US President Barack Obama does not seem to be obsessed with the kind of rhetoric used by his predecessor to promote democracy in the Middle East. Instead, Obama is focused on domestic problems and preoccupied with re-establishing America's leadership abroad. His priorities are to resuscitate the US economy and end two unnecessary wars in the Greater Middle East — in Iraq and Afghanistan. That makes him more content with the status quo than former president George W. Bush.
In the 18 months since his election, phrases such as "democracy promotion" have rarely been used in Obama's public speeches. In comparison, the word "freedom" was mentioned 41 times in Bush's second-term inauguration address. This may reflect a return to "pragmatism" in US foreign policy under the Democratic administration. This turn of events is welcomed by some in the US academic community. Some have even questioned whether America can live with the democratic governments in the Middle East. The Cold War argument that advocates a more "pragmatic" policy, based on the old ‘end justifies the means' adage, has made a comeback in Washington. There are even attempts to justify America's alliance with autocrats around the world. The theory that America must support dictators or else accept living with the very people it regards as dangerous to its interests and core values is once again gaining momentum.
One US academic wrote that, "Pressure for democracy will present the US with a number of immediate dangers and few clear advantages". He believes that the likelihood of the Arab world producing a fully democratic regime in the next 10 to 15 years is remote, because "it enjoys none of the recognised prerequisites for sustaining democracy: its elites are not committed to democracy, its population is not homogeneous, its national institutions are extremely weak and the per capita GDP in some places is closer to $1,500 [Dh5,517] than the $5,500 commonly viewed as the democratic tipping point". He adds that the transition to democracy would, in most Arab countries, almost certainly lead to the disintegration of state institutions, such as the army and police. As in the Iraqi experience, this would result in chaos and violence. "[The] replacement for the incumbent Arab governments will not be the small class of liberals or old bourgeois families that once reigned. Rather, the alternative is an Islamic state run by Muslim extremists," the US academic concludes.
Spurious argument
Regardless of who is setting the agenda in Washington concerning democracy promotion in the Arab Middle East — academics or politicians — this argument is spurious. To start with, if Arab elites are not committed to democracy, as this American academic would like to argue, we truly don't know how much commitment there was among the Portuguese or Spanish elites during the transition to democracy in these two countries in the mid 1970s. In addition, neither homogeneity nor GDP can explain why poor and heterogeneous India has become the world's biggest democracy.
As for the fear of Islamists taking power in Arab countries, this is justified only if autocracies are better than the governments that might replace them. It is unfair to compare the current Arab governments with hypothetical Islamist regimes, because Islamists might never come to power if Arab citizens are given the right to vote for their leaders. Even if ‘radical' Islamist governments were to come to power, it is still not obvious that they would do a worse job.
Clearly, the predominance of Islam cannot alone explain why democracy promotion has failed in parts of the region. The success of some Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia, in establishing democratic institutions has pulled the rug out form under the feet of some US academics. One should not be surprised, therefore, that other explanations have been offered, such as living standards. On other occasions, the focus has shifted from Islam as a religion and culture to tribalism as a key component of Arab society and a major hindrance to political and social development in the Arab world.
Apparently, western academics never tire of looking for opportunities to claim that Arabs are not mature enough to have democratic governments. The hope is that a full-fledged Arab democracy will emerge soon so that western academics will cease to argue that the region cannot support democracy.
Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations at Damascus University's faculty of Political Science and Media in Syria.
