Engagement or Coercion: Weighing Western Human Rights Policies Towards Turkey, Iran and Egypt
(I've reviewed her previous book Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights here). This is a review of various policies adopted by the U.S., the European Union, various nations of Western Europe and Canada and an assortment of NGO's in an effort to promote human rights in the Middle East throughout the 1990's. Dalacoura meticulously documents every peaceful approach tried with respect to the nations mentioned in the title, the full suite of diplomatic tools ranging from verbal pressure to economic punishments, and the failure of each one (unless one counts cosmetic and short-lived changes as success, which she doesn't). So what does Dalacoura think of the Iraq War, you are dying to ask?
If the conclusion of this study, that Western human rights policies have had a limited and ambiguous impact in the Middle East, is correct, the implication, ironically, is that Iraq will democratize only if it is fully taken over and reconstructed by the occupying powers. But if the Iraqi people eventually come to assume responsibility for their affairs, as Japan and Germany did after the Second World War, then the flourishing of democracy and liberal institutions in Iraq is a possibility.
A similar argument was made by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in October 2002: "One of the lessons of more than a decade of democracy promotion around the world is that outsiders are usually marginal players. They become the central determinant of political change only if they are willing to intervene massively, impose a de facto protectorate, and stay for an indefinite, long term. No matter what happens in Iraq, such forceful intervention is unthinkable in most Middle East countries." It is indeed doubtful that the United States and the United Kingdom will be willing to commit the manpower and resources entailed by such an occupation of Iraq. A job left half-done and a quick exit, in the manner of Afghanistan after the US intervention of 2001-2, which left the Kabul government in partial control of the country, is a more likely scenario. This cannot but further discredit the West's commitment to human rights and democracy in the eyes of the people of the Middle East.
Of course that is a false characterization of the situation in Afghanistan. The US and its allies have not yet left Afghanistan; indeed that war isn't actually over yet, and there may be a bit more endgame to be played with respect to the warlords there once it is over. She may be right, she may be wrong; we'll all learn together soon enough I suppose.