Foreign Policy in Focus Special Report: Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

The growing movement favoring democracy and human rights in the Middle East has not shared the remarkable successes of its counterparts in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia. Most Middle Eastern governments remain autocratic. Despite occasional rhetorical support for greater individual freedoms, the United States has generally not supported tentative Middle Eastern steps toward democratization. Indeed, the United States has reduced—or maintained at low levels—its economic, military, and diplomatic support to Arab countries that have experienced substantial political liberalization in recent years while increasing support for autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and Morocco. Jordan, for example, received large-scale U.S. support in the 1970s and 1980s despite widespread repression and authoritarian rule; when it opened up its political system in the early 1990s, the U.S. substantially reduced—and, for a time, suspended—foreign aid. Aid to Yemen was cut off within months of the newly unified country’s first democratic election in 1990.

Figure 8

Military vs. Economic Aid to the Middle East FY 1999 (est.)

Source: The Secretary of State, Congressional Appropriations for Foreign Operations 2000 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1999).

Despite its laudable rhetoric, Washington’s real policy regarding human rights in the Middle East is not difficult to infer. U.S. aid to Israel increased during the 1980s, when the Israeli government’s repression in the occupied territories reached record levels. In addition, American occupation forces failed to stop widespread repression—even lynchings—of Palestinian residents in Kuwait immediately after liberation from Iraq. Aid to Morocco grew as that country’s repression in occupied Western Sahara (and even within Morocco itself) continued unabated. The U.S. largely welcomed the 1992 military coup in Algeria that nullified that country’s first democratic elections. Washington has pressed Syria, an authoritarian government undergoing some gradual liberalization, to crack down even harder on left-wing Palestinian groups based in Damascus who were critical of the U.S.-led peace process. The Clinton administration has also pressured the Palestinian authorities to engage in active suppression against both Islamic and secular opposition groups within areas of their administrative jurisdiction. Whatever the actual intentions of the U.S., the message to Middle Eastern countries appears to be that democracy is not important.

The Middle East is the destination of the majority of American arms exports, creating enormous profits for politically influential weapons manufacturers. Despite promises of restraint, U.S. arms transfers to the region have topped $50 billion since the Gulf War. Joe Stork, in a survey for the Middle East Research and Information Project, argues that the ongoing Middle Eastern arms race continues for three reasons: 1) arms sales are an important component of building political alliances, particularly with the military leadership of recipient countries, 2) there is a strategic benefit arising from interoperability—having U.S.-manufactured systems on the ground in the event of a direct U.S. military intervention, and 3) arms sales are a means of supporting military industries faced with declining demand in Western countries. One episode revealing the facade of the security argument justifying increased weapons sales occurred during a 1993 off-the-record seminar involving assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, top Saudi officials, and the vice-chairman of the board of Morgan Guaranty (the bank that organized the financing of Saudi Arabia’s 1991 war effort), where it was acknowledged that arms transfers had little to do with the objective security needs for the Saudi kingdom.

To link arms transfers with human rights records would lead to the probable loss of tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for American weapons manufacturers, who are among the most powerful special interest groups in Washington. This may help explain why the United States has ignored the fact that UN Security Council resolution 687, which the U.S. has cited as justification for its military responses to Iraq’s possible rearmament, also calls for region-wide disarmament efforts, something the United States has rejected.

With the exception of Israel, which has provided an exemplary democratic system for its Jewish citizens, none of America’s allies in the region could really be considered democracies. Yet none require democratic institutions in order to fulfill American strategic objectives. Indeed, the opposite may be true: the Middle Eastern countries that most vigorously opposed the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991—Jordan and Yemen—were the two Arab states with the most open political systems. Most observers acknowledge that close strategic cooperation with the United States tends to be unpopular in Arab countries, as are government policies that devote large sums toward the acquisition of weapons, most of which are of U.S. origin. Were these leaders subjected to the will of the majority, they would likely be forced to greatly reduce arms purchases from and strategic cooperation with the United States. As the British-based Middle East specialist Dilip Hiro explains, the United States does not actually support democracy in the Middle East because “it is much simpler to manipulate a few ruling families (and to secure fat orders for arms and ensure that oil prices remain low) than a wide variety of personalities and policies bound to be thrown up by a democratic system.” Elected governments might reflect the popular sentiment for “self-reliance and Islamic fellowship.”

It is undeniable that democracy and universally recognized human rights have never been common in the Arab-Islamic world. Yet the tendency in the U.S. to emphasize cultural or religious explanations for this fact serves to minimize other factors that are arguably more salient—including the legacy of colonialism, high levels of militarization, and uneven economic development—most of which can be linked in part to the policies of Western governments, including the United States. There is a circuitous irony in a U.S. policy that sells arms, and often sends direct military aid, to repressive Middle Eastern regimes that suppress their own people and crush incipient human rights movements, only to then claim that the resulting lack of democracy and human rights is evidence that the people do not want such rights. In reality, these arms transfers and diplomatic and economic support systems play an important role in keeping autocratic Arab regimes in power by strengthening the hand of the state and supporting internal repression.

Indeed, Clinton’s view of the Middle East is not unlike Reagan’s view of Central America: discount the authoritarianism, poverty, and social injustice within allied countries and blame their internal unrest on outside forces; insist that military solutions are required to resolve what are essentially political and economic problems; define terrorism and extremist movements as the primary problem rather than the gross injustices that spawn these movements; apply strict interpretations of international law and United Nations resolutions to governments the U.S. opposes and ignore these laws and resolutions when they target governments the U.S. supports; and position the U.S. as the primary economic, military, and diplomatic force in the region, even to the exclusion of Washington’s European allies.

So far, U.S. policy has largely been successful in extending American strategic, economic, and diplomatic interests in the region. However, as the Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans, French, and British all learned, such hegemonic relationships with the Middle East can be short-lived and even disastrous for the once-hegemonic power. Given the growing resentment over America’s role by much of the Middle Eastern population, there will likely be continued conflict between the United States and the peoples and governments of the region unless there are some dramatic changes in U.S. Middle East policy.

Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East

The Struggle for Democracy

Continuing Storm:
The U.S. Role in the Middle East