A Desert In Springtime Is Still A Desert

Yglesias reminds us that, in the spring of 2005, supporters of the administration began crowing about the advance of democracy in the Near East.  Supporters believed a new era was dawning.  Critics of the “freedom agenda” said that democratisation would either fail or breed chaos.  True cynics, such as yours truly, never believed that there was much democratisation going on in the first place, but we did think that all of the hysteria was probably going to lead to trouble and said so at the time.  Two years later, guess whose predictions have been better? 

While we’re on the subject, here is a cover from that period that I bet the editors at The Economist wish they could take back.

Krauthammer’s “An Arab Spring?” (at least he kept a question mark in there) gives a clear example of the fundamental flaw in all of this democratisation talk.  The flaw is the belief that the type of government in a given country matters to our relations with that country:

The theory is that non-dictatorial regimes—which represent democratic aspirations and adhere to the democratic principles of the rule of law, protection of minorities, and human rights—are more likely to have normal relations with us.

It is almost never the case that dictatorial regimes actively refuse to have normal relations with us, but it is very often the case that Washington refuses to have normal relations with certain dictatorial regimes (while having perfectly delightful relations with other dictatorial regimes).  Instead of attempting to transplant the delicate orchid of representative government to a harsh, inclement setting in the hopes of somehow bettering relations between these states and our government, we might try a slightly less risky and hopeless strategy by…normalising relations with the states that we have been treating as pariahs.  Perhaps there would be one or two dictators who would hold out indefinitely and refuse normal relations, and that would present a more difficult problem.  However, for most states, especially those that are suffering economic meltdowns or deepening isolation, an offer of normalised relations with Washington would be most welcome.  The problem is that Washington does not want to make this offer, because the policy and political establishments believe it is unacceptable to have normal relations with these states.  Perhaps they can defend such a position, though I think it unlikely.  It is nonetheless remarkable to see such a straightforward statement of what democratisation in the Near East and elsewhere is supposed to achieve, since this statement reveals that the same goal could be reached simply by resuming diplomatic contacts and reestablishing formal, normalised state-to-state relations.