President Bush's call to promote democracy and freedom reveals a fundamental foreign policy dilemma for the world's democracies, writes Andrew Cottey
President George W. Bush's inaugural address has put democracy at the centre of global politics. United States policy, the president declared, is "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world". Many around the world will view this as rank hypocrisy.
In Central and Latin America, the United States has a long record of intervening militarily against democratically elected regimes and of supporting authoritarian rulers. More recently, the Bush administration has opposed Venezuela's populist but democratically elected left-wing President Hugo Chavez, including by providing covert military support for an attempted coup in 2002.
The Middle East, now a key target of American democracy promotion efforts, also has long experience of American support for authoritarian allies. Saddam Hussein was an ally of the US until he overstepped the mark by invading Kuwait in 1990. Iranians, who US neo-conservatives hope may be the next beneficiaries of democratic regime change, remember the 1953 US/British-engineered coup that overthrew the nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadeq and the subsequent US-backed rule of the Shah. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have long been US allies.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, one of the key rationales for supporting authoritarian allies - the need to contain communism and the Soviet Union - was removed. The old argument that "they may be sons of bitches, but at least they're our sons of bitches" held less weight than before, as figures such as Indonesia's Gen Suharto and Congo's Mobuto Sese Seko discovered to their cost in the 1990s. Although partial and inconsistent, the shift away from supporting friendly dictators and towards promoting democracy was real.
In the wake of 9/11, countering terrorism has emerged as a new rationale for supporting authoritarian allies. The US has renewed or intensified military and intelligence ties with old allies, including authoritarian Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, whose militaries face serious questions about their human rights records. The US has also gained some nasty new allies, in particular the former Soviet Central Asian states that are supporting America in Afghanistan as well as facing internal Islamic opposition movements. Uzbekistan, the closest Central Asian ally of the US, is one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, with a truly appalling human rights record.
The US's own behaviour in the "war on terror" also calls into question its commitment to democracy and liberty. The rule of law and the right to open justice are fundamental principles of democracy and basic guarantees of liberty. In holding prisoners in dubious legal circumstances in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, and in establishing closed military tribunals, the US calls these principles into question. The US has also greatly expanded the use of so-called rendering, where terrorist suspects are covertly captured in foreign states and then transferred to prisons such as that in Guantanmo Bay or in third countries. It is widely believed that one purpose of transferring prisoners to third countries is to avoid US legal strictures against torture.
To some extent, accusing America of hypocrisy is an easy game. We should also remember that the US played the central role in defeating fascism in the second World War. US leadership and support was vital in democratic reconstruction in western Europe and Japan after 1945. More recently, the US has helped to nurture democratic transitions in post-communist eastern Europe, post-apartheid South Africa and elsewhere.
The US, further, is far from unique amongst democracies in its hypocrisy. Britain, France and other European ex-imperial powers have dishonourable records of supporting unsavoury allies in their former empires. While Ireland arguably has a comparatively good record in supporting democracy and human rights abroad, the Taoiseach's recent visit to China shows that economic interests usually have primacy over human rights concerns.
US and broader Western double standards over democracy reveal a fundamental foreign policy dilemma. Morally, the case for basic liberties and the right to choose one's government is overwhelming and these rights should not be denied to others. For all their flaws, democracies do not go to war with each other, are less vulnerable to civil war, genocide or mass human rights abuses than non-democracies and are usually more politically stable and prosperous than authoritarian regimes. The promotion of democracy elsewhere in the world is surely in the long-term interests of the world's existing democracies.
Too often, however, democracy and human rights are subjugated to short-term interests, whether they be maintaining access to oil, countering terrorism or securing contracts in China.
This dilemma is not new, but in the post-9/11 world it is more acute than in the past. While we may be uncomfortable with what can be seen as democratic imperialism, President Bush and the neo-conservatives are probably right that from a long-term perspective, democracy is one of the best antidotes to terrorism and guarantees a safer and more stable world.
The gap between here and there, however, is large. The double standards of the US and the world's other democracies make the bridging of this gap difficult, undermining democracy in the short-term and convincing many in places such as the Middle East that the rhetoric of democracy is simply cover for the promotion of Western interests.
The US and the world's democracies need to begin to address this dilemma by reducing their dependence on authoritarian allies, living up to the standards they proclaim and playing down the overblown rhetoric of presidential addresses. America will be judged not by what its president says but by what it does.
• Andrew Cottey is senior lecturer and Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Integration in the Department of Government, University College Cork