Editor's Note

In support of his “global war on terror”, President George W. Bush has pledged that a primary goal of United States foreign policy will be to spread and encourage the growth of democracy and freedom worldwide, if necessary by force.

The Middle East is the initial focus of this US democracy drive. In speeches in 2003, Bush declared that the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a legitimately elected government in Iraq would be a “watershed event in the global democratic revolution”, and would serve “as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region”.

But Bush’s democratisation strategy is not confined to the Middle East: its reach is truly global. In January 2005, in his second inaugural address, Bush declared: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

The theoretical implications and practical consequences of this breathtakingly ambitious policy are examined in the present issue of Global Dialogue.

Our opening contribution, by Liaquat Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law, looks at the Bush administration’s initiative to bring democracy to Muslim nations. This endeavour raises numerous thorny questions, among them the differing connotations in East and West of terms like “liberty” and “freedom”, and the wisdom of using force in attempting to impose democracy on other countries. This latter effort, Khan argues, is certain to meet with stiff resistance in the Muslim world, where Bush’s democratisation drive will unleash an inevitable dynamic of us-versus-them.

Arab attitudes towards democracy and towards the United States as self-appointed bearer of that good to the Middle East are considered further by Ramzy Baroud of Australia’s Curtin University of Technology. Reviewing the US response to recent developments in Egypt and Iran, in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, he finds that Arab scepticism and suspicion regarding the US democratisation campaign are amply justified. The Bush administration, he says, has put itself in a quandary regarding the Middle East: for ideological reasons, it talks up the need for democracy in the region, yet it knows that the first outcome of a truly democratic process there would be the ousting of the political and business elites that have protected US interests for decades.

The sincerity of the Bush administration’s proclaimed desire to democratise the greater Middle East, and the effectiveness of its measures towards that end, are assessed by Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco. He concludes that there are distinct limits to the US commitment to democracy and human rights. “The unfortunate reality,” he argues, “is that US policy in the Middle East has tended not to promote freedom, but to support authoritarian governments and occupation armies.”

Iran is widely tipped to be the next Muslim country to suffer US military attack in furtherance of President Bush’s mission to “end tyranny and to promote effective democracy” across the globe. William O. Beeman of Brown University weighs the chief US charges against the Islamic Republic—on terrorism, on the treatment of women and ethnic minorities, and on the purposes of its nuclear-energy programme. He contends that the US complaints lack substance, and that Iran is not a suitable candidate for US-enforced regime change in the name of democratisation.

The war in Iraq is not the first to have been justified as a US attempt to democratise a country. As James Kurth of Swarthmore College relates, the twentieth century witnessed numerous US efforts to effect democratic transformations in states formerly under dictatorial or authoritarian rule. He enquires what lessons these earlier ventures hold for the current US democratisation project in Iraq, and by extension in the wider Muslim world. In particular, he evaluates the often advanced claim that the post-1945 democratisation of Germany and Japan is a historical precedent indicating that US force of arms can succeed in bringing democracy to Iraq and other Muslim countries.

A prime justification offered for the Bush administration’s democracy-promotion policy is the claim that democracy is the antidote or cure for terrorism. If global terrorism is to be eradicated, the argument goes, then a certain “root cause”—the absence of democratic government in the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere in the world—must be addressed. Leonard Weinberg of the University of Nevada, Reno, casts a sceptical eye on this claim. He argues that democracy not only fails to prevent terrorism, but may make societies particularly vulnerable to the scourge of politically motivated violence.

Another major rationalisation for the democracy-promotion policy, and for the US-led war in Iraq carried out in its name, is the theory of the “democratic peace”. This holds that democracy fosters and strengthens peace among nations, and thus enhances America’s security, because democracies seldom fight one another. Omar G. Encarnación of Bard College subjects this theory to searching scrutiny. Democracies do indeed seem to have an aversion to war, he finds, but it is dangerous to build policies of democracy promotion on that basis, especially those relying on military force. The aggressive pursuit of global democratisation, he warns, is likely to put the United States in a perpetual state of war.

The impact on democracy in the United States of President Bush’s “war on terror” is discussed by Stanley Kober of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. With illuminating reference back to the seminal debates of America’s Founding Fathers, he analyses Bush’s policies in three main areas: the authority to initiate war, the question of civil liberties, and governmental secrecy. Bush’s assumption of extraordinary powers on these matters rests, Kober argues, on a pernicious misinterpretation of the doctrine of the “unitary executive”. The result is that democracy in the United States is undermined and, because of the bad example set, efforts to spread it abroad are also damaged.

The two articles that follow consider how Iraq and the war on terror have affected the prospects for democracy worldwide. Joseph Siegle of the University of Maryland asks whether the US intervention in Iraq has undercut momentum for the global expansion of democracy. He finds that the Iraq War has significantly weakened US domestic support for the promotion of democracy abroad. He suggests a number of measures to rebuild global and US support for democracy promotion.

Barry K. Gills of Newcastle University, UK, argues that although we are today supposedly entering a new age of universal democracy, in reality we face a malaise of democracy, and a global crisis of its legitimation. We are now witnessing a shift towards “silent authoritarianism”, which spreads under the guise of fighting terrorism and defending the sacred values of freedom and democracy. Gills identifies many gaps between the rhetoric and the reality of today’s neo-liberal world order, and details the multiple ways in which it does “violence to democracy”.

We wrap up our survey of US democratisation efforts with a pair of articles that stand back a little from current events to take a more general view of the nature and spread of democracy. Yannis A. Stivachtis of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University discusses the historical development of democracy as a form of governance that reflects the highest stage of “civilised” statehood. He stresses that while Western and non-Western nations may publicly subscribe to the same democratic values, goals and procedures, their differing historical experiences and cultural traditions can cause them to interpret and act upon these democratic imperatives in markedly different ways. Democracy promotion today, he argues, does not represent a new phenomenon. Rather, it constitutes an extension, if not a repetition, of an older, quasi-colonial, process associated with the “civilising” of humankind undertaken by the Western states.

Daniel M. Smith of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker peace lobby in Washington, D.C., provides an “open commentary on the prospects of President Bush’s gamble that he can bring democracy to the Middle East”. In the course of this commentary, Smith traces the legacy of the ancient Greek experience with democracy, enquires what inspired the “ferment for democracy” in post-medieval Europe, and considers why the twentieth century was both the bloodiest in human history and that in which democracy flourished as never before. Examining the personal and ideological motivations of George W. Bush’s policies, he discerns in the US president the conviction of “a messianic calling to save the world by spreading democracy and free markets”. Democratic change, he concludes, may come to the Middle East, but not necessarily at a time or in a manner of America’s choosing.

Our issue concludes with an endpiece that comments on the present-day ramifications of a question that figured hugely in the evolution of democracy in the United States: slavery. Biologist and writer Robert S. Capers discusses whether reparations should be made for the “peculiar institution”. Reviewing recent truth and reconciliation efforts in other countries, he argues that a serious examination of US slavery—what was done, by whom and to whom—must precede an apology and reparations in order to make these necessary measures meaningful.

Paul Theodoulou
Summer/Autumn 2006