Returning to the questions of the “cynical cudgel” of democracy promotion and causes of anti-American terrorism, Greg Scoblete writes:

If you’d like to see fewer American troops and less American meddling in the Middle East, in other words, than you should indeed be pushing for greater democratic participation in the region. And yet that sits at cross-purposes with much of what I understand the contemporary Republican and conservative position to be – which is to entrench American military power and influence over the region.

I suspect this is why, for all the talk, President Bush never really leveraged American aid and influence in the Middle East in such a way as to truly endanger any incumbent autocrats. If Bush grasped at the kernel of a sound idea, he and his advisers were likely scared off by its implications, especially after the elections in the Palestinian territories.

If they ever intended more than lip service to democracy promotion in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, the previous administration probably was very quickly scared off by the prospect of empowering democratic majorities in those countries. Even though it was U.S. support for Egyptian and Saudi governments and the policies related to that support (e.g., American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia) that contributed to the motivations of the 9/11 hijackers, there was no serious proposal to “drain the swamp” (to use the hawkish phrase from that time) by somehow compelling democratic changes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Such changes would have been destabilizing for two important allies, and it would have probably resulted in the empowerment of groups that are critical or hostile to the alliance with the U.S. There would have been absolutely no promise that liberalization would follow democratization, and probably the reverse would have occurred, at least in Egypt. Democratic “values” would have been served after a fashion, but most likely at the expense of U.S. hegemony.

As we have seen, hegemonists find democratization desirable only when it destabilizes rival or hostile governments. After overthrowing a hostile Iraqi regime by force, hegemonists assumed not only that Iraqis would be grateful, but that they would show this gratitude by adopting a “pro-American” orientation. This did not happen. In many of the “color” revolutions, the supposed reformers were embraced because they supported a “pro-Western” orientation, but in most cases they were unrepresentative of their nation as a whole and their efforts to pull their countries in that direction met with varying degrees of resistance (Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan) or resulted in calamity (Georgia). What mattered to Washington in the Rose and Orange “revolutions” was not the leaders’ credentials as reformers or their credibility as democrats, but their willingness to move their countries toward Western economic and security structures that their people either did not want or the pursuit of which worked against the economic and political interests of their countries.

There are at least two key tenets that democratists have typically held: democratization will stabilize the region in which it occurs and nations that share “our values” will also tend to share our interests. These are both wrong. New democracies are often unstable and can often be the cause of international instability. Democratic practices, institutions and values provide the framework for the expression of a nation’s own interests (as defined and shaped by the nation’s political class), which normally diverge more sharply from the interests of other nations than their authoritarian or monarchical rulers admitted. Even with thoroughly Westernized and European allies, values and interests do not coincide nearly as often as democratists would have us believe. A foreign policy view that assumes that the U.S. interests are served whenever “our values” prevail somewhere is a policy doomed to result in repeated misunderstandings, disappointments and failures. And so it has.