Imperial democratization: Rhetoric and reality

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer-Fall, 2006 by Glenn E. Perry

UNDER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, the United States proclaimed its commitment to making the world "democratic" and "free." Robert Jervis sees this emphasis on the domestic structures of states, along with a willingness to use such means as preventive war, an absence of inhibitions about unilateral action, and the necessity "of American primacy, hegemony, or empire" for the sake of peace and stability--with the hegemonic power not even bound by rules that apply to others--as the "four elements" of the Bush doctrine. This portrays a vision of a democratic, peaceful world and the warlike ways through which a hegemonic power would impose it through its own diktat--what I sum up here as imperial democratization. Just as war would make for peace, the authoritarian world order would impose "democracy" within each country. The Bush Doctrine is focused on the Middle East. The centerpiece of this policy was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in a military campaign officially dubbed "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The proclaimed goal of this campaign was to turn Iraq into a "democracy" as a step toward the democratization of the Arab world and Iran. Ironically, this is the region in which the United States has long depended more than anywhere else (particularly since it began supporting at least superficial democratization in other less-developed countries during recent decades) on a network of client authoritarian regimes. This is part of an imperial structure that Johan Galtung (2) characterizes as being based on alliances between the center of the Center (that is, the ruling class of a developed country) and the center of the Periphery (the ruling class in underdeveloped countries) to suppress popular opposition (again in Galtung's words, from the periphery of the Periphery) to American (or other Center countries') policies. And indeed amid repeated pious proclamations of repentance for its past sins, Washington now relies more than ever on local autocratic allies as the foundation of the Middle Eastern part of its empire. Is the Bush administration merely lying when it talks about the necessity of democratization when such would undermine the empire?

EXPLAINING THE CONTRADICTION: IDEOLOGY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND EMPIRE

In his classic treatise, Politics Among Nations, Hans J. Morgenthau provides important insight for understanding the role of idealist rhetoric about such matters as spreading democracy. Like other proponents of the "realist" school, Morgenthau emphasizes that all politics is a struggle for power. As he goes on to tell us, power is the "immediate aim" in international politics--the means to whatever aim motivates a state, whether it be power for its own sake or some other value. (3) While not denying the possibility that the "ultimate goals" are sometimes of an idealistic nature ("legal and ethical principles and biological necessities"), he emphasizes the "ideological element in international politics" from a "realist" perspective. Drawing on insight from Shakespeare and Tolstoy, he shows that this involves hiding a struggle for domination--even "deceiving oneself"--"behind the mask of a political ideology" (i.e., "pretexts and false fronts") that make one's goals "psychologically and morally acceptable" and thus provide "weapons in the struggle for power," for not only would frankness about one's lust for power evoke opposition abroad, but it would create a "bad conscience" at home, thus making it difficult to rally support for foreign policies. (4)

Since we cannot get inside policy makers' minds, the possibility that sometimes they are simply lying about their intentions cannot be dismissed. But I believe that the Bush administration's proclaimed commitment to democratizing the Middle East provides a prime example of such rationalizing and that American leaders and their spokespeople often actually believe what they say, even though the dynamics of the situation dictate that their actions will belie their rhetoric. This may in part represent the well-known phenomenon of "groupthink," in which those engaged in policymaking reinforce one another's opinions and, more to the point here, their "unquestioned belief in [their] inherent morality," which has been identified as one of the main symptoms of the "groupthink" malady. (5) But Jervis (6) suggests that what originally just provided a rationalization may sometimes affect policy makers' actual behavior and--while citing "mid-level officials" who dismiss such as "window dressing"--describes the Bush administration as having "a faith-based foreign policy" that leaves beyond question the necessity and efficaciousness of democratizing Iraq and the Middle East generally even though it might in fact "not act on it" at the price of "sacrific[ing] stability."

The loud proclamations of support for democratization may also exemplify a tendency to engage in impression management (again, likely a matter of rationalization rather than simply lying) as a substitute for actions that seem too costly to carry out. Thus in reference to the Allied response to information revealing the extent of the ongoing Holocaust against the European Jews in 1943, a recent account spoke of "ways [Allied leaders used] to create the impression of concern but" without a real "intention of taking any meaningful action." (7)