Source: Carnegie
For Immediate Release: January 15, 2003
Contact: Carmen MacDougall, 202-939-2319, cmacdougall@ceip.org
The Bush Administration's Split Personality
on Foreign Policy
Threatens Potential Democracy Gains Worldwide
In the war on terrorism, George W. Bush has shown a split personality
on democracy promotion abroad. Bush the Realist seeks warm ties with dictators
who may help in the fight against al Qaeda, while Bush the neo-Reaganite proclaims
democracy is the only true solution to terror. As Thomas
Carothers argues in "Promoting
Democracy and Fighting Terror," published in the January/February issue
of Foreign Affairs, how the administration resolves this tension will
define the future of U.S. foreign policy.
Carothers highlights the new U.S. embrace of non-democratic leaders in Central
and South Asia as evidence of the democracy-versus-security tradeoffs that the
war on terrorism has caused in U.S. policy. The same tension has quickly spread
out beyond the immediate front lines to Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, China,
and elsewhere. Carothers notes that pressure on civil liberties from the U.S.
Justice Department has sent a powerful negative signal around the world, emboldening
some governments to curtail domestic liberties, supposedly in aid of their struggles
against terrorism.
In the Middle East, Bush the neo-Reaganite hopes that an ouster of Saddam Hussein
in Iraq could bring democracy to that country and create a democratic trend
in other Arab states. Carothers contends that though the United States can certainly
oust the Iraqi leader and install a less repressive regime, it would not be
the same as creating democracy in Iraq. He cites other cases of U.S. military
interventions as evidence of the difficulty of reshaping troubled political
systems, even under U.S. occupation.
The tensions between U.S. security interests and democracy abroad are hardly
new. But the "war on terrorism has laid bare the deeper fault line that
has lurked below the surface of George W. Bush's foreign policy...-the struggle
between the realist philosophy of his father and the competing pull of neo-Reagansim,"
Carothers writes. There is no magic solution, but the Bush Administration "must
labor harder to limit the tradeoffs caused by the new security imperatives and
also not go overboard with the grandiose idea of trying to unleash a democratic
tsunami in the Middle East."
Thomas Carothers directs the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy
and Rule of Law Project. His most recent book is Funding
Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, edited with Marina
S. Ottaway (Carnegie, 2000). He wrote Aiding
Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Carnegie, 1999).
The full text of this article can be accessed through www.ceip.org/democracy.
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