Un fantasme américain : la démocratie au Grand Moyen-Orient

In November 2004, the American presidential election will be held against an international background dominated by the situation in Iraq, where the American-led coalition is floundering. Virtually everywhere in the world, the majority of public opinion is against the re-election of the current President, George W. Bush. The main complaint is about his administration’s “messianic” attitude in attempting to impose its vision of the world and of international relations, which was revealed in the Greater Middle East Initiative announced by the United States at the G8 meeting last June and which is presented as the spearhead of American ambitions for the region.
Jean-Jacques Salomon has examined the origins and underlying agenda of this “great plan”: he describes for readers of Futuribles the main characters inspiring and implementing the foreign policy of the Bush team (neo-conservatives, the oil lobby, the religious lobbies, the links with the Likud party in Israel), their ideological convictions, the way they hope to put these convictions into practice (in particular state-building) and the flow of reforms that might then come about. This “American fantasy” of Western-style democracy in a region as diverse as the Middle East is hardly realistic under current conditions.
Nonetheless, as Jean-Jacques Salomon stresses, the need for radical reforms in the Muslim world is increasingly recognized and proclaimed by many Arab commentators. But would Westernisation be too high a price to pay for modernization?
As to the result of the American presidential election, let us not delude ourselves: if the Democrats were to win, this would not necessarily bring about a major change in American foreign policy – although at least it would mean that there would be greater respect for the views of their allies and partners – and the messianic tendencies would not disappear.