America’s costly return to realism

Bush’s foreign policy has indeed taken a decidedly different turn over the last two years. Idealism is now out the window while realism is back with a vengeance. Gone are hawkish idealists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and, of course, the formidable Donald Rumsfeld who was never able to make up his mind whether he was an idealist or a realist. The Pentagon’s new boss, Robert Gates, has superb realist credentials with a stamp of approval from Bush senior. Same goes for the realist credentials of Condoleezza Rice whose State Department is back in the business of “balance of power” diplomacy. The only person not to have gotten the realist memo is the chief internal dissenter, Dick Cheney, who still has the heart to insist that everything in Iraq is going just fine.

All jokes aside, it is truly disturbing to see such a drastic U-turn in the “democracy and freedom” agenda. Particularly in the Middle East, the region that most needs democracy, reforms greatly depend on external dynamics. Whether we like it or not, external pressure for democratization often helps. Turkish democratization is a case in point. Do you think Turkey would be as democratic as it is today without external pressure? From the decision to hold multi-party elections in 1946, to the abolition of the death penalty, most turning points in Turkish democratization were greatly related to external incentives.

Those who think that the Arab world is not ready for democracy should think twice about the poisonous status quo. The rationale for democratization in the Middle East is based on a compelling logic: authoritarianism in the Arab world fuels political Islam. In the absence of legitimate democratic outlets, such as political parties, the mosque is simply the only available institution where opposition movements can gather and organize. The absence of basic political liberties such freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly transforms the mosques into political parties in the Arab world. The result is catastrophic for both religion and politics. These authoritarian dynamics not only create the Islamization of dissent, but also generate the politicization of Islam. Under such circumstances, the winners are Islamists and authoritarian governments. The Islamists get stronger and stronger while authoritarian repression becomes harsher and harsher. The autocrats are winners because they are the only alternative in the eyes of Western governments who are afraid of an Islamic revolution or Islamic victories in case there are free elections. The losers, of course, are liberals, secularists, and democrats.

America discovered this poisonous vicious cycle in the Arab world after 9/11 and began pushing for democracy in the region. Now it is giving up. What went wrong? The short answer is the disaster in Iraq. Cynics may argue that America was never serious about democracy in the Middle East. They have a point. It is true that America never applied serious pressure on friendly autocracies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet, the hope that a democratic Iraq would serve as a model for the rest of the region was a sincere one.