Democracy Promotion Requires Peace Promotion
Over at the Wonk Room, Peter Juul calls attention to our CAP colleague Brian Katulis’ paper on democracy promotion in the Middle East for the Century Foundation. It features the following bullets:
1. Restore U.S. credibility by disconnecting democracy and human rights promotion from U.S. security goals and reforming our own human rights and civil liberties practices. The Obama administration has already taken big step in this direction by directing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp by next January.
2. Use diplomacy to promote national consensus in key countries and address conflicts in the region. Internal conflicts in countries throughout the region – form Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories to Iraq and Yemen — are driven by the lack of a national political consensus on basic structures of governance. Moreover, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will create an environment in the region more conducive to democratic reform.
3. Integrate U.S. approaches to supporting democracy and governance reform in the region. All U.S. government assistance – from USAID to the State Department to military aid — should be coordinated to better encourage better governance by recipients of American funding and assistance.
4. Increase positive incentives for democratic reform. The model of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which provided incentives to promote economic development and improved governance, is one the new administration can encourage reforms.
5. Diversify funding for democracy promotion in the region. Private philanthropy, endowments, partnerships and the like in the Middle East should be encouraged to take on political reform, building a stronger organic base for democracy and human rights.
6. Recognize the political power of Islamist forces. Like it or not, Islamist groups are potent political forces in many countries in the Middle East. Reform efforts that ignore them are at best incomplete, and the United States needs to take non-violent religious-political movements into account.
These are all excellent points. One thing I would add that I think has a tendency to go missing in these discussions is that the essential background for effective and sustainable democracy promotion is a relatively benign international climate. The end of the Cold War wound up being a boon to democracy not just because several Soviet-dominated countries in Central and Eastern Europe turned into democracies. It also helped spread democracy in Asia and Latin America, too, primarily because the United States no longer felt the need to support “our bastards” regimes and could, instead, make it clear that close relations with the U.S. depended on a proper respect for basic human and political rights. Great power conflict, by contrast, merely ensure than any actual or would-be dictator or revolutionary can always count on the support of one or the other external players.
That’s something to keep in mind in general as we try to stay true to our values while negotiating a transition to a more multipolar world. An emphasis on democracy and human rights implies some level of tension with the government of China. But at the same time, maintaining a basically friendly relationship with China is actually crucial to fostering an environment in which democracy and respect for human rights can blossom. That’s a difficult line to walk, but it’s important. And the general idea has application to the specific region. Working on the Israeli-Arab conflict or on trying to work toward an improved relationship with Iran can be seen as contrasting goals with democracy promotion. But at the same time, lowering international tensions in the Middle East would in many ways make it easier to move forward on democracy.
25 Responses to “Democracy Promotion Requires Peace Promotion”
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February 24th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“Moreover, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will create an environment in the region more conducive to democratic reform.”
So all we need to do is resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict? Easy enough. Someone gets paid to write this nonsense?
February 24th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I don’t think the line to walk is actually that difficult — just apply pressure on nations like China and Iran with regards to human rights, without letting it poison efforts at cooperation — which, as you pointed out in the last post, is possible — or at the very least not allow the tensions to turn into a regional or geopolitical struggle.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I actually met Brian when we did the Iraq Lobbying for Campus Progress. He’s kind of like establishment-left, and a really interesting guy. I still think CAP could go for some actual peaceniks in its camp, but whatever.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
It also helped spread democracy in Asia and Latin America, too, primarily because the United States no longer felt the need to support “our bastards” regimes
Is there any actual empirical reason to think this is true? The world’s an awfully complicated place and this sort of cause and effect is unlikely to be proven. Isn’t it just as likely that the Clinton administration was less likely to support the thugs that Reagan and Bush liked, regardless of the world climate, or that other complex social and economic forces were at work?
In fact, other than Saddam Husein, who are the thugs we used to like who were removed from power following the cold war?
February 24th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
These points contain some good ideas, but ultimately, I find them pretty vague and idealistic. A critical problem not addressed here is that the United States has little genuine interest in promoting democracy in most Middle Eastern countries, because democracy in these countries would produce governments more hostile to the US than their present set of conservative despots. National consensus may be an issue, but I doubt any American president would consider national consensus based on anti-American sentiment a victory.
This applies particularly to bullet #6. I don’t think any of Bush’s “reform efforts” in this region–if indeed he cared about reforming anything other than oil routes–ignored the power of Islamist parties. Quite the opposite: we’re scared to death of them, and wax rhapsodic about democracy promotion without mentioning the caveat that such democracy absolutely cannot produce an Islamist government–witness Gaza. One of the pitfalls of democracy promotion in the Middle East is that democracy actually would help Islamist parties in many instances; for example, if a free and fair election were held in Egypt today, the Muslim Brotherhood would likely take control of the government.
We cannot be taken seriously when speaking of democratic reform in the Middle East as long as the populace of these countries deeply distrusts the United States and outright despises its satellite state, Israel. Katulis is right to recognize that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would create a better environment for reform, but seems to vastly understate its significance. It is not merely a good idea to solve the Palestine conflict before attempting real democratic reforms–it is the sine qua non for any such attempts. As long as popular sentiment across the region views Israel as the enemy and the US as its enabler, emergent Arab democracies will not be the warm, fuzzy states we’d like to imagine. They would as likely as not produce governments with anti-American and anti-Israeli (by now, thanks to decades of bungling and neglect, outright anti-Jewish) ideologies. The only way to ensure that these ideologies do not prevail in these hypothetical democracies is to secure an equitable and sustainable peace in Palestine (and with Netanyahu running the show… good luck with that). Then, and only then, will the United States have any credibility in professing a desire for democracy in the Middle East.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
It would help if we let peoples work toward democracy themselves. Not bombing countries is paramount. Not overthrowing democratically elected leaders and groups, or declaring them to be terrorist organizations would be helpful, too.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
What certain fellows lack in democracy they may make up for in the sheer deliciousness of their recipes.
I made some of this Moroccan harissa-rubbed roasted veal with apricot sauce and almonds on a bed of couscous the other day and it was pretty tasty.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Jonah above is quite right. There is no way Washington is going to enact policies which would weaken for example the Hashemites in Jordan or Mubarak in Egypt, no matter how corrupt or despotic they are. Aside from the various security and financial arrangements, both of these regimes have signed treaties with Israel. Eventually, these regimes will fall and then we will pay the price. In the meantime, democracy promotion inside the Beltway is nothing more than a small time rent-seeking operation.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:48 am
For once Fred is right:
“Internal conflicts in countries throughout the region – form Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories to Iraq and Yemen — are driven by the lack of a national political consensus on basic structures of governance.”
I think that qualifies as a “duh” statement.
“Moreover, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will create an environment in the region more conducive to democratic reform.”
No shit, Dick Tracy.
Email me when this happens. Or when Obama even gets a clue HOW it COULD happen.
Because there IS only ONE solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict – and there is no way Zionists are going to accept it except at the point of a US gun.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
“the United States no longer felt the need to support “our bastards” regimes and could, instead, make it clear that close relations with the U.S. depended on a proper respect for basic human and political rights. ”
Um. I thought that close relations with the U.S. depended almost entirely on proper respect for Milton Friedman and privatizing the public sector and paying off the debts run up by “our bastards”.
February 26th, 2009 at 6:55 am
This trend actually began before the end of the Cold War, though it was at fullest steam once the Gorbachev era started. The U.S. decided to stand against, rather than with, most of its erstwhile dictatorial allies in Latin America, the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan when they faced rising democratic opposition. So, most of those countries’ democratized a couple years before the east bloc did. One thing the end of the Cold War in Europe did to soften the US approach though was that it made Washington amenable to many settlements in Central America and elsewhere where Soviet-allied parties remained substantial participants in politics (FMLN legislators and Mayors in El Salvador, Sandinista participation in Nicaraguan government, etc.)
Rob Mac is right to point out this was a complicated process.
What the local actors did shaped what the U.S. regarrded as possible. Also, the idea of supporting democratic alternatives against friendly dictators when they became available was not a strict right versus left thing in the U.S. It’s biggest proponents were coalitions including liberal Democrats and hawkish Democrats like Al Gore and Steve Solarz. In the GOP, a major faction of the neoconservatives, most notably Paul Wolfowitz, supported the policy of turning away from friendly dictators, the precise opposite of Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s approach 10 years earlier.
What Jonah says seems to ring true. The Arab-Israeli conflict, and, I think a more broad obsession with with purifying the Middle East of colonial vestiges, makes it impossible for the U.S. to find democratic allies in most greater Middle East countries. (There’s actually some exceptions. Zardari in Pakistan is democratic and anti-militant, though corrupt. The democratically elected parties of northwest Pakistan are anti-militant but at this point too intimidated to resist).
In Haiti, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea and Chile, when you had popular democratic movements, they had just as much of a legitimate beef with U.S. policy and understandable desires for retribution as anybody in the Middle East. But, their leaders found a way to make their demands and enact national policies that did not diametrically oppose them to the U.S. They were ready to move on and be on civil terms with the U.S. as long as the U.S. belatedly endorsed the right side of history. Hardly anybody in Middle East oppositional politics is ready to be so forgiving. They pretty much all want to take a crap on the treaty arrangements set up by the Carter and Clinton administrations.
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