’ policies.
In sum, the notion that Bush policy represents any kind of all-out democracy crusade is an illusion, fueled by the exceptional and confusing case of Iraq. President Bush’s pro-democratic rhetoric is grand, but his policy overall is best understood as a semi-realist mix of major realist elements with minor democratic ones.
Discouraging Results
As recent Freedom House surveys indicate, democracy basically has not advanced in the world since the late 1990s. Democracy’s troubled state has multiple causes, including the loss of forward momentum of the third wave of democratization, the strength of the Chinese and Russian economies bolstering the strong-hand model of development and the recent surge in oil and gas prices emboldening energy-rich autocratic governments.
What is the effect of Bush pro-democracy policies within this mix of broader factors on the state of democracy around the world? In the greater Middle East, the results are largely discouraging. Afghanistan is under siege from the resurgent Taliban, and Iraq is embroiled in a horrendously violent civil war. On the whole, in spite of some encouraging heightened debate about the need for democratic reforms, the Arab world remains stuck in authoritarian rule. The new discussions about democracy have not translated into new broad-based citizen constituencies and movements in support of such change. Political reforms carried out by Arab governments in recent years still conform to a strategy not of democratization but of defensive liberalization.
Outside the Middle East, it is difficult to find evidence of any major positive U.S. impact on the state of democracy. The Bush administration, like its predecessors, has played a minor but useful role in helping various countries move ahead on democracy or at least avoid slipping backwards. In the few cases where long-term support crystallized around particularly consequential political junctures, such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the U.S. role was at most a facilitating rather than determining factor.
At the same time, assessing the effects of Bush policies on the state of democracy in the world must account for negative effects. America’s status as an example of democracy and human rights, perhaps the most important pro-democratic influence it exerts, has been grievously harmed by the Bush administration’s violations of the rule of law in the “war on terrorism.” The global legitimacy of democracy promotion has been badly hurt by the constant identification under Bush of democracy promotion with the military intervention in Iraq.
Regaining the Moral High Ground
How can the United States get back on track in promoting democracy? Debates over the appropriate role of democracy promotion in U.S. foreign policy typically center around where the U.S. government should position itself along the realist-idealist continuum. Given the overall mix of U.S. interests in the world, however, it is unlikely that U.S. policy will shift from its long-standing semirealist mode significantly in either a realist or idealist direction in the years ahead. The key to moving forward lies in finding ways to carry out democracy promotion more effectively and persuasively. This will entail addressing three concrete challenges.
First, U.S. democracy promotion must be decontaminated from the negative taint it acquired under George W. Bush through clear, well-conceived steps to restore the credibility of the United States as a symbol and promoter of democracy. The next administration must improve compliance with the rule of law in fighting terrorism. Democracy promotion must also be disassociated from U.S. military force. Future security-related interventions should be justified on security grounds alone. More broadly, the next administration must work to reduce inevitable inconsistencies. This involves toning down the democracy rhetoric and being more willing to exert real pressure on some key autocratic partners, such as Pakistan and Egypt.
Second, democracy promotion must be repositioned more modestly within the “war on terrorism.” The idea that it is the lack of democracy that causes terrorism must not be treated as an iron law of politics and turned into a one-size-fits-all policy nostrum. Many democracies suffer or have suffered from home-grown terrorism, such as Spain and Great Britain, while many dictatorships do not. While democratization can help encourage moderate Islamic actors and over time weaken more radical ones, it can also empower radical Islamists in societies with pent-up pressures for sociopolitical change, as in Algeria in the early 1990s and Palestine recently with the election of Hamas.
Third, democracy promotion must be recalibrated to account for the larger changes in the international context. The next administration should draw the connection between energy prices and democracy policy. With the rising appeal of non-Western political models and disillusionment in nascent democracies, the United States must reengage with the idea of democracy rather than taking its near-universal appeal for granted. With the loss of U.S. moral leadership on democracy promotion, the next administration should encourage cooperation and emphasize solidarity with like-minded governments and international organizations promoting democracy.
Getting the United States back onto a better track with regard to democracy promotion will not be easy, given the considerable damage wrought by the Bush administration. The drop in support for democracy promotion among the U.S. public is just one direct casualty.
Nevertheless, positive change is possible. The intense personalization of the global antipathy toward Bush foreign policy means that the next U.S. president, whether Republican or Democratic, will have a real opportunity to repair America’s negative image. In addition, although the state of global democracy is unusually challenging, a majority of citizens in most parts of the world favor democracy, at least in the abstract. The quiet side of democracy promotion—technical assistance programs and targeted low-key diplomacy—remains intact. Finally, in spite of Iraq, the U.S. public maintains a belief in the underlying principles of multilateralism, U.S. global engagement and the importance of human rights.
Thomas Carothers is a professorial lecturer of International Development at SAIS and vice president for studies–international politics and governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a leading expert on democracy promotion and democratization and author of a recent Carnegie report, Democracy Promotion During and After Bush, from which this article is drawn. |
