- Other Opinions
- April 5, 2006
- 6 minutes read
The Democracy Promotion Backlash (and the The Need for a “Third Way”)
Suffice it to say that I knew the backlash had begun, and it was to rage with increasing ferocity. I look back now and wonder if I had seen it coming. Perhaps it was inevitable, for there was too much at stake. When ambition exceeds ability, the results can be disorienting, if not outright destructive. This, I worry, is what happened to our post-9/11 efforts, however halting, to promote democracy in the Arab world. The tipping point was Hamas’s shocking victory in the Palestinian elections. But the doubts regarding the wisdom of an assertive pro-democracy posture had surfaced long before in the wake of a series of substantial Islamist electoral gains in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.
Unfortunately, because of its destructive policies elsewhere, this novel (and useful) understanding of the relationship between terror and democracy was sullied (in the eyes of many liberals) through guilt by association. More problematic was the inability of the Bush administration to live up to its lofty rhetoric. The gap between what we said and what we did grew only more striking with time. Indeed, President Bush has become the anti-Midas of our time. A good message has been tainted, in some circles irrevocably, by a bad messenger.
But while many liberals, in response to Bush’s heightened Wilsonian appeals, had descended into a curious mix of neo-isolationism and careful Scrowcroftian cynicism, there remained a consensus of sorts in DC political circles that promoting Arab democracy was a worthwhile and urgent concern. It seems like an eternity ago but last November, I wrote on this blog about what I termed “the emerging democratic consensus.” There was, it appeared, an emerging, if reluctant, consensus among both Democrats and Republicans, that there was a causal relationship between lack of democracy and terrorism. We could not win the war on terror without, first, defeating the authoritarian status quo which had poisoned Arab politics and contributed to the rise of religous extremism.