Fukuyama on Democracy Promotion

Francis Fukuyama, the penitent ex-neocon, has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today that calls for the Bush Administration to ratchet down its democracy promotion efforts in the Arab world and focus first on fixing Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting terrorism. Why give democracy promotion a rest:

Promoting liberal and democratic institutions in the Middle East should be decoupled from this fight, since it is a much more long-term project--and a project in need of significant redesign. The Bush administration has not admitted to itself the degree to which it has been knocked off its own timetable by the chaotic situation in Iraq. Its Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative to promote democracy in the Middle East through high-profile rhetorical support for democracy and funding for local democratic organizations was originally conceived as a way of capitalizing on the momentum gained from a successful Iraqi transition to democracy. But there is no such momentum right now, only backlash. Many would-be democratic opponents of regimes in places like Syria or Iran now say they'd prefer the status quo to the situation the Iraqis are in. This does not paint a rosy picture for the Bush administration's new initiative to promote democratic regime change in Iran; it will be hard to find any takers for the $75 million in new funding for this purpose.

To put it mildly, the Iraq war has not increased the prestige of the U.S. and American ideas like liberal democracy in the Middle East. The U.S. does not have abundant moral authority for promoting the rule of law, since the first thing people in the region associate with America today is prisoner abuse at Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib. Many Americans have explained these events to themselves by saying that the abuse was an aberration that has been hyped by enemies of the U.S., and that in any event such things just happen during wartime. Perhaps; but the fact remains that Guantanamo is still open, and nobody except for a couple of lowly enlisted soldiers have been prosecuted for prisoner abuse by the Bush administration. Fair or not, American insistence on rule of law and human rights looks simply hypocritical.

The Bush Administration has done major damage to the image of the United States as a beacon of human rights and democracy promotion. And the damage continues since no one in authority has been punished and the prisons are still open. Fukuyama is right but it is going to take regime change at home before we are in a position to implement his ideas.