"Democracy promotion" by the Bush administration

William Fisher writes on how the "Terror War" Begets Devil's Bargains Inter Press Service 05/04/06:

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush's "global war on terror" has produced the unintended consequence of bringing the United States ever-closer to some of the world's most repressive regimes.

Egypt provides a classic example. Last week, over the objections of the country's human rights advocates, Egypt extended the 20-year-old "emergency" law that gives the government power to arrest and detain people without charges, and refused to moderate its campaign to further compromise the independence of an already weak judiciary.

Bush's "Wilsonian" democratic is one more negative legacy that he and his administration will leave to the US and the world. In reality, "democracy" for Bush and his team has been little more than a slogan to justify war.

Without going too much into doctrinal definitions, "neoconservatism" in my mind is just a form of "isolationism". Or, rather, both neoconservatism and isolationism are rooted in a nationalistic, unilateralist approach to US foreign policy. Even those Old Right isoloationists have disagreed very strong with neocons on the Iraq War and now on the Iran War, their basic approach toward international institutions is the same: they reject them. That includes even the current nonproliferation "regime", as the diplomats call it.


I do think the US should promote democracy, though I won't split rhetorical hairs here trying to define that. But the ease with which a Bush administration can use even seemingly benign "democracy-promotion" schemes for their unilateralist agendas has made me take a whole new look at this question. I do believe the US should promote democracy; but I also recognize it has to be balanced with the practical need to deal with existing regimes that may not be democratic.

It's important to recognize, though, that the Bush administration has severely alienated most of our democratic allies while cozying up to authoritarian regime like Egypt's and Pakistan's. That's not necessarily bad in itself. It's the specific terms of the relationships that matter. But there's also no reason the American public should buy the hokum about how the Bush Doctrine of preventive war is intended to spread the blessings of democracy.

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