Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

Efforts at democratization in the Middle East resemble a wavy sea, where a short-term wave of reforms leading toward democratization is immediately followed by a period of reform-crippling or even destructive "low tide". Seeking to revive, enhance and speed up the stumbling democratization in the region the Bush lead U.S. Administration practically unilaterally undertook an unprecedented wide range of direct activities in the region. Revulsion at nation-building expressed by G. W. Bush during the election campaign in 2000 later during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq put the U.S. into a precarious situation - the state whose leader publicly denounced nation-building by will of the very same leader is now forced to lead two grandiose nation-building operations. In both cases the USA chose the perceived quicker path - through the creation of central structures of governance needed for institutional democracy. The biggest paradox of the democratization in the Middle East is that since the USA started actively implementing democracy in the region (through democratization from the outside, sometimes called "democratization by force") the demand for democracy (and perspectives for democratization from inside) has shrunk, while artificially created institutional democracy by Americans in the pilot projects of Afghanistan and Iraq has been used to their advantage by not necessarily democratically inclined forces.