Bush, Democracy and the Greater Middle East

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 George Bushs strategy to promote freedom and progress in the Middle East seems to be sinking in the regions shifting sands.

　The new policy was set out in a keynote speech in November last year. Addressing the National Endowment for Democracy, a private organization in Washington which promotes democracy around the world, Mr Bush announced a new forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. In a sharp rejection of the status quo he declared: 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.

　The president returned to the theme in his State of the Union address in January 2004, which vividly displayed his moral zeal for the cause (I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom). This time he added the word Greater before the phrase Middle East.

　But just what the American president had in mind became clearer only when US officials began discussing the theme with their European counterparts and when the influential Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat published a working paper distributed to members of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations ahead of their summit which Mr Bush will host at Sea Island, Georgia, on 8-10 June (see www.daralhayat.net for the English text).

　Thus was born the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), an ambitious proposal to promote democratization from Morocco to Pakistan.

Democracy and the neo-cons

　For George Bush, the initiative is firmly rooted in the events of 9/11, which led the president and his advisers to discern a link between terrorism and tyranny. Yet the idea has an older history. It is one of the pet projects of the neo-conservatives the radical right-wing Republicans whose influence has grown markedly since Mr Bush entered the White House.

　 For the neo-cons, the end of the Cold War should have marked the opening of the floodgates of democracy everywhere, including the Middle East. They argue that, because of Americas thirst for oil, successive presidents allowed the regions rulers to stick to their old authoritarian ways. The folly of this, they believe, was cruelly exposed by the attacks of 9/11.

　 But events have now conspired to undermine the GMEI.

• Arab rulers read the G-8 working paper (whose content is for the most part remarkably banal) and complained that outsiders were foisting Western ideas on the region without even a minimum of consultation.
• Arab commentators loudly proclaimed that without a resolution of the Palestinian problem, talk of human rights in the region would be meaningless and even offensive.
• Washingtons European allies gave the plan mixed reviews. Some (notably the Germans) staunchly supported it and pledged co-operation. Others saw the plan as over-ambitious and as overlapping with their own Barcelona initiative for political, economic and security co-operation between the states of the Mediterranean.
• Finally, the deepening crisis in Iraq undermined the notion that democratization would start in Baghdad and spread by example to the rest of the Muslim world. In particular, the photographs of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison made it singularly difficult for the American superpower to present itself as a teacher of human rights and democracy.

　Rather than abandoning the GMEI altogether, the Bush administration has downgraded it. It insists its aim is to encourage home-grown movements of reform, not impose its own blueprint on the region. The G-8 will be asked to endorse relatively modest schemes to help NGOs and small businesses, create a development bank, support a new literacy programme and set up various channels for dialogue.

　The autocrats of the Greater Middle East are sighing with relief. They believe that, for the time being at least, there will be less pressure on them to embark on far-reaching change and that Iraq-style regime change is off the agenda. Among the regions reformists and fledgling reform movements, on the other hand, feelings are more mixed. Even some of the fiercest critics of US foreign policy had been hoping sustained outside pressure might force reluctant rulers to reform.

　The Bush administration has ended up satisfying no one.