Constructing America's Freedom Agenda for the Middle East: Democracy and Domination by Oz Hassan

Author:Oz Hassan [Hassan, Oz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415603102
Google: Os0Mfg5kG1sC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T07:42:45+00:00

The incremental evolution of a new policy paradigm for the Middle East

By understanding the Iraq war and the Freedom Agenda as part of a grand vision for the MENA region, articulated together by the vision set out at ‘Bletchley II’, it is possible to trace the gradual evolution of the Freedom Agenda back to within months of the September 11, 2001, crisis. Indeed, by early 2002, policy practice began to catch up with the initial transformative discourse the administration set out in its initial crisis narrative. Yet the evolution of the policy itself was not a smooth process, as the Bush administration needed to adapt its crisis narrative to events, setbacks and challenges to the policy’s institutionalisation. This became all the more apparent throughout the end of 2002 when long-term MENA allies, such as Egypt, began facing increasing pressure from the administration to reform. Equally, as the build-up to the war in Iraq was unfolding, the administration’s thinking about the Freedom Agenda was evolving to provide a more distinctive policy coupled with a distinctive set of institutions. Thus, although the Iraq war was intended to create a domino effect, the Freedom Agenda was departing from relying on the fall of ‘dominos’ alone.

Long before the Freedom Agenda was declared the leitmotif of Bush’s second term in office, the policy came into fruition through a slow gestation of ideas. What distinguishes the period between early 2002 and the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, and why it is important to the evolution of the Freedom Agenda, is that the Bush administration began to shift the definition of the national interest. No longer was simply ‘eradicating terrorism’ at the core of the definition, but at the same time as the administration began to include the use of ‘pre-emptive’ force to ‘prevent mass terror’ it also slowly began to see a national interest in addressing wider social conditions in the MENA. What emerged was a definition of the national interest that sought to deal with what the administration saw to be the causes of terrorism. As strategically selective actors within the state bureaucracy began to interpret the strategically selective context differently, as a result of a crisis, the construction of the national interest shifted to solve the puzzle the crisis appeared to present. The Freedom Agenda in its final evolutionary form is the product of this shift.

That the Bush administration’s post-crisis narrative was evolving to include a more prescriptive approach to dealing with the causes of terrorism before the Iraq war was launched became highly evident in the President’s West Point speech. As early as June 2002, the President declared to West Point candidates that

the 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human progress, based on non-negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women and private property and free speech and equal justice and religious tolerance. America cannot impose this vision – yet we can support and reward governments

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.