Perhaps the greatest question facing the Bush administration is the question of resolve. While the President has publicly committed himself to democratic reform in the Middle East, what remains to be seen is whether or not his actions will match the lofty Wilsonian rhetoric of his second inaugural address. The elections in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq have shown that the Arab world is ready, if not eager, to embrace democracy. But the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq and munificent support for Israel cast doubt on the sincerity of President Bush's promise.
Many on the American left are quick to label the Bush Doctrine as nothing more than a smash and grab job for American oil companies. While this point is not without merit, it overlooks the deep national interests that America has in the Middle East. Oil security has been a priority of every industrialized power since the end the First World War. Now, as China has overtaken Japan as the world's second largest oil consumer (second only to the United States), it is very tempting to view the war in Iraq as nothing more than the Bush administration's farsighted plan to protect the lifeblood of American industry. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, America's oil security is an anathema to Middle Eastern democracy. As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." Gaining and retaining control of oil has for the past fifty years has been our number one priority in the Middle East, while nurturing democracy was not even a distant second.
What has taken place since September 11th and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of U.S. control of the Middle East. The U.S. now has a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar. Tellingly, not one of these countries has an elected government that voluntarily requested our presence. The mass public demonstrations in the streets of Beirut show that the Arab world wants an end to tyrannical regimes. What remains to be seen is whether or not President Bush will make the sacrifices that are inherent to political change.
If there is any hope of legitimizing American supported democracy in the Arab world, the President must act quickly to rebuild America's credibility and end the hypocrisy that has characterized American-Arabian relations for so long. Unfortunately, recent events suggest that this prospect is quite slim. In a pronouncement that defies satire, President Bush has insisted that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon before elections are to be held in May in order "for those elections to be free and fair." Why the same point does not apply to elections held in occupied Iraq - where the U.S. has 140,000 troops patrolling the streets, compared with 14,000 Syrian soldiers in the Lebanon mountains - or in occupied Palestine, for that matter, is unexplained. And why a U.N. resolution calling for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon has to be complied with immediately, while those demanding an Israeli pullout from Palestinian and Syrian territory can be safely ignored for 38 years, is apparently unworthy of comment.
At present, the Bush administration is pursuing polices that pay only lip service to the need for real democratic reforms in the Middle East. While the recent Iraqi and Palestinian elections are a tremendous step towards achieving real democracy, they do little to offset the Bush administration's continued support for authoritarian regimes throughout the region.
What we can derive from the President's continued support for these oppressive governments is that it's not the regimes themselves that are threatening, but rather the image that those regimes present to the rest of the world. As long as a faade of democratic reform is presented to the Western media, the Bush administration seems to have no qualms with maintaining the status quo. It is little wonder then that the President loudly applauded the local elections that were held recently in the Saudi Kingdom. What his administration ignored was the fact that only half of the seats were even open for contest and that the Saudi citizens were so distrustful of their government's electoral promise that only a quarter of eligible voters even bothered to register. Women were, of course, barred from voting. Even less surprising is the ongoing U.S. support for Egypt. Despite rampant political oppression and intimidation, Hosni Mubarak continues to receive the second highest amount of U.S. foreign aid (Israel is the top recipient) even as he prepares for a fifth consecutive unopposed term as president. If freedom is "on the march," as the President has said, it apparently stops at the border of countries whose tyrannical governments support U.S. interests.
President Bush's supporters will say that this double standard illustrates a painful truth about protecting America's vital interests, and in many ways it does. Historically it has proven very difficult to reconcile the need to ensure our security with the desire to promote our ideals. During the Cold War, democracy and human rights fell by the wayside in the fight against Communism. Likewise, the necessity to maintain access to oil overshadowed our fidelity to Arab freedom and self-determination. The problem of interests versus ideals still hinders the growth of democracy in the Arab world to this day. I believe President Bush is correct when he says that a free and democratic Middle East is essential for the security of the United States. But a free and democratic Middle East will never emerge unless the United States eliminates its long-standing policy of tolerating dictators who are generous with their nation's oil supply.
The oil card has allowed far too many oppressive regimes to operate with impunity. It was our need to maintain access to this oil that compelled us to support these repressive and authoritarian governments in the first place. Should our dependency on Middle Eastern oil be lessened, we would face far fewer constraints in our effort to bring democracy to that region. A direct byproduct of Middle Eastern stability would be American security. What is noticeably lacking from the President's national security strategy is an alternative energy strategy. The demand for oil is what prevents us from matching our ideals to our actions, and until it is sufficiently addressed, President Bush's promises of democracy in the Middle East will ring hollow.
