Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
On the democratization idea, the way I'm playing that in my book is that it was based on a complete misunderstanding of the Reagan administration. I y believe Bush badly wanted to be another Reagan. He saw the wave of democratization that took place in the former Soviet bloc in the 1980s and 1990s and concluded, "Gee, this is easy." In other words, he totally misunderstood the cultural and historical differences between Eastern Europe and the Arab world. I can write that off to his inexperience. But I will never for the life of me understand why brilliant people like Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Muravchik, etc. couldn't see this.
For most of them, I think, it hardly went beyond the notion of a "grand idea," the primary vehicle for which would be regime change in Baghdad and the ensuing domino effect. In this sense, yes, it was modeled on the sudden, rapid changes in Eastern Europe, and not on the much more contingent and difficult changes elsewhere.

The operational challenges of the agenda--how one balances off CT cooperation and pressuring authoritarian regimes, how one configures aid programs/MEPI, etc. were never thought through at all, but rather replaced with a lot of wishful thinking.

It was also relatively late in the game that some actors began to engage the broader research and analytical community with expertise in these areas (DoS did some, the NIC and others had a brief flurry of doing it, and USAID had a longer history of doing it, but was already locked in a private sector growth/civil society empowerment/gender equity model that was of limited effectiveness).

The turning point, I think was Egypt in 2005. US pressure undoubtedly played a key role in both competitive presidential elections, and the parliamentary elections. However, when the regime responded to the Muslim Brotherhood's success in the latter, Washington shifted back to pre-9/11 strategy and essentially acquiesced in authoritarian measures.