Promoting democracy in the Middle East is at the heart of President Bush's strategy for winning the war against terrorism. He also aims to destroy terrorist groups like al Qaeda and to stop governments from supporting terrorists. He recognizes, however, that a long-term solution must address the underlying causes of terrorism.
On this point, Bush differs from those who say that the roots of terrorism are to be found in poverty. Several empirical studies show that the socio-economic status of terrorists tends to be above the average of their societies and that poor countries are not more likely to breed terrorists than rich countries. The theory behind the Bush strategy is that the root cause of terrorism is to be found not in economics but in politics, specifically in tyranny.
A political culture in which power flows, as Mao Zedong put it, "from the barrel of a gun," is one that will breed people who think that violence is an acceptable way to pursue political goals. In contrast, in societies is which people are accustomed to resolving political differences by means of discussing and voting, they will be more likely to carry out their disputes with outsiders by peaceful methods. Democracies are less likely to start wars than are dictators, and for the same reasons they are less likely to hatch terrorists.
Is it any wonder that most of the terrorism that plagues the world arises in the Middle East? Today, out of 22 Arab countries not one has a government elected by its people. Of the world's other 170 governments, 120 (70 percent) were chosen in bona fide elections.
The rise of democracy in the Middle East will benefit not only the U.S. Middle Easterners, just like people in every other region, crave the dignity of selecting their own rulers and being free to voice their opinions. We have seen evidence of this in the Arab Human Development Reports, the declaration of the recent conference at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and other recent statements by Arab thinkers. We have seen it too, in the reactions of untold numbers of Iraqis to being liberated from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein--even most of those who resent the American presence in their country. If America succeeds in implanting democracy in the region it will benefit the Arabs even more than the Americans.
What right has America to say how other nations should govern themselves? What if others don't want democracy? The answer is that there is no way to know what a people "wants" except by a democratic process in which they can express it themselves.
This is not to say that America would be justified in spreading democracy across the region by the sword. Iraq--with Saddam's record of aggression and using chemical weapons and his defiance of his disarmament obligations--was a special case. For the most part, America's hopes of promoting democracy rely on peaceful methods: aid, diplomatic pressure, propaganda, education, commercial incentives, and the like.
Is America sincere? Why should the Arabs believe Bush's honeyed words about democracy? Such skepticism is easy to understand because the US has not pushed democracy in this region in the past the way it has done in Eastern Europe or South America. But 9/11 convinced Americans that our traditional approach to the region was a failure. Bush himself said last year that his approach amounted to a repudiation of "60 years of western" policy of "excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East." These 60 years included the administration of Bush's father. This is not something he would say lightly. Nor, if he were insincere, would he go out of his way, as he has done, to say that our goal of democratization applies not only to states that have been hostile to us but also to close U.S. allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
However earnest the American effort, are the Arabs ready for democracy? Perhaps the absence of democracy in the region reflects some profound cultural incompatibility with democracy. Similar speculation was once voiced about the prospects of democracy in Asia. During World War II, it was the official wisdom of the U.S. State Department that we could not democratize Japan because history had taught us that democracy could never work there. Such doubts were expressed about democracy's prospects not only in Asia but also Latin America, Catholic Europe, and even the American south. Time and again, democracy has proven to be compatible with more variegated cultures than many experts had expected.
Even so, can democracy be stimulated from the outside? Doesn't every nation need to establish democracy for itself? Ultimately, the endurance of democracy depends on the roots it can sink in the values and expectations of the populace, but we have many examples in which democracy was first implanted by outsiders. Moreover, outsiders can give a helping hand to indigenous democrats who are working or struggling for democracy. Although U.S. popularity may stand at an all-time low in the Arab world, nonetheless there are many signs that America's demand for democratization has already had an impact, evidenced for example by the recent cancellation of the Arab League summit caused at least in part by divisions over how to respond to this issue.
How much success the U.S. will reap in its democracy campaign will depend to a great extent on its success in making Iraq some kind of model or at least leaving Iraq a more open and livable society than it was under Ba'th rule. And it depends, too, on Washington's determination to pursue this goal consistently and for many years.
Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
