Following the effective use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools in regional uprisings, an ..... Brown, Michael E., Lynn-Jones, Sean M., & Miller, Steven E. (1997). Debating the .... In Larry Jay Diamond & Marc F. Plattner (Eds.) ...
Fahed Al-Sumait. Chapter contribution for Middle East Communication Studies Section: Global Media, International communication and the Middle East A Rhetorical Tightrope: U.S. Political Discourse on Arab Democracy following the Cold War
U.S. Presidents and Middle East Democratization: An Introduction America‟s position toward Middle Eastern democracy has always been more complicated than its rhetoric implies. Nearly a century ago as the end of World War I began to emerge, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson delivered a pivotal speech to a joint session of Congress outlining 14 points that were to form the basis for the Axis surrender and the establishment of the League of Nations. In it, he offered a bold direction for U.S. foreign policy steeped in moral righteousness and based on the politics of progressivism that had yielded important domestic reforms. This new foreign policy direction was anchored in the ideas of self-determination, free trade, and especially democracy. With respect to the Middle East, most of which was under Ottoman rule, Wilson also declared the need for self-determination throughout the region. In the decades since, U.S. presidents have often followed Wilson‟s cue, consistently declaring self-determination and democracy as moral justifications for foreign involvements (Wittes, 2008), with these rationales serving as key banners flying over U.S. policies. Despite Wilson‟s assertion, however, these ideas have seldom been articulated as important U.S. policy objectives for the Arab nations of the Middle East.i Instead, a pragmatic approach based on a realist doctrine and short-term interests has generally been the norm. Only with the administration of George W. Bush did “Wilsonianism” ii again take center stage in U.S. foreign policy, this time with plans for a redefined and democratic Middle East as its cause célèbre (Sadiki, 2009). In the words of U.S. President George W. Bush‟s in 2002: “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export… Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East” (Bush, 2002). The ideas of freedom and democracy provided anchors for President Bush‟s “Freedom Agenda” as he set a new direction for relations with the region. Such statements also became common among policymakers and pundits following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and subsequent U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They reflected a new, deeply held assumption that democracy could be “exported” to the broader Middle East and might serve as a force for peace and a political panacea for terrorism (Al-Sumait, Lingle, & Domke, 2009). In many of his speeches during 2005, Bush pointed to elections in Iraq and Afghanistan and ones pending in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories as evidence of his strategy‟s prudence and democracy‟s contagious expansion. He pledged that “in these countries and across the world, those who claim their liberty will have an unwavering ally in the United States. This administration will stand with the democratic reformers no matter how hard it gets” (G. W. Bush, 2005). But by the following year, things had changed. Electoral victories by Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon forced the U.S. government to conclude that its policies for promoting elections had helped to empower organizations previously viewed as terrorists. In this context, the Bush administration shifted rhetorical gears to emphasize how the trappings of democracy in the region should be manifested, changing the yardsticks mid-play. By the end of his term, Bush‟s inconsistent application
of principles on Middle Eastern democracy fueled an already contested political terrain on the topic. The result was a conceptual gap of significant consequence between those in the West who promoted democracy and the people in the Middle East who were expected to adopt it. Shortly after U.S. President Barack Obama came to office he called for a new beginning in America‟s relations with the “Muslim World.” During his highly anticipated Cairo speech he directly addressed the issue of democracy. To distance himself from the stigmas of the Bush years, he exhibited a delicate rhetorical balance between general support for democratic principles and respect for the sovereignty of nations. He said: I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people (Obama, 2009). He then described his “unyielding belief” in such principles as freedom of expression, popular sovereignty, rule of law, and government transparency. He said, “These are not just American ideas, they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.” Eighteen months later, his commitment to this statement was put to the test. In December 2010, an “Arab Spring” of democratic protests began in Tunisia following the self-immolation of a frustrated graduate-turned-fruit-vendor. Less than a month later, Tunisia‟s president was forced to step down followed by long-time U.S. ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (Lynch, 2011). Days later, protests erupted in neighboring Libya. There, Muammar Qaddafi did not hesitate to use force, leading protesters-turned-rebel-fighters to request assistance from the international community. Obama responded to these calls with military support, a decision described by a senior administration official as “the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values [in the Middle East]” (Rogin, 2011). Obama‟s decision, however, not to respond similarly to stop the use of force against protesters in the Arab countries of Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria made this attempt at realignment appear hollow. As with previous administrations, significant contradictions remained between America‟s stated interests and its ideals with regard to Middle Eastern democratization. This chapter provides a communication-based analysis of such political discourse in the U.S. regarding Arab democratization, revealing much about America‟s consistent use of democratic rhetoric in the pursuit of inconsistent regional policy objectives. Specifically, I present the findings of a thematic analysis based on more than two thousand texts since the end of the Cold War, including presidential speeches, news reports, TV news broadcasts, and foreign policy journal articles. I begin by explaining the methodology for this study and then present three primary classifications and their themes that emerged in my reading of these texts. These are: (1) democratic rationales: realism and idealism, (2) democratic scrutiny: observation and proclamation, and (3) democratic expectations: optimism and pessimism. Each refers to debates that waxed and waned over time, but were particularly prominent in certain periods. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the dominant 2
patterns in the discourse divided according to three distinct eras: pragmatism (1991-2001), ideal internationalism (2002-2007), and pragmatic idealism (2008-2011), which represent the dominant governmental policies toward Arab democratization at a given time. I also suggest consequences caused by the strategic application of similar democratic language by different political actors pursuing dissimilar political objectives. Among these has been the creation of a particularly charged rhetorical environment through which current and future advocates of democracy in the region must now delicately tread. Before presenting my methodological approach, I wish to clarify what I mean by “discourse” and why it is conceptually central to this study. My use of the term refers to the representation of ideas through modes of communication that form central elements in the social production of knowledge, power, and meaning (Hall, 1997). It is through discourse that relationships between objects, subjects, meanings, and ideas are created and perpetuated. Within any discursive field we can examine complex constructs that illuminate specific ideological practices. Such constructs are part of larger communicative arenas that Foucault (1972) has labeled discursive formations: that is, collections of statements across epochs with similar styles, strategies, and political patterns that enact and affirm ways of thinking about issues. Discursive formations exist at the meta-level of language use and are comprised of complex networks of ideas and terms surrounding broad areas of knowledge. In turn, these ideas and terms function as heuristic devices that are recognized by members of a shared community as the cultural and political lexicon surrounding particular issues. While such formations are a necessary arrangement for shared communication, the meanings associated with them are part of an historical legacy complicit with contested issues of power, representation, and legitimization. From a discursive perspective, ideas such as democracy, or communism, or terrorism are constructs that are given meaning by political actors and other key cultural leaders through patterns of representation within a discursive formation we might label “international relations.” These constructs comprise notions of “truth” and knowledge that are created and sustained through the discourses of a given period or context (Howarth & Torfing, 2005). Foucault (1971, 1972) applied the notion of discursive formations in his analysis of the knowledge surrounding natural history and the Enlightenment period. I use it here more narrowly to illustrate the application of communication theory to examine specific ideologically laden terms like democracy in relation to broader formations, such as international relations, in order to identify the semantic networks that form certain institutionalized forms of discourse; this is particularly important when these discourses have significant political consequences and real-world effects. Terms of Analysis For this analysis, I examined a wide range of communications delivered or published over two decades. I began in 1991 because this year marked an end of the Soviet Union and beginning of the first Gulf War. With the end of a “Cold War Consensus,”iii containing communism was no longer 3
the primary guiding philosophy for US foreign policy. With the 1991 US-led military effort to remove Iraq‟s invading army from Kuwait, America‟s relationship with the Middle East also changed and its military presence greatly expanded. During that same year Algeria entered into a civil war triggered by the electoral success of Islamists, and Samuel Huntington (1991) published his influential book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, both of which feature prominently in subsequent discourse. The two-decade time period is also an era of media globalization with the rise of satellite TV, the Internet, and new media technologies. For example, viewership of Cable News Network (CNN) surpassed the U.S. television networks of ABC, NBC, and CBS for the first time during the 1991 Gulf War. This was also the year that the pan-European organization for particle research, CERN, launched the World Wide Web project that helped propel the global diffusion of the Internet. The data collection ended in April 2011, approximately one month after the start of NATOled bombings in Libya intended to aid pro-democracy fighters in that country. I draw on speeches from the four presidential administrations since 1991 (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) as touch points for examining important U.S. government discourses about Middle Eastern democratization over time. iv News content came from newspapers, television broadcasts, and policy journals. I analyzed news articles and editorials from two U.S. newspapers with a high degree of foreign policy content, the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as CBS broadcast news.v Two leading policy journals on foreign affairs were also included. These journals play an important role in policy debates and function as an intersection for ideas and discussions by politicians, academics, and other policy experts. The first, Foreign Policy, is produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The second, Foreign Affairs, is produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.vi Data were collected using a number of Boolean searches vii and the results were then filtered to focus on only those dealing specifically with the topic of democracy in the Arab Middle East. This identified 2,287 texts: 296 presidential speeches including 19 State of the Unions, 1,313 articles and editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post, 509 CBS News transcripts, and 169 articles in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy journals. The total number of communications varied by year, from a low of 22 in 1995 to a peak of 282 in 2003, when debates about the Iraq war climaxed. My analytical approach was an iterative process of reading the texts, categorizing them according to different schemes, and revisiting the corpus of communications several times to refine the categories. This yielded three comprehensive thematic categories I refer to as primary classifications, each of which contained two opposing themes, or realms of debate, distinguished by their underlying suppositions. These classifications contextualize the array of discussions on Arab democratization over the past two decades based on distinct time orientations: past, present, and future. Importantly, they are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. Therefore, the explanatory value of these broad classifications is not in establishing hard distinctions between commentators or 4
sources so as to box them into a particular area. Such an approach would not allow for changes in opinion nor reflect the diversity within or across the debates. Rather, they synthesize a wide array of U.S. discourses on Arab democratization to provide a parsimonious analytical tool with which to assess emphases across time. Where the primary classifications provide a broad organizing frame of reference, the themes they contain add analytical power by focusing on underlying philosophical standpoints that capture opposing positions within a given classification. The resultant analysis delineates the foundational debates in which important U.S. political sources sought to rationalize current policies, interpret past events, and make predictions related to Arab democratization. Such analysis is essential for understanding public sphere debates about America‟s role in the Arab Middle East, as well as for assessing the rhetorical environment in which both proponents and opponents of democratization policies must operate. I now turn to a fuller explanation of each classification and its themes by presenting some illustrative excerpts from each of the analyzed sources. As a point of reference, Table 1 summarizes each of the primary classifications, their opposing subthemes, and the central topics of debate within each.
***TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE***
Democratic Rationales: Realism and Idealism I begin the analysis with democratic rationales because it is focused on discussions about policies in effect at a given point of time. Thus, it serves as a useful orientation to U.S. positions toward Arab democratization under each of the four presidential administrations contained within the sample. To a large extent, the prevailing governmental policies toward Arab democracy drove the broader discourses. As a result, presidential rhetoric appeared to exert a type of agenda-settingviii force—directing debates toward particular aspects of democracy promotion policies even if it could not dictate the overall tone. To illustrate the most common trends for rationalizing policy debates, I provide examples from both politicians and pundits according to the two opposing themes under this classification: realism and idealism. Theme I: Realism’s Dominion For the first decade of analysis U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East could be characterized as “pragmatic” because it was strongly grounded in realist principles, which propose that states prioritize security and power over the pursuit of ideals. Under the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton this pragmatism in the Arab Middle East trumped the idealism of democracy promotion. For example, regional policy prioritized the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least participation in an on-going peace process, over Arab democratization. While there has always been idealistic presidential rhetoric regarding the issue of democracy, for many years this was almost exclusively directed toward countries outside of the Arab Middle East. Instead, regional policy 5
involved cooperating with non-democratic regimes which usually required acceptance of behaviors directly contradicting U.S. values and ideals (Cleveland, 2004; Lesch, 2007; Milton-Edwards, 2006; Sadiki, 2009; Saikal & Schnabel, 2003; Wittes, 2008). Given these conditions, this classification includes examples of discourse according to both of these characteristics of the realist approach: (1) policy pragmatism over idealism, and (2) prioritizing the peace process. Taken together they typify the rhetorical realism that dominated discussions on Arab democratization for more than a decade. Policy pragmatism over idealism During the first decade under examination, policy pragmatism was more important than idealism. To be clear, it was still commonplace for administrations to offer idealistic rhetoric, since ideals make for an easier policy sell to the public. However, until 2002 such ideals were carefully excluded or only tentatively regarded when talking directly about Arab countries. Rhetorical maneuvering that couched pragmatism in idealism was characteristic of both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. For example, Bush gave this description of the government‟s pragmatic position when asked by journalists about the possible democratic motives for liberating Kuwait in 1991: “Well, let me say this, and I hope it doesn‟t come out wrong. The war wasn‟t fought about democracy in Kuwait. The war was fought about aggression against Kuwait. Having said that, the Kuwaitis have said that they want to move towards the democratic process, and I hope they do. And they should” (G. H. W. Bush, 1991b). In his view it was best to carefully position policies as close as possible to the nation‟s valued democratic ideals, even if he did not see these as a basis for regional policy. The effort to liberate Kuwait was one of the first events after the Cold War to spur public discussions about the possibilities of Arab democracy. However, many pundits echoed the president‟s realist sentiments for this Gulf War. For example, syndicated Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen cautioned against enthusiastic calls by some Congressional members and columnists to build on the military success in Kuwait and bring democracy to the region: There is a pride bordering on national hubris, a growing sense that, having whipped Iraq, there is almost nothing we cannot do. Why not, for instance, proceed to Baghdad and convert Iraq itself into a democracy?… But our experience in Vietnam ought to remind us that democracy is not so easily transplanted. Iraq, for example, has never been a democracy—and neither, for that matter, has any other Arab state, Kuwait included (R. Cohen, 1991). In line with the administration‟s thinking Cohen warned against the tactic of using ideals as a basis for policy. For Cohen, and others, the dearth of regional democratization was seen as a justification for avoiding the issue rather than a rationale for trying to improve conditions. President Bill Clinton frequently proposed his commitment to a robust democratic agenda but also stopped short of applying such an agenda in the Arab Middle East. Observers regularly questioned contradictions between his applied realism in the region and his professed democratic idealism in areas like Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Political commentator and
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academic Leon Hadar of the Cato Institute was among them as he summarized the perils faced by Clinton in building a foreign policy platform on democracy that ignored the Arab Middle East. The new administration‟s neo-Wilsonian orientation with its emphasis on defending democracy, human rights, self-determination and arms control worldwide clearly runs contrary to the interest of maintaining alliances with Middle Eastern despots and arming them to the teeth. Directing such a policy only against Iran and the Islamists, while exempting the pro-American Arab axis from its pressure, will only signal to the rest of the world that American policy is dominated by duplicity (Hadar, 1993). Despite such an apparent contradiction it was common practice for many years to ignore democratic ideals both politically and rhetorically in Arab Middle East. Prioritizing the peace process The rhetorical placement of the Middle East peace process above other regional concerns was a second principal characteristic of the realist discourse under the elder Bush and Clinton administrations. This commentary from esteemed Washington Post columnist David Broder was illustrative: “White House officials assert that Clinton has been consistent to his campaign promises… in putting economic issues at the center of foreign policy, in pressing for democracy in Russia and peace in the Middle East. What the White House officials don‟t say is that all of these policies are carry-overs from the Bush administration” (Broder, 1994). Even when a journalist asked Clinton about the apparent contradiction between his democracy-promotion policies and his support for nondemocratic Arab partners in the peace process, Clinton‟s realist priorities were made apparent: Well, first of all, those countries have to work out their internal affairs for themselves. But as long as they are responsible actors on the international stage and as long as they are contributing to the peace process in the Middle East, we will consider them our partners for peace in the Middle East. That‟s the first and most important thing: How do they conduct themselves, and are they supportive of the peace process? (Clinton, 1996). As did his predecessor, Clinton avoided describing democratization as a possible means to achieve peace and instead countered by ranking partnerships and international stability over interventionism. Taken together these two variations within the realist theme—pragmatism over idealism, and prioritizing the peace process—indicate that realism dominated both presidential rhetoric and political punditry about the region during the Bush Sr. and Clinton years. Such pragmatism undoubtedly kept the United States from prolonged entanglements in the name of idealism that could have hurt vital economic and security interests. Instead, the more pressing concern was the objective of brokering peace between Israel and its neighbors. Hence the otherwise global push for democratization could be put on hold when it came to Arab countries. However, contrary to serving American interests, such policies actually helped foster resentment in the region and fuel radical elements which were to later strike America. An inability to reach a peace settlement over the years added to these dynamics. Given these conditions George W. Bush concluded that a different approach was necessary to address the root problems in U.S. policies that contributed to the attacks of September 11, 2001. His 7
new approach occupied an opposing philosophical position of idealism, which he saw as offering possible solutions for both terrorism and the fractured peace process via the energetic application of Middle East democratization. His Wilsonian vision was not the only form of idealism with a bearing on the region, nor did it prove to be more successful than the realist approaches of his predecessors. What it did do, however, was profoundly change the rhetorical environment in America with regard to Arab democratization. Theme II: Idealism’s march and retreat Idealism is a variant of liberalism that involves a range of arguments for using moral principles as a primary rationale in formulating foreign policies. Its most significant rhetorical component during the period analyzed involves what has commonly been referred to as Wilsonianism—or liberal internationalism in international relations‟ terminology. This idea represents a belief in the moral right of countries to interfere in the affairs of other nations when done in the advancement of liberal principles like democracy. During the period examined, it was best exemplified by George W. Bush‟s “Freedom Agenda.” A second component of this theme concerns the ideas of Israeli and American exceptionalism, which posit a unique quality to both nations with respect to democracy. Unlike the Wilsonian component, exceptionalism was a common element in the rhetoric of both realists and idealists; what differed were the policies for which it was invoked. I will discuss both Wilsonianism and exceptionalism in turn and then elaborate on the broader relationships between rhetorical idealism and realism in U.S. foreign policy toward the region since the end of the Cold War. Wilsonianism As illustrated, U.S. presidents have traditionally been hesitant to force the idea of democracy on the region. Eventually, George W. Bush exhibited a strong Wilsonian outlook toward the Arab Middle East, but did not begin his presidency with such a position. Bush‟s first major attempt at promoting democracy in an Arab context manifested via the peace process in 2002. As illustrated, the peace process took priority over democracy promotion for many years until Bush flipped the equation and touted Palestinian democratization as the principal route to peace. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence (G. W. Bush, 2002). Bush suggested that elections would be the first step to a viable democratic Palestine, which would then form the basis for an independent state and create a greater likelihood for peace. After years of failed talks, some pundits were quick to support this new approach. Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime New York Times columnist William Safire was among them:
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With his Reaganesque style and surprisingly Wilsonian outlook, Bush is now actively engaged in fostering the creation of the first Arab state that could provide freedom, equality and the good life to millions of its citizens. The odds are against him… Bush‟s post-Oslo involvement at least offers Palestinians a way to satisfy the universal human desire for a good life under honest government—where they can go to work instead of watch their children go to war (William Safire, 2002). Such optimistic appraisals, however, did not heed the warnings of analysts who predicted that Islamists would be the most likely beneficiaries of electoral politics in the region—a point to which I return under the classification of democratic expectations. In the Palestinian Territories it was Hamas that capitalized on elections, and their successes in 2005 and 2006 triggered an international reaction that eventually reverted the peace process to the pre-Oslo condition of indirect negotiations. Bush‟s early rhetoric suggests such a direction was largely unanticipated. Furthermore, his failure to keep his promise and “actively support” Palestinian electoral efforts severely damaged America‟s credibility. Prior to such fallouts from the Palestinian elections—as well as similar results in Lebanon and elsewhere—Bush actively championed a democratic Iraq. An important part of his approach was to explain interventionism there and elsewhere as critical battlefronts in the war on terror, as he did here on the first anniversary of the invasion. The rise of democratic institutions in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great step toward a goal of lasting importance to the world. We have set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment, and terror. We‟ve set out to break the cycle of bitterness and radicalism that has brought stagnation to a vital region and destruction to cities in America and Europe and around the world (G. W. Bush, 2004). Bush‟s explanations about the relationships between terrorism and democracy usually suggested that greater freedoms in certain countries would reduce terrorism by offering alternative political expressions for the disenfranchised. Some policy experts questioned his reasoning, but many pundits initially bought into this idea (see Al-Sumait, Lingle, & Domke, 2009). Bush frequently added his expectation that a democratic Iraq could also inspire parallel reforms across the region—a “contagion effect” that was central to optimistic expectations (Sadiki, 2004). Such ambitious endeavors found support from those who were eager to try something different in the region. As one Washington Post op-ed said: “Indeed, for adherents of the so-called „realist‟ school of politics, who always thought talk about Arab democracy was delusional, dropping the entire project makes sense. But in the post-Sept. 11 world, these realists are not realistic: Arab democratization is not a fantasy, it is a necessity—for both Americans and Arabs alike” (Mustafa & Makovsky, 2003). Between 2002 and 2007 it was common for such idealistic beliefs to be expressed, but they were not without critics. Regional experts, often writing in policy journals, were skeptical of the Freedom Agenda‟s promises and many saw it as a destabilizing force that could damage the very ideals it sought to promote. Their critiques did not curb the policy, but unexpected electoral outcomes and continued instability in Iraq did. By 2007, Bush had backed off democracy promotion rhetoric 9
and each of the media sources examined in this study followed suit. In his 2009 White House farewell speech, Bush made only one mention of Iraq as a democracy and a friend of the United States. Notably absent were references to the broader Freedom Agenda. With the primary champion now subdued, the discourse once again changed. In the decade preceding Bush, democracy promotion had been almost exclusively presented as a non-Arab endeavor, but by the time he left office the opposite was the case. In the years that followed, Arab democracy promotion was rarely discussed without reference to problems in Iraq. This was true until early 2011, when the “Arab Spring” brought debates about democracy promotion in other Arab countries momentarily back to the fore—a point I return to in a moment. The turn from Wilsonianism After years of insistence by the younger Bush to reconcile contradictions in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, the Obama administration returned to patterns of nuance exhibited by earlier presidents. Obama often tried to create distance from the policies of his predecessor while still embracing the ideals of democracy, but over time he was criticized for failing to publicly define a clear stance on Middle East democratization in line with his professed ideals. For example, in the Washington Post they declared: “Despite his promises of change when speaking in Cairo last June, Obama has retreated to Cold War policies of favoring stability and even support for „friendly tyrants‟” (Ibrahim, 2010). Similarly, the default assumption for numerous pundits was that democratic idealism for the region was on the retreat. Even when uprisings in the Middle East forced the president to discuss the issue of democracy more directly, he continued to emphasize human rights and freedoms over democracy. Speaking from the White House on January 28, he asserted: “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights, and the United States will stand up for them everywhere” (Obama, 2011). When Obama did directly reference democracy, it was often to describe the importance of peaceful transitions, international coalitions, or humanitarianism that might help legitimate U.S. involvement in regional affairs. In an address to the nation on March 28, 2011, Obama brought together several of his new rhetorical tropes: “In this particular country, Libya, at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves.” In such ways, Obama remained consistently pragmatic despite new regional engagements. He downplayed democracy and emphasized human rights and humanitarianism, while declaring legitimization for involvement conferred by the international community and Arab peoples. In short, he avoided the accusations of unilaterally imposed American exceptionalism that plagued his predecessor‟s efforts. Israeli and American exceptionalism 10
The second major strand of idealism is the idea of exceptionalism, which refers to the notion of a unique or exceptional democratic quality in a nation. Exceptionalism across the different texts had two variants related to democratic idealism: Israeli and American. Israeli exceptionalism denotes the commonly repeated view that Israel is the only democratic nation in the Middle East and constantly at risk from its non-democratic neighbors—an important rationale for favorable U.S. policies toward it. American exceptionalism has been used to characterize the widespread assumption that America occupies a uniquely special position in the world with a distinctive responsibility to share its versions of freedom and democracy with other nations. As idealisms, these two forms of exceptionalism share the tendency of foregrounding moral and cultural values in political arguments about democracy promotion. A view of Israeli exceptionalism was evident across all presidencies but was most pronounced among the realists. The following are two early examples from George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Bush explained the security component to this form of exceptionalism: This is a relationship based on a shared commitment to democracy and to common values, as well as the solid commitment to Israel‟s security, including its qualitative military edge. This is a special relationship. It is one that is built to endure… Israel is a democracy surrounded by countries that aren‟t, and they have been loyal and staunch friends… You rely on friends in a crisis. Israel is not only important as a friend, but they have demonstrated strategic reliability (G. H. W. Bush, 1992). Similarly, Clinton frequently described Israel in democratic terms. “Israel‟s democracy is the bedrock on which our relationship stands. It‟s a shining example for people around the world who are on the frontline of the struggle for democracy in their own lands” (Clinton, 1993). The shared commitment to democracy was regularly presented by both presidents as a rationale for America‟s special relationship with Israel, with security as the driving imperative. As a result, democracy was tied to the peace process only as something that requires protection in Israel and not necessarily as a system that might apply to Arab countries in the pursuit of a Middle East peace. In their approach, these presidents were not alone. In 2009, Barack Obama said: “That is why, even as we never waver in pursuing peace between Israelis, Palestinians, and Arabs, our bond with Israel is unbreakable. It is the bond of two peoples that share a commitment to a common set of ideals: opportunity, democracy and freedom” (Obama, 2010). Many analysts and activists were initially critical of Obama‟s stance toward Israel, but this diminished when his administration initiated a strong public relations effort to bring his messages back in line with previous administrations. Unlike the other three presidents, George W. Bush was not as vocal in pronouncing Israel‟s democracy as the primary ingredient for its special relationship with America. Presumably this was because his democratic rhetoric was more directed toward Palestine and Iraq which, if successful, would then make Israel‟s democracy no longer the regional exception.
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American exceptionalism was another idealistic rationale prevalent in the discourse of the previous two decades; only the justifications for which it was employed changed with time. Concerning the Middle East during the first two presidencies it was used as a justification for efforts such as liberating Kuwait, leading the peace process, and holding Iraq accountable for its noncompliance with United Nations resolutions. For example, in Bush Sr.‟s 1991 State of the Union he invoked the ideal of American exceptionalism multiple times with regard to Kuwait‟s liberation: Yes, the United States bears a major share of leadership in this effort. Among the nations of the world, only the United States of America has both the moral standing and the means to back it up. We‟re the only nation on this Earth that could assemble the forces of peace. This is the burden of leadership and the strength that has made America the beacon of freedom in a searching world (G. H. W. Bush, 1991a). He often framed the United States as uniquely positioned to take up the burden of global leadership in such ways. In the speech he drew on American exceptionalism as a rationale for a foreign engagement undertaken on behalf of realist concerns, such as protecting non-democratic allies in the region, enhancing security, and maintaining a reliable supply of natural resources. Like his father, Bush Jr. used American exceptionalism as a tool for selling war to the public. He did so by invoking famous moments in U.S. presidential history when freedom and democracy were employed as justifications for foreign interventionism. The advance of freedom is the calling of our time. It is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms to the speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature. We believe that liberty is the direction of history” (G. W. Bush, 2003c). Bush‟s references ix perhaps were not apparent to everyone, but the overall message was still clear. America had been, and would continue to be a force for freedom in the world. What is important to understand is that American exceptionalism was roundly used across the first three administrations even when America‟s unique moral imperative was differently applied toward regional issues. Bush Jr. made Arab democratization an American calling for the first time, but by the Obama administration American exceptionalism and Arab democracy promotion were once again separated. Reflecting on the primary rationales for or against Arab democracy promotion policies during the previous two decades some general patterns in the discourse were evident: pragmatism was the province of the first two presidencies, idealism was an experiment under George W. Bush, and a kind of hybrid “pragmatic idealism” was the rhetorical approach of Obama in his first two years of office. Punditry in the news media closely mirrored, or at least reported on such positions with regularity. There were certainly journalists who disagreed with policy tactics, but many evidenced at least an implicit acceptance of the democratic philosophies that guided the Arab Middle East at any given time. Policy journals were more likely than newspapers or television news to include philosophical critiques and offer alternative outlooks for the region, though they too included contributions 12
supporting both the realism and idealism of respective presidents. The result was a convoluted discursive environment concerning Arab democratization with no clear guiding philosophy. As Georgetown professor and Washington Post blogger Daniel Brumberg characterized the situation circa 2009: “The challenge for the U.S. [… and its allies] is to map a strategy by which power and principle can be more closely and consistently aligned” (Brumberg, 2009). This is a task much easier to suggest than achieve. Democratic Scrutiny Democratic scrutiny is the second primary classification in my analysis. This area contains discussions looking back at transpired events that were then scrutinized to assess their impacts on regional democratization. Two themes of observation and proclamation were present. Observations are perspectives espousing the crucial importance of close, systematic monitoring of democratizing developments in the Middle East without explicitly offering final edicts or predictions. These include attempts to quantify democratization and Arab public opinion, as well as qualitative efforts to monitor developments like elections or the state of civil society and civil rights. Conversely, proclamations are debates in which past events are offered as evidence of the success or failure of democratization policies. These include verdicts about previous regional experiences as well as debates over the evolutionary nature of democracy and its absence in the region. I begin with examples of observations and then turn to illustrations of the more abundant and vociferous proclamations. Theme III: Observation Those who contributed to this discursive theme offered observations of events without passing explicit judgments. Before 2001 there was little effort to track democratic developments using either quantitative or qualitative assessments. This was due in part to the fact that few such developments captured attention in the United States. Those that did were either perceived to be of little significance or were often discussed to offer verdicts about democracy‟s grim prospects in the region. Of note, due to the somewhat laissez faire approach of the first two presidents toward Arab democratization and Barack Obama‟s general circumvention of the subject, much of the discourse within this theme occurred in response to George W. Bush‟s Freedom Agenda. In general the presidents did not offer observations free from judgment since they tended to only draw attention to democratic developments so as to proclaim the advantages of their particular policies. The press too was reluctant to discuss incremental developments in the region unless woven into larger narratives about the progress or regression of democracy. Therefore, observations most commonly came from experts in policy journals. I have divided observations according to the quantitative or qualitative nature of the evidence they offered. Quantifying democratization Quantifiable assessments regularly included democratization indicators and opinion polls. Early attitude research on the region was rare and often problematic (Al-Sumait, 2011; Hudson, 13
1995). This left initial democratic observations to organizations such as the World Bank and Freedom House, which produce regular―albeit not without controversy―reports about the global progress or decline of democratic measures based on such things as elections, political parties, parliaments and judiciaries, information access, and public policies (Munck, 2009). These data are aggregated into overall scores and countries are ranked according to their “freeness” of the type produced by the Freedom House organization. While rare, by the second decade of analysis these were increasingly supplemented by public opinion polls.x Early polls failed to effectively assess the diversity of regional perspectives about democratic functioning (Al-Sumait, 2011), but there was general consensus on a few issues. These became the talking points for many analysts who pointed to promising findings that most respondents saw Islam and democracy as compatible and strongly supported the ideals of democracy. They also drew attention to the more worrying trend that vast majorities harbored antipathy toward U.S. regional policy, such as in Iraq. The worrying combination of these factors was aptly expressed by Middle East Political Science professor Gregory Gause III, who stated in Foreign Affairs: “To the extent that public opinion can be measured in these countries, research shows that Arabs strongly support democracy... But many Arabs hold negative views of the United States. If Arab governments were democratically elected and more representative of public opinion, they would thus be more anti-American” (Gause III, 2005). Indeed, the 2005-2006 electoral results in a number of Arab countries seemed to illustrate this possibility. Qualitative monitoring Quantifiable indicators like opinion polls and freedom indexes represented only a small part of the discourse on regional observations over the last two decades. More common were qualitative assessments derived from anecdotal or highly publicized incidents. For example, observers reported on nearly every election in the region since 2003 by presenting voting figures, monitoring processes, and presenting general outcomes. As with the Freedom House rankings, such information was ostensibly offered for people to use in forming judgments about democratic progress. Similar kinds of observations were made regarding the state of civil society or civil rights in the region, with commentators marking their ebb and flow in various contexts but not necessarily describing their end state. These observations tended to soft-pedal judgments, but that did not mean they avoided calling attention to either encouraging or worrying events. Among the more frequent alarms raised by qualitative observers in the last decade was the decline of American credibility in the region. This development was sensational enough to be carried in both policy journals examined and the press. A frequent contributor to both forms of media, Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cited the widely publicized U.N. Development Program‟s Arab Human Development Report as evidence of this problem. “The report reveals a complete acceptance of democratic principles and a complete mistrust of the Bush administration‟s efforts to promote democracy. This mixed message is at the heart of the conundrum 14
the United States faces in pursuing a policy of political change in the Mideast” (Ottaway, 2005). For Ottaway and many other commentators declining U.S. credibility was an observation of significant import. With most qualitative observations, anecdotal evidence was sufficient to make the author‟s point and leave verdicts to the readers. By contrast, proclaiming verdicts was the defining characteristic of the contrasting theme under democratic scrutiny. Theme IV: Proclamation The majority of discourse related to democratic scrutiny since the end of the Cold War was explicitly judgmental about democracy-related events, or simply judgmental of the region and its people. This discourse constituted the proclamation theme which far outpaced observations. I focus on two types of proclamations. The first contains either negative or positive verdicts based on regional democratization experiences such as elections and parliamentary activities, or the lack thereof. The second is grounded in debates I designate as “democratic evolutionism.” These stem from arguments such as Fukuyama‟s (1989) claim to the End of Historyxi or Huntington‟s (1991) thesis on democracy‟s third wavexii that posit democracy as the inevitable outcome of global political evolution. Examples within this theme varied in opinion, but they shared a penchant for passing judgments based on the perceived presence or absence of democratic activities. This type of discourse thus reinforced people‟s expectations for conclusive evidence about democracy‟s viability in the region. I begin by presenting examples of explicit verdicts and then describe the prevalence of rhetoric on democratic evolutionism and its corresponding debates about Arab and Muslim exceptionalism. Dispensing verdicts In the case of all arguments under the proclamation theme, developments in the region were invoked as evidence that democratization was either failing or succeeding. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Israeli Lukid member Ze‟ev Begin illustrated the first position. He painted a chaotic picture of the region where democracy continually failed due to an inherent problem with the “20 Arab states” that have prevented the adoption of such a system. The grim truth of the matter is that the Middle East is characterized by numerous political volcanoes, distributed randomly in space, which erupt violently, randomly in time. This is a textbook definition of disorder… It cannot be merely coincidence that among the 20 Arab states, which have been free from the yoke of colonialism for one or two generations, none has succeeded in establishing a democracy (Begin, 1991). Such characterizations of the region as inherently volatile were commonly used in the first decade to explain the paucity of democratic developments. Notably, democracy‟s absence was not used as an explanatory factor for the region‟s instability. A second, more positive type of verdict became common in the discourse during the George W. Bush era. These pointed to regional developments as evidence that democratization policies were working. Bush was a primary advocate of this position, highlighting positive occurrences in the region
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as confirmation of his approach. In a 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy he cited developments in several Arab countries as important movements toward liberalization: Governments across the Middle East and North Africa are beginning to see the need for change. Morocco has a diverse new Parliament. King Mohammed has urged it to extend the rights to women… In Bahrain last year, citizens elected their own Parliament for the first time in nearly three decades. Oman has extended the vote to all adult citizens. Qatar has a new constitution. Yemen has a multiparty political system. Kuwait has a directly elected national assembly, and Jordan held historic elections this summer. Recent surveys in Arab nations reveal broad support for political pluralism, the rule of law, and free speech. These are the stirrings of Middle Eastern democracy, and they carry the promise of greater change to come (G. W. Bush, 2003c). In the same speech he talked about developments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Between 2003 and 2006 he routinely catalogued democratic stirrings in proclaiming the virtues of his policy agenda. This became increasingly harder to do as people grew impatient for clear signs of success. Thus the negative verdicts mounted. However, news media still credited Bush‟s policies for affecting change with some regularity even if they did not agree with his methods. Egyptian-American human rights and democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim illustrated: To be sure, the methods through which Bush pursued his policies left much to be desired, but his persistent rhetoric and efforts produced results. From 2005 to 2006, 11 contested elections took place in the Middle East: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt and Mauritania. These elections were not perfect, but the advances sparked unprecedented sociopolitical dynamism and unleashed tremendous pent-up desire for democratic choice (Ibrahim, 2010). Those who asserted such positive proclamations might have disagreed about the means, methods, and motives for democratic change, but Bush‟s dominant narrative of regional progress was still frequently echoed even after he was long out of office. Even with the regional uprisings that began in December 2010, Bush was often recognized for inspiring change in the Middle East. Political commentator and CNN host Fareed Zakaria provided one such example in the Washington Post: Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama deserve some credit for what has happened. Bush put the problem of the Middle East‟s politics at the center of American foreign policy. His articulation of a “freedom agenda” for the Middle East was a powerful and essential shift in American foreign policy (as I wrote at the time). But because so many of Bush‟s policies were unpopular in the region, and seen by many Arabs as “anti-Arab,” it became easy to discredit democracy as an imperial plot (Zakaria, 2011). Verdicts may have oscillated between the positive and negative depending on the speaker, but members of both camps regularly claimed the authority to make declarations about the state of regional democracy. Democratic evolutionism
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Democratic evolutionism was the other major trend in the proclamations theme and it describes those who applied the logic of evolutionary theory to political developments. Based on the increasing number of democratic countries in the 20th century, some scholars concluded that democracy would become the pinnacle of political evolution (Fukuyama, 1989) and the majority of its progress had already been realized in a series of democratic waves (Huntington, 1991). These ideas gained rapid popularity following the Cold War and fueled larger debates about the global progress of democratic governance. With regard to the Middle East a common conundrum in this evolution was frequently raised. In short it asked, “If democracy is the inevitable outcome of human governance, and if it has advanced in a wide variety of contexts around the world, then why are there no Arab democracies?” Among the more cynical explanations were theories about Muslim or Arab exceptionalism, which suggested that the particularities of Arab cultural values or the principles and beliefs of Islam prevented democracy from taking hold (Lewis, 2003; Lipset, 1993; Stepan & Robertson, 2004; Waterbury, 1994). Such theories, like Huntington‟s (1993) clash of civilizations thesis, have been criticized for reductionist assumptions about Islam or Arabs (Esposito & Voll, 1996; Harik, 2006; Inglehart, 2003; Milton-Edwards, 2006; Moaddel, 2007) but these assertions routinely arose in the discourse of the previous decades, even if mainly to reject them in the pursuit of policy. On a number of occasions George W. Bush explicitly challenged the notions of Arab and Muslim exceptionalism since they directly challenged his political aspirations to spread democracy. For example, speaking to the American Enterprise Institute he bluntly declared, “It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world, or the one fifth of humanity that is Muslim, is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life” (G. W. Bush, 2003d). In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, invoked a similar declaration from a speech by Bush to his organization: President Bush was correct… to have officially repudiated the doctrine of “Arab exceptionalism,” according to which democracy could progress everywhere except in the Arab world. His courageous pronouncement actually had the effect of stirring ferment in the only major region bypassed by the third wave of democratization in the 1980s and „90s (Gershman, 2007). Worthy of note is that while both men rejected exceptionalism, they embraced democratic evolutionism—as evidenced, for example, by Gershman‟s references to “progress” and a “third wave.” Other commentators shared this distinction. This ability to separate exceptionalism from evolutionism was an important rhetorical move for proponents of the Freedom Agenda. Evolutionism helped justify interventionism on the basis of speeding along a democratic inevitability, while Arab or Muslim exceptionalism argued that the region was likely immune to such forces—or at least problematically resistive. The two theories developed in tandem from the early 1990s, but ten years later they had to be routinely disassociated in order to pave the way for a new, more forceful democratization policy in the Middle East embodied by Bush‟s Freedom Agenda. 17
The observations and proclamations themes illustrate the types of democratic scrutiny that have contributed to important discursive trends in regional monitoring. The dominant pattern for interpreting the past was to proclaim verdicts, rather than offer neutral observations. These verdicts differed widely in tone but shared an assumption that enough information was available to determine the direction or fate of democracy. Other commentators sought to discredit doctrines of Arab or Muslim exceptionalism and separate these ideas from democratic evolutionism—which argues that democracy is socially ordained—in order to proclaim the wisdom of pursuing Middle East democratization. However, both exceptionalism and evolutionism embody Western-centric perspectives about democracy that offer little practical insight into the regional realities that might determine its applicability for the Middle East. On a final, more hopeful note, the theme of observations suggests that there have been increasing attempts to assess democratic developments in the region using more empirical evidence while refraining from explicit verdicts. The rise in this type of information can help increasingly align democratic expectations with actual developments. The predictions fueling such expectations are the subject of my remaining classification. Democratic Expectations The final primary classification is entitled democratic expectations. It is future-oriented and characterizes discourses that attempted to predict the outcomes of regional democratization efforts. Its two themes are optimism and pessimism. As the term implies, optimism describes debates that suggested positive democratic potential. As might be expected based on the discourse illustrated so far, expectations were primarily pessimistic during the first two presidential administrations until optimism reached a zenith under George W. Bush. After 2007, both pessimistic and optimistic expectations declined as regional observers and policymakers increasingly recognized the longue duree of democratic change in the region and the difficultly in predicting it various effects. The regional uprisings beginning in late 2010 once again brought these debates to fore of the public sphere, with a sense of cautious optimism. Theme V: Optimism Optimistic expectations about Middle Eastern democracy were not common during the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, yet important theoretical debates did occur about the idea of democracy more generally. These would later play important roles in discourses about interventionism in Iraq and elsewhere. The debates concerned the widely espoused set of expectations derived from what is known as democratic peace theory. This theory proposes that democratic nations do not make war with other democratic nations, and thus it is in the interest of global peace to achieve the greatest possible number of democracies (see Brown, Lynn-Jones, & Miller, 1997; Farber & Gowa, 1997; Paris, 2006; Rosato, 2003; Russett & Oneal, 2001; Solingen, 2003). Another significant component of optimistic expectations emphasized what might be called “democratic contagion.” This term captures the optimistic belief that specific structural modifications 18
will determine the trajectory of democratic adoption in the region. Under George W. Bush the idea of democratic contagion rapidly spread through the discourse. Specifically, he suggested hope for a domino effect whereby even one democratic Arab nation would inspire political change in the neighborhood (Sadiki, 2009). I first trace the development of discourses on democratic peace and security and then illustrate those that professed democratic contagion. Democratic peace and security The idea that democracies are more peaceful had been proposed prior to the early 1990s (Paris, 2006) but a number of studies were published during that decade showing a significant correlation between democracy and peacefulness. These academic debates quickly found their way into policy journals and eventually encouraged optimistic expectations. U.S. Congressional representative, co-director of the post-September 11 Commission, and now Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Lee H. Hamilton wrote one of the early journal articles on the subject for Foreign Affairs. In 1992 he said: We have a golden opportunity to foster the spread of democracy and free markets. But President Bush has been too selective in his application of democratic principles, forgetting them when it comes to China or the Middle East… Democracy promotes, rather than undermines, long-term stability. Democratic governments are more peaceful than authoritarian ones. They make better allies and more reliable partners in international affairs. The denial of basic political rights often leads to violent upheaval. When we promote respect for human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law, we build a better foundation for long-term security and prosperity (Hamilton, 1992). Hamilton highlighted what he saw as flaws in the realist position of Bush Sr.‟s foreign policy and called for a greater application of democratic ideals in pursuit of pragmatic objectives—a call Bush‟s son would take up with vehemence. Hamilton‟s criticism for selectively applying these principles was leveled at Bill Clinton too by other commentators. It was only with rare exceptions regarding Palestine or Iraq that any reference to Arab democracy even entered Clinton‟s presidential discourse. Several essays of the time espoused that democratic countries are more reliable partners; they respect rights, liberty, and rule of law; and they are the best foundation for security and prosperity. The appeal of such ideals coupled with apparent empirical support for the underlying hypothesis ensured that the idea of democratic peace gained widespread support in the United States. The idea has also occupied a central role in foreign policy rhetoric by politicians and academics alike since the 1990s—even if its expectations were initially concentrated outside the Arab Middle East. Ten years after its debut in both policy journals, democratic peace theory was attempted in the region. In doing so it acquired an additional and highly optimistic corollary expectation: that democracy could be a cure for terrorism. In a special address to the nation just days before the second anniversary of 9/11 George W. Bush suggested that his policies of imposed democratization were both a force for peace and bulwark against terrorism. He first presented the binary option that the
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Middle East will be “a place for progress and peace” or “an exporter of violence and terror” and it is democracy that would make the difference. He then stated: The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat (G. W. Bush, 2003a). As was common to this type of optimistic rhetoric there were two sides to the formula and one catalyst. On one side was war, instability, tyranny, and terrorism while the other harbored peace, stability, freedom, and security. Democracy was the force determining which would prevail and it was up to people to choose a side; as Bush frequently emphasized to others: “Arab leaders need to recognize that the choice in Iraq is between democracy and terrorism, and there is no middle ground” (G. W. Bush, 2006). From this perspective democracy was a potent tonic that would be foolish to dispute. Proponents extolled its benefits, peddling it as a region-wide cure. New York Times columnist William Safire colorfully explained: “Democratic creep”„ is not a derogation of a liberal candidate. On the contrary, it is the process—now well under way—by which free nations will win the world war on terror… Success of democracy in Iraq is the key to democratic reform throughout the greater Middle East. When that reform dawns in Ramallah, there can be an independent, contiguous Palestine. When creeping democracy gradually brings a better life to people of the region, the basis for hatred and terror will erode and the suicide bomber will pass from the scene (William Safire, 2004). For the last decade democratic peace theory has been a foundational component in discourses about the interrelationships among democracy, peace, and security in the Middle East. Few worked to sell the idea harder than George W. Bush, who often showcased efforts in Iraq as the frontline battle between terrorism and democratization. Democratic contagion Another prominent optimistic expectation to emerge during George W. Bush‟s White House was the idea that democracy in the Middle East would have a domino effect. This was one of the many benefits Bush suggested when he went before the United Nations to seek continued support in Iraq. “Iraq as a dictatorship had great power to destabilize the Middle East. Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East. The advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is setting an example that others, including the Palestinian people, would be wise to follow” (G. W. Bush, 2003b). This idea differed from evolutionism discussed previously in that democracy was not seen as an inevitability, but rather a system that required a catalyst in order to take hold.
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New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and one of Bush‟s most ardent supporters, regularly echoed both the domino effect and the notion that democracy was a cure for terrorism, as he did here: What the Arab world desperately needs is a model that works—a progressive Arab regime that by its sheer existence would create pressure and inspiration for gradual democratization and modernization around the region… Because only by helping the Arabs gradually change their context—a context now dominated by anti-democratic regimes and anti-modernist religious leaders and educators—are we going to break the engine that is producing one generation after another of undeterrables (Friedman, 2002). Optimistic discourse of this nature resonated with those members of the public who wanted to believe the United States policy was accomplishing something positive. Supporters of the Freedom Agenda advanced a combination of powerful rhetorical tactics. They framed policy rationales on the basis of valued ideals, proclaimed successful verdicts based on selected developments, and peddled the future promise of greater peace and security. The added hook was that once the process of democratization began, its benefits would continue expanding throughout the region. New media were cited as another type of institutional development that could bring democratic change. Growing access to the Internet, pan-national satellite broadcasters, and new tools for communication and networking were some of the forces predicted to play an important role in stoking regional liberation. Writing in Foreign Affairs a well-known political and media expert on the region, Marc Lynch, described the emergence of a new regional public sphere and suggested that the U.S. administration pay it more attention: An effective approach to Arab public opinion today should therefore focus less on the street and the palaces than on the participants in and audiences of these new public forums… Washington should make explaining what it is doing in all these [suggested policy] areas openly, clearly, and continuously in the Arab media one of its highest priorities (Lynch, 2003). Courting regional media was good policy advice, but others advocated the more engaged approach of supporting local media development as a path toward democratization. In many Muslim countries, globalization and the communications revolution are opening up new opportunities for independent media that local journalists and media entrepreneurs are eager to seize. Even repressive governments will find this pressure hard to resist, because modern media are essential gateways to the globalized economy… Experience in Eastern Europe suggests that providing assistance to local, independent media is a vital way to promote freedom and democracy (Hoffman, 2002). Emphases on new media and the Arab masses were two especially noteworthy contours in the recent discourse. Following the effective use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools in regional uprisings, an optimistic narrative of new media determinism emerged. For example, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, credited both Bush and new media for the changes sweeping the region: “Facebook and Twitter have surely mediated this 21
pan-Arab (and Iranian) reach for dignity and freedom. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise” (Krauthammer, 2011). Noticeably absent from Krauthammer‟s column was credit for the Arab people driving the changes. Some journalists, however, saw both the masses and the media as critical to understanding unfolding events. Several journalists, however, gave increasing recognition to the power of Arab publics to demand democratic change from the bottom-up. They described new media technologies in Arab hands as potent enablers for turning demands into action. Liberal columnist and commentator Eugene Robinson described the situation in Egypt as democratic and worthy of U.S. support: “The people of Egypt have chosen the path of democracy, despite the many obstacles ahead. We must walk beside them” (Robinson, 2011). Another journalist writing in the New York Times pointed out the ways that America had already been walking beside the Egyptians, maybe even leading them along. Some Egyptian youth leaders attended a 2008 technology meeting in New York, where they were taught to use social networking and mobile technologies to promote democracy. Among those sponsoring the meeting were Facebook, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School and the State Department. “We learned how to organize and build coalitions,” said Bashem Fathy, a founder of the youth movement that ultimately drove the Egyptian uprisings. Mr. Fathy, who attended training with Freedom House, said, “„This certainly helped during the revolution” (Nixon, 2011). Interestingly, even in recognizing the local color of the revolutions many observers could not resist painting a role for the United States, either preceding the events or in the future. Even with this temporary spike in optimism, pessimism was a much more common characteristic of the discourse over the entire period examined, as I will now illustrate Theme VI: Pessimism Pessimism comprises the other theme within the classification of democratic expectations. I discuss two variants in this theme. The first focused on the expectation that unfavorable Islamist groups would be the primary beneficiaries of a democratized Middle East, and that these groups would be more anti-American than existing autocrats. The second described a pessimistic variation on arguments about structural and institutional issues. On the whole, pessimists contributed a strong dose of skepticism to discourses on Arab democracy throughout the entire period examined. The specter of Islamist outcomes As previously illustrated, only a few early events stimulated discussions about Arab democratization within the United States and those that did helped give rise to negative verdicts and pragmatic policies. Among the most prevalent pessimistic forecasts to emerge alongside these outcomes included an expectation that unfavorable Islamist domination would be the most probable outcome of Arab elections. The fear was that if Islamists came to power they would be less supportive of U.S. goals, more ideologically driven, and opposed to minority and women‟s rights as well as the democratic systems that might have brought Islamists to power ( see Esposito & Voll, 1996; Fuller, 2003; Hefner, 2005; Inglehart, 2003; Sadiki, 2009). Occasionally some offered hope that allowing 22
Islamists a greater role in governance could moderate their politics by forcing them to deal in routine governance rather than lofty ideologies. However, most people who discussed Islamists suggested political avoidance rather than engagement. Consider the view by former New York Times editorial columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller from 1993: As it begins to chart its course in foreign policy, the new Clinton administration is likely to feel obliged to promote democracy in the Middle East. It must recognize, however, that the promotion of free elections immediately is likely to lead to the triumph of Islamic groups that have no commitment to democracy in any recognizable, meaningful form… Free elections seem more likely than any other route to produce militant Islamic regimes that are, in fact, inherently anti-democratic (Miller, 1993). Here Miller saw democratic reform as one-dimensional; that is, she focused exclusively on electoral democracy. For her, the logic was straightforward: democracy equals elections, elections equal Islamists, and Islamists equal trouble. Expectations such as Miller‟s were not based solely on conjecture since previous electoral openings had resulted in problematic Islamist victories. In the case of Algeria, for example, elections were halted due to fear of Islamist domination and this led the country into a ten-year civil war.xiii Even those who supported the idea of more democracy in the region still warned that Islamists would likely be the immediate benefactors. Leading up to the war in Iraq senior fellow of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution Shibley Telhami stated in the New York Times: One of the most appealing thoughts about a possible war with Iraq is that it could help spread democracy, transforming a rotten political order in the Middle East. But more likely, such a war would render the Middle East more repressive and unstable than it is today… At the same time, we would not be comfortable if democratic change in the region results in the victory of radical Islamist groups, as happened in Algeria a decade ago (Telhami, 2002). The expectation that unfavorable radicals would be the product of Arab democratization became even more common after Bush‟s Freedom Agenda fueled a number of Islamists electoral successes in 2005 and 2006. These results made many Americans wary about pushing for Arab democratization too fast. Award-winning journalist David Ignatius wrote: The healthy parts of Arab life keep being overwhelmed by the sickness. The more the United States and its allies try to support the forces of moderation, the more they seem to undermine them. Western ideas about democratic progress instantly produce deadly antibodies in the Arab body. The disease keeps winning. The idea that America is going to save the Arab world from itself is seductive, but it‟s wrong (Ignatius, 2006). Ignatius puts much of the blame on Arabs, but his cynicism toward democratization on the whole was clear. Ultimately, the pessimistic predictions that Islamists would be inherently undemocratic may have been overstated, but the expectation that they would dominate in elections across the Middle East proved correct. According to the Journal of Democracy, a number of elections took place in 23
2005 and 2006 in countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen ("Election Watch," 2005). Most of these gave increased power to Islamist political movements, some of which were previously condemned by the United States as terrorist organizations (including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine). These outcomes placed the United States in a tough position wherein they promoted the very elections which helped further empower organizations they had previously boycotted. Such certainly results fueled pessimistic expectations. The durability of structural impediments The final variant of pessimistic expectations highlighted the assumption that regional democratization faced serious structural impediments. Where the optimists saw structural and institutional conditions as holding the potential to foster democracy, pessimists saw them as impediments to democratic possibilities. This perspective held the expectation that existing social, institutional, or political arrangements in the region would prevent democracy promotion policies from yielding results. In an example from Foreign Policy, former CIA intelligence expert and Middle East analyst Graham Fuller put forth his view that democracy would face resistance because regional realities would work to preclude it. He also provided a telling forecast about what might happen if democracy were brought to Iraq: The specter of democracy is now stalking the entire Gulf. The demands began in Kuwait. Saudi Arabia, in turn, views the prospect of greater participatory government in Kuwait—or Iraq—with trepidation and will likely seek to repress it. Other Gulf States face the same challenge. And democracy in Iraq would be even more destabilizing for the region because it would involve a literal social revolution… Any Iraqi efforts to seek democracy will most likely bring long-term turmoil; the emergence of Shiite power [in Iraq] would strengthen Iranian influence (Fuller, 1991). Fuller‟s overall point of the article was that democracy is in the best long-term interest of the Arab Middle East, though he painted a very pessimistic picture of what to expect in the short term if it were introduced—particularly in Iraq. Years later as democracy struggled to materialize in Iraq and elsewhere following U.S. efforts to plant it, advocates of the structural argument were quick to offer their explanations and foreboding predictions. Michael Mandelbaum, director of the American Foreign Policy program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, was among them. “The prospects for democracy in the Arab countries are poor. A number of features of Arab society and political life work against it. None is exclusive to the Middle East, but nowhere else are all of them present in such strength” (Mandelbaum, 2007). These types of arguments offered grim predictions about the prospects of democracy in the region and shared an affinity with the views of Arab and Muslim exceptionalism discussed previously. In summary, those in the optimist camp were enamored with the idea of a democratic peace, though they were initially tentative to throw their weight behind the theory when it came to Arab countries. With George W. Bush the ideas of peace and security through regional democratization 24
were evidence of a new spring of optimism. Part of his new equation included the probability of a democratic contagion effect and increased financial support for economic and social liberalization. Pessimistic expectations dominated the years preceding Bush‟s Freedom Agenda, but his robust optimism was somewhat contagious. For a handful of years a number of commentators echoed various aspects of his optimism even if they disagreed with his means. By contrast, pessimism was a common element of regional expectations over the entire period examined and commentators could point to a number of conditions in support of their views. For example, in drawing on previous electoral experiences from the region they regularly expected to see more Islamist outcomes in the future. Other expectations discussed by pessimists included the persistence of structural impediments to democracy. The continued failure of democracy to develop internally and the inability to introduce it externally also appeared to give credence to the idea that regional democracy was doomed to failure, at least for the time being. In the most recent years expectations of both persuasions declined. Even the rise in discourse following the regional uprisings that began in 2010 have yet to reach similar levels to fervor about Arab democratization during the administration of G.W. Bush. Mapping the Discursive Terrain In examining the rhetorical trends about Arab democratization from 1991 to 2011 some common patterns emerged. Namely, the discourse developed in three distinct phases, which I term discursive eras. These eras are pragmatism (1991-2001), ideal internationalism (2002-2007), and pragmatic idealism (2008-2011), and they represent the dominant governmental policies toward Arab democratization at a given time. I use these eras as a structure through which to review the trends among the primary classifications and their themes identified in this chapter. Reflecting on the discourse in such a way allows for greater perspective into the changing nature of public sphere debates on Arab democratization among a range of American commentators over time. I present the eras in chronological order, first defining them and then summarizing the key contours of debates within them. The First Era: Pragmatism, 1991-2001 The United States foreign policy in the Middle East during this era exemplified a pragmatic approach to international relations based on realist principles. Under the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, pragmatism in the Arab Middle East trumped democracy promotion. This was also the initial inclination of the George W. Bush administration prior to autumn 2001, which is why the time period of this era does not directly correspond with presidential tenures. Each president during this time would pay rhetorical service to the virtues of democratic principles but hedged these by emphasizing the greater import of pragmatic objectives in the region. The pragmatism of this era was not only a characteristic of the presidents since many pundits also supported this approach—or at least recognized it to be the dominating philosophy. The appeal of pragmatism was probably explained by a combination of factors. To begin, most attention was 25
focused on the peace process as a regional priority and this overshadowed other concerns. Neither politicians nor pundits saw increased democratization as offering real opportunities to move the peace process forward. Instead they concentrated on the negotiations between parties rather than structural conditions behind them. Furthermore, the benefits of working with regional autocrats appeared to outweigh the potential costs of pushing for democratic change. Such change, were it to come, was regarded as either highly unpredictable or predictably undesirable. The proclaimed verdicts of the era were mostly negative and its few expectations were generally pessimistic. Fear of Islamist electoral domination or of autocrats refusing to accept defeat—both of which happened in Algeria—helped to perpetuate such apprehension. The paucity of empirical information about regional events and attitudes only added speculation to that apprehension. Some commentators did question the era‟s pragmatism and call for a better alignment between regional policies and American ideals, but they were in the minority and had little traction in the discourse. It was during this time that democratic peace theory became a central idea in the sale of U.S. policies around much of the world, albeit not in the Arab Middle East. Democratic peace also rose in tandem with a growing chorus of people touting the notion of democratic evolutionism. This potent combination inspired later beliefs that democracy was not only inevitable and universally desirable, but that it would bring increased peace and harmony across the world. American and Israeli exceptionalism were other regular aspects of presidential discourse during the era. American exceptionalism was used to create a foundation of righteousness for political objectives, opening the possibility to frame dissenting perspectives as either anti-American or simply erroneous, and the rhetoric of Israeli exceptionalism established it as the region‟s only democracy and America‟s closest ally. In short, the dominant discourse in this first era saw regional democracy as something to be protected in Israel and avoided in Arab countries. In the short term, the region was seen as either incapable of democratic change or simply unprepared for it. By the next era, George W. Bush helped to unsettle most of these assumptions. The Second Era: Ideal internationalism, 2002-2007 The label ideal internationalism is a merger of political terms that signifies something slightly different than either of its two components. Idealism is aligned with Wilsonianism and American exceptionalism, particularly in the emphasis on using domestic political philosophies as the basis for foreign policies—such as the idea of sharing democracy. But by itself, idealism only explains part of the political philosophy of this era. Internationalism—the philosophy of greater cooperation between nations—was also a selectively applied characteristic. With regard to democracy in general and its perceived role in combating terrorism, this administration was more aggressively internationalist than unilateralist. Thus, by combining idealism and internationalism, I seek to define the era as one where international cooperation was sought in the pursuit of policy goals based mainly on American ideals of democracy promotion. 26
September 11, 2001 set in motion a series of events that ruptured political and discursive environments. As America went on the military offensive in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ideal of democracy became an increasingly powerful rhetorical weapon to garner support for these endeavors. George W. Bush also adopted the idea of democratic peace which had been in circulation for many years and he added the prevention of terrorism and new hopes for the peace process to its optimistic promises. Advocates of his Freedom Agenda were enthusiastic to try a different approach to the region and the host of benefits Bush peddled were certainly desirable. There were critics of the idea that democracy could be a cure for terrorism or that it would have a contagion effect in the region. Still others criticized Bush‟s methods and warned that pushing too fast for democracy could create problems. However, supporters of the Freedom Agenda were in the majority and few contended that democracy was not a worthy regional goal. The high-water mark of “democratic success” came in 2005 when regional elections proliferated, but the victories of Islamists soon toned down the optimism of both the politicians and the pundits. Importantly, the doctrines of Arab and Muslim exceptionalism were brought to the fore of the public sphere in this era and routinely critiqued for their reductionist and somewhat prejudiced assumptions—so as to disentangle these ideas from democratic evolutionism and clear the way for a new style of democracy promotion. Those who were eager to show policy progress placed a heavy emphasis on elections and paid little attention to structural and institutional aspects of democracy building. As such, the period was characterized by a rhetorical idealism lacking in substance. However, one of the promising trends to emerge during this time was a growth in empirical regional monitoring. The Third Era: Pragmatic idealism, 2008-2011 The final era was distinguished by its pairing of rhetoric from the preceding periods— pragmatism and ideal internationalism—with a general lack of commitment to either. Democratic ideals remained an essential part of explanations for continued engagement in Iraq and elsewhere but these were qualified by acknowledging the existence of other pragmatic considerations. By 2008 George W. Bush had backed off the staunch idealism of his Freedom Agenda and instead discussed regional developments in more tactical terms, such as troop deployments, institutional requirements, and time needed to build democracies. Barack Obama entered office with high expectations for change, but his rhetoric on democratic idealism in the region was not dissimilar to Bush‟s during his final years. Obama attempted to differentiate himself from Bush‟s policies by putting more emphasis on human rights, rule of law, and other principles broadly associated with freedom, coupled with less emphasis on democratization or elections. When he directly discussed democracy‟s benefits he also pointed out that its encouragement was via a more sensitive and inclusive approach to the region. However, in the end both Bush and Obama refrained from presenting U.S. policy as entirely
27
pragmatic or idealistic during this era. This hybrid position is an attempt to partially reconcile the two approaches, hence the term “pragmatic idealism.” After the Arab uprisings, Obama and the news media slightly, but noticeably, shifted the balance between pragmatism and idealism toward the latter. Pragmatic idealism continued, but with additional rhetorical tropes harkening back to ideal internationalism and fresh contours describing Arab publics empowered by new media. Cautious optimism prevailed, though the president and the press diverged in the extent to which they presented a narrative of U.S. involvement; Obama was cautious in giving credit to the United States, while the media were much less so. Over this entire era, commentators offered fewer expectations for regional democracy than those in the previous period. Expectations that Islamists would benefit from electoral policies proved fairly accurate, suggesting this type of prediction may remain until evidence illustrates otherwise. There are signs that the U.S. government has decreased its attention on national conversations and increased its focus on regional developments. In line with this approach there was sustained optimism about media technologies and their democratic benefits. Given the use of such technologies in recent popular uprisings across the region, this strategy appears to have been vindicated. Conclusions This chapter sought to illustrate major contours in the U.S. discursive environment on Arab democratization from a communication-studies perspective. I now conclude by discussing some of the larger implications. The first concerns the mass media‟s performance over the three eras, the second addresses issues of ideology and power in discourse, and the final point highlights implications of U.S. discourses on this subject. The various media sources behaved as might be expected with regard to foreign policy matters. The journals had the most robust discussions of Arab democratization across all three eras, presenting opposing perspectives and providing significant context and analysis. However, the volume of articles on Arab democratization still increased or decreased in direct relation to presidential emphases on the topicxiv and both the magnitude of coverage and the intended audiences were considerably smaller than the other sources. Content in newspapers and on television also declined in the last era compared to a high point of activity between 2003 to 2006. Like the journals, newspapers carried articles from opposing perspectives but on balance they exhibited more support for prevailing policies, or at least policy objectives. Newspapers exhibited a strong tendency to proclaim verdicts and offer judgments rather than providing context or deeper analysis of regional developments. The television news offered the least critical reflection on the topic and largely presented pithy narratives about the progress or failure of democratization policies. Television news contributed little originality to debates on Arab democracy in terms of quantity and quality. It should be noted that the limited number of sources sampled preclude the generalizability to all U.S. media. Instead, the sampling is meant to gauge the depth of discourse from important sources based on a close examination of an entire corpus of texts on Arab democratization over two decades. However, 28
given the consistency in issues across platforms it could be assumed that other U.S. media discussed the issue in similar ways. Moving to a broader level of abstraction there are ideological features in the discourse which merit attention. Political actors and media sources have a disproportionate effect on foreign policy debates about which most citizens have little concern and even less to contribute. Thus, the ability to influence perceptions on issues like Arab democratization works primarily in one direction, from elites to the public. Publics have the ability to seek out information on which to form their own judgments and can influence foreign policy debates through mechanisms like opinion polls, protests, and voting behaviors, but for the most part it is political and media elites who determine the tone of such discourse. Their language and convictions help establish normative frames of reference through which people interpret important foreign policy issues. In short, these elites facilitate the creation of knowledge, or at least the perception of it, by which meaning is ascribed to events outside most people‟s direct experience. There were numerous aspects of this process at work in the discourse examined. The net effect was to make Arab democratization appear to be as much a U.S. policy issue as one of internal Arab concern. Knowledge of the process by which it might occur is not resoundingly established, but the belief that Arab democracy is a worthy regional goal is now firmly entrenched. This has occurred without the serious inclusion of voices from the region on the topic. It is here that the issue of power becomes most salient. That is, the discourse makes evident that the power to determine democracy as the ideal political state, to expect a role in its development, and to impose both of these implicitly and explicitly are part of America‟s privilege. Furthermore, there are embedded expectations about the components of a “proper democracy” and based on prevailing assumptions Islamists are not a desired part of the equation—even if they continue to be the leading short-term beneficiaries of regional democratization. The U.S. has been the hegemonic power in the Middle East during the entire period examined and its actions and discourses have potent effect within the region. Among the consequences of the inconsistent approach toward Arab democratization is the growing credibility gap in the region that has arguably tarnished both the U.S. and the idea of Western democracy itself. This makes the future of regional democracy that much less predictable and increasingly difficult to achieve. Furthermore, it hampers efforts at international coordination for democracy building. If regional democratization continues, it will happen through processes, and manifest into systems that are significantly different from experiences in the European tradition—as the recent wave of regional protests appears to illustrate. U.S. discourse that better incorporates regional perspectives into its debates could prove an important step toward rectifying some of the negative consequences that have mounted over the previous decades with regard to the issue of regional democratization. The citizen-driven changes in across the Middle East are now providing an unprecedented opportunity to do so, but whether U.S. politicians and pundits can effectively capitalize on this historic moment remains to be seen. 29
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Table 1: A summary of the thematic analysis key components
Classifications Democratic Rationales
Democratic Scrutiny
Democratic Expectations
Themes and their key components Realism:
Idealism:
Policy pragmatism over idealism Prioritizing the peace process
Wilsonianism/liberal internationalism Israeli and American exceptionalism
Observation:
Proclamation:
Quantifying democratization Qualitative monitoring
Dispensing verdicts Democratic evolutionism
Optimism:
Pessimism:
Democratic peace and security Democratic diffusion: contagion and liberalization
The specter of Islamist outcomes The durability of structural impediments
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Endnotes i
For purposes of parsimony, I confine my discussion of the Middle East to those countries in the region with predominantly Arab populations. I recognize that important non-Arab populations and countries are part of the broader Middle East as it is often defined, but my particular interest here is in the Arab nations most often referred to in discussions about democratization, or the lack thereof. ii Wilson‟s rhetoric marked an important new position in US foreign policy wherein the US model became the foundation of what was later termed liberal internationalism, or simply Wilsonianism—a doctrine arguing that liberal states can, and indeed should, intervene in other sovereign nations in the pursuit of liberal objectives. iii This consensus describes the standing agreement of both political parties in the U.S. to work together on foreign policies that would lead to the defeat of communism. It has also been used to characterize Cold War news media coverage which often used a simplified frame of democracy-versus-communism to explain foreign affairs (McCormick, 1998; Norris, 1995). iv The speeches range from domestic State of the Union addresses, beginning in 1991, to international visits such as Barack Obama‟s 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. They were collected from the American Presidency Project (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu), as well as the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from the U.S. Government Printing Office (http://www.gpoaccess.gov). v All were accessed from the Nexis News database. The decision to include network television news is because its viewership far exceeds other news outlets such as cable news, newspapers, and weekly news journals. For example, between 1997 and 2006 the average viewership for network evening news was generally 10 times higher than for cable news (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2007). Since differences in viewership and ratings between the three major U.S. networks have been historically similar, CBS News transcripts can be said to generally represent network news broadcasts. vi Searchable full texts of both journals were available in electronic access through my university‟s subscriptions to the JSTOR and EBSCO Academic databases. These did not include online-only content from either source. vii All State of the Union Addresses were downloaded in full from the American Presidency Project. Search terms for the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents were “Arab AND „middle east‟ AND DEMOCRA*.” In the Nexis database, which contained Washington Post and New York Times content. The search terms were “democra! W/8 (Arab OR „Middle East‟) AND NOT „democrats‟ OR party OR „EVENT‟.”For television news, CBS transcripts also came from the Nexis, with the search terms “democra! AND (Arab OR „Middle East‟) AND NOT „democrats‟ OR party OR „EVENT‟ OR Russia .” Articles from the journals of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy were retrieved from the JSTOR Academic database using the Boolean terms “Arab Democracy” ~30 OR “Middle East democracy”~30 NOT Letters (item title).” viii By using the term “agenda setting” I am referencing the media theory of this name which is often summarized by the axiom that news media do not tell the public what to think, just what to think about (B. C. Cohen, 1963; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). In my analysis the presidential agenda on Arab democratization appeared to have a similar effect but with a twist. Presidents could not dictate to news media how to cover democratization policies, but they did seem to influence whether they were covered. That is, the degree to which these policies were a presidential focus seemingly had an impact on the degree to which the policies became a focus in news coverage. ix Bush‟s references were to Wilson‟s 1918 speech cited at the beginning of this chapter, Franklin D. Roosevelt‟s 1941 State of the Union outlining what he defined as four universal freedoms, and Ronald Reagan‟s 1982 address to the British Parliament that led to the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy. x In the wake of September 11 there was urgency among Americans and Westerners to know more about Arab and Muslim attitudes to help answer the oft-asked question “Why do they hate us?” This—coupled with the later desire to empirically monitor the success of efforts in Iraq and elsewhere—led to a rapid growth in survey-based research. xi This theory claimed the “End of History” was at hand since liberal democratic nation-states had become the universal standard that would mark the final evolution of human government. xii This theory reinforced Francis Fukuyama‟s End of History idea and described three waves of contemporaryera democracy, each resulting in increased numbers of democratic nation-states. The first began with the American and French revolutions and saw the creation of foundational “Western” democracies. A second wave
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came with the establishment of post-World War II democracies in Germany and Japan, and the final wave was said to run from 1974 to the present, during which time authoritarian regimes have been increasingly replaced by democratic ones in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, but notably not in the Middle East. xiii In 1991, Islamists in opposition to the ruling government unexpectedly dominated in the first round of multiparty elections. Out of fear of losing power to a group questionably respectful of democracy the Algerian government intervened with its military to prevent the second round and then banned political parties altogether. This resulted in a civil war that claimed the lives of over 150,000 people (Esposito & Voll, 1996; Najem, 2003). xiv For example, a mere seven relevant articles appeared on the topic in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy combined between 2007 and 2010.
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