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Bush, democracy and the Middle East
JANE's Intelligence Review report
FOREIGN REPORT - FEBRUARY 03, 2005
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Bush, democracy and the Middle East
'THE survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world". This, in a nutshell, was US President George W Bush's message in his inauguration speech last week. European governments, which are paying a great deal of attention to these first indications of the administration's foreign policy priorities, now accept that there is no doubt that the US leader passionately believes in what he says. But there is equally little doubt that the policy, as currently conceived, will not achieve its desired results. So, the Europeans are proposing to harness the US president's enthusiasm and merge his verve with a policy that might actually work. Here is what the Europeans are proposing to do.
First, a dose of scepticism is required. The US remains a curious superpower. Because of its sheer military and economic prowess, it cannot help but dominate areas around the globe. However, given its birth out of a mutiny against colonialism, the US has always been uneasy with the reality of its own empire. The idea that its soldiers and merchandise are merely establishing spheres of influence or grabbing markets remains publicly unacceptable. So, successive presidents have told their people that everything was part of a gigantic selfless exercise, designed to spread democracy and prosperity, a burden the US has been pre-ordained - by God - to shoulder.
In this respect, President Bush's inauguration speech represented the norm, and European governments have learnt to discount at least some of the noise about human rights. Yet there are two fundamental differences in Bush's human rights rhetoric. Unlike many of the US's previous presidents over half a century, President Bush no longer has to contend with the old Cold War, or the single enemy of communism. But, unlike Bill Clinton, his immediate predecessor, Bush believes that he has finally identified the next mortal threat to the US. It comes in the shape of dictatorships around the world that breed terrorism. As he said in his speech last week: "After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical and then there came a day of fire." Therefore, for the current president, encouraging democracy is not just the traditional explanation for the exercise of US power, but a specific aim in itself.
Remember what happened years ago in Helsinki? Our informants say the US sat down to negotiations with the Soviet Union in Finland. A deal was offered. The US tacitly accepted that the Soviet Union could keep its colonies, but in return the Soviets undertook to respect human rights. The Soviets grabbed the bargain, believing that they could safely ignore human rights provisions. The US pushed the deal, because it guessed that insistence on human rights would ultimately destroy the Soviet empire from within. The US was correct. When the Soviet Union was smashed, the Helsinki Process -- as it came to be known - reaffirmed the US belief that the aggressive promotion of human rights will, almost by definition, advance US interests.
In the so-called Greater Middle East Initiative unveiled last year, the US called for the encouragement of a free press and freedom of speech in that region. Like the Helsinki Process, the US proposes to start slowly: pushing for free elections, encouraging the establishment of non-governmental organisations or training journalists. And, as in Europe, the US is thinking long-term, expecting the gradual replacement of the current regimes with governments that could be both democratic and pro-Western.
The comparison stops here, however. In Europe, during the Cold War, the US was the subject of adoration. But in the Middle East and parts of Asia suspicion, or even outright hatred of the US, is deeply ingrained. Very often the entire US model, with its emphasis on consumerism and individual rights rather than collective duties, is rejected.
More importantly, the Helsinki Process succeeded in Europe because security questions were addressed first; human rights came later. In the Middle East, the US expects nations to place democracy before security. The Palestine-Israeli conflict, which enrages the Muslim world, is explicitly excluded from discussion by the US. No wonder then that the US's current experiment in implementing human rights - that of holding elections in Iraq - was not even mentioned in President Bush's inauguration speech. It was a telling omission, at least as far as the Europeans are concerned.
So, what are the Europeans proposing? In principle, President Bush's European allies accept that he is right to insist that the way governments treat their people is an essential ingredient of world stability. A government that puts economic development ahead of military adventures is more efficient at managing the national economy. This is the idea the European Union has tried to promote in the Middle East for years through a diplomatic vehicle called Mediterranean Dialogue, a framework of assistance run by the EU essentially with the countries of North Africa. As with all EU projects, the start was slow and hesitant.
But the outcome is not in doubt: small-scale economic assistance to governments in Algeria and Morocco to improve their administration and pacify their societies, coupled with the encouragement of non-governmental organisations and the provision of rewards to governments that start treating their citizens better. There is little doubt that the tactic worked. Algeria's vicious civil war has subsided, while Morocco's governmental standards have improved. More spectacularly, Libya's behaviour has been tamed and the country is talking about improving its human rights record and economic efficiency. The UK will lead the way in co-ordinating efforts to improve the performance of the Palestinian Authority (Prime Minister Tony Blair will hold a specific conference with the Palestinians on this topic in early March).
Furthermore, the Europeans are proposing to use a new framework of dialogue, launched by NATO (incidentally, under US pressure), to help countries in the Gulf reform their military and alter their military spending away from inefficient bureaucracies that constantly interfere in politics and towards the delivery of services to their people. The achievements are small, but they are already being felt in the small sheikhdoms of the Gulf - in places like Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen or Oman.
Our prediction: The US Department of State, relegated to a secondary role in President Bush's first term in office, will soon be reinvigorated by Condoleezza Rice and her team of close advisers. They are all supporters of a more traditional foreign policy, which seeks the possible, rather than being a hostage to dreams about the desirable. The Europeans feel confident that Rice will see the wisdom of co-operating with existing structures established by Europe, rather than inventing new ones. So, it could become a force for good in the world and, incidentally, it could also cement trans-Atlantic relations.
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04 Shkurt 2005 00:24
Forumi Horizont > Media dhe Politika > Mediat Shqiptare > Diskutime te ngjarjeve nga bota > si e mendoni politiken e jashtme te SHBA-ve ne presidencen e dyte Bush
