Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
Gaddis made the point that the administration, without publicly stating so, believed that the toppling of Saddam Hussien and a resulting shift towards democracy in Iraq might serve as the first domino in the region. Other democratic shifts in Iran and Saudi Arabia were plausible, and that was where the administration was moving with the "grand strategy" it developed in NSS-2002.
There's no doubt in my mind that the idea of Iraq as a "democratic domino" was a real element in US strategy for many--although certainly not all--in the Bush Administration at the time. There are a variety of reasons why political changes in Iraq didn't have the desired effect (PM me with an email address, and I'll send to some of my own work on the issue), but the question raised here is what effects the rhetoric of a "forward agenda of freedom" had on US interests in the region and around the world.

Ironically, I think there were two seemingly contradictory effects. The first was the response, especially in the ME, that this was just a new form of imperialism. The second objection, however, was that the US was not serious--and was not going far enough. In short, Washington got simultaneously blamed for both meddling too much, and not meddling enough.

Exacerbating these effects was the additional factor that the critics were, to a large degree, right. The US became quite serious about pushing reform for a brief period of time in 2002-05, even on its allies—however flawed, the semi-competitive Egyptian presidential elections of 2005 wouldn't have occurred without US pressure. Indeed at the time many in Cairo would likely have ranked US pressure for reform as among the primary national security threat to Egypt (or, more accurately, its dictatorial regime).

The policy was dead by the end of the year, however, as evidenced by Washington's tepid response to massive fraud in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, as well as the unwelcome results of the January 2006 Palestinian (PLC) elections. Washington's problem with democratic politics is that voters in the region didn't like US foreign policy, and if given the choice would often vote for parties (usually Islamist) who had very different views of the world than those held in the White House.

The net effect of all this was a policy that fell between two stools. It raised expectations through lofty rhetoric of supporting change, only to back off, and thereby confirm the view of so many in the region that it had all been subterfuge all along. This was far more damaging to US interests, IMHO, than would have been either accommodating dictators or pressing for real political change.