WASHINGTON - However much President George
W Bush's "Freedom Agenda" asserted itself into US
foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq invasion
three years ago, traditional geopolitics - and the
realpolitik that goes with it - is making a
remarkably strong comeback.
From the
energy-rich Gulf of Guinea, across the Islamic
Middle East to Central Asia, the Bush
administration has pretty much dropped its
democratic pretenses in favor of stability - and
the "friendly" autocrats who can provide it,
especially those with plentiful oil and gas
resources and strategically placed real estate
with
regard to emerging foes, be they Russia, Iran or
China.
The latest evidence took the form
of the appearance last Friday at the White House
by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev, whose
party's sweeping victory in November's
parliamentary elections was widely denounced by
Western observers as fraudulent.
"We
talked about the need for the world to see a
modern Muslim country that is able to provide for
its citizens, that understands that democracy is
the wave of the future," Bush said at a brief
photo-opportunity. "And I appreciate your
leadership, Mr President."
The photo-op
was cut off before reporters could ask any
questions about precisely what Aliev's
"understanding" of democracy might be, let alone
Azerbaijan's placement as one of the world's most
corrupt nations, according to the latest rankings
by Transparency International.
Bush's warm
words were a reminder of the visit in mid-April of
another allegedly corrupt - albeit far more brutal
and long-ruling - dictator, Equatorial Guinean
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
While
Obiang was unable to penetrate the White House
gates, he did get a warm and remarkably public
reception from Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, who praised her guest as "a good friend" of
the United States.
Rice, whose outspoken -
if largely rhetorical - championship of Bush's
"Freedom Agenda" has recalled Joan of Arc's
crusade for the French Dauphin, failed even to
utter the words "democracy" or "human rights"
during her appearance with Obiang.
What
Aliev and Obiang have in common, of course, is the
fact that their nations' territory sits atop
billions of barrels of hydrocarbons at a time when
global supply is stretched very thin; the US is
more dependent than ever on external supplies; and
US presidential public-approval ratings appear
increasingly tied to the price of gasoline and
home heating oil.
The same can be said of
Kazakhstan, a major oil producer, whose president,
Nursultan Nazarbayev - like Aliev, an exemplar of
the kind of corruption and autocracy that have
dominated Central Asia since even before the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - will
receive Dick Cheney on one of the vice president's
extremely rare ventures outside US borders this
week.
Nazarbayev, whose election to a
third seven-year term with 91% of the vote last
December was also denounced by Western observers,
has ruled Kazakhstan since 1989. His security
services, if not he personally, have been
implicated in the apparent murders of two
opposition leaders since the elections. Cheney,
according to one government source, is expected,
among other things, to renew a standing invitation
to Nazarbayev to the White House.
In these
exchanges, which have strong military as well as
diplomatic implications, Washington Post columnist
Jackson Diehl sees a "tipping point" that amounts
to a "retreat from [Bush's] 'Freedom Agenda',
particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia,
where Washington finds itself in an escalating
competition for influence, especially over the
outward flow of oil and gas, with Russia".
"At the heart of Bush's democracy doctrine
was the principle that the United States would
abandon its Cold War-era practice of propping up
dictators - especially in the Muslim world - in
exchange for easy access to their energy resources
and military cooperation," wrote Diehl.
But "the race for energy and an
increasingly bare-knuckled contest with Moscow for
influence over its producers have caused the
downgrading of the democracy strategy", he wrote,
noting that Azerbaijan's proximity to Iran and the
existence of a fairly significant Azeri minority
in Iran might also help explain Washington's
willingness to ignore Aliev's autocratic
peccadilloes.
That downgrading, however,
is hardly confined to the former Soviet states, as
is clear from Washington's unexpectedly public
embrace of Obiang.
Indeed, the most
spectacular pullback so far has been in the Arab
world - the major focus of the "Freedom Agenda" -
where Hamas' unexpected sweep of the Palestinian
elections in January capped a string of strong
showings by Islamist parties in Egypt, Lebanon,
the Persian Gulf region and, most discouragingly,
Iraq.
Those victories, as well as last
month's forced exile of an Afghan Christian who
faced a possible death sentence for having
converted from Islam, has spurred a major rethink
by key Bush constituencies - including the
Christian Right and some prominent pro-Israeli
neo-conservatives, if not by key administration
officials - of the wisdom of aggressive democracy
promotion in a part of the world where many people
have serious problems with US foreign policy.
In recent weeks, that has translated into
a number of subtle policy changes that the
administration has preferred not to highlight.
Thus after almost three years of applying maximum
pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad -
apparently in hopes of bringing about "regime
change" - US officials have recently begun
praising Damascus's cooperation in halting
infiltration of Islamists into Iraq.
Similarly, last year's high-profile
pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to
implement democratic reforms and ease up on the
opposition appears to have dissipated. For
example, last week's harsh crackdown against
protesters who turned out in support of two judges
who accused the government of election fraud
elicited scarcely a peep from Washington, which
said it was merely "disappointed" by the extension
on Monday of a much-despised 25-year-old emergency
decree.
Similarly, the shelving by King
Abdullah of Jordan - or for that matter, of reform
plans by a number of Gulf states - of an ambitious
reform agenda has ruffled few feathers in
Washington, particularly in light of reports that
Hamas' victory next door has boosted the
popularity and organizing efforts of the local
branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Washington is
vigorously promoting the construction of a
proposed pipeline project that would transport gas
from Turkmenistan - whose regime's bizarre,
Stalin-era cult of personality has made it
impossible for Bush to upgrade ties substantially
- to India as a substitute for a much cheaper
Iran-Pakistan-India link.
The move
underscores the degree to which Bush's declaration
17 months ago that the "ultimate goal" of US
policy was "ending tyranny in our world" has been
cast aside in the interests of old-fashioned
geopolitics.
