Democracy Promotion: Anti-terrorism Tool?

“Decoupling support for democracy from the broader effort to combat terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle East would be a costly strategic misstep,” say Shadi Hamid and Steven Brooke in a feature for the latest edition of the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review. Surveying a number of reports and academic works, they conclude that political repression breeds violent extremism and that those who commit acts of terrorism are more likely to come from repressive authoritarian states.

Further, Hamid and Brooke argue that the failed Bush administration agenda to promote Middle East democracy was not a reflection of shoddy theorizing, but rather the result of insufficient and poorly resourced policies that, aside from a short period following the 2003 Iraq invasion, did little more than issue rhetorical support for democratic reforms. They propose reformulating the U.S. democratization strategy to include more stringent aid conditionality, greater funding for the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account, and new initiatives to unite Islamist and secular groups under pro-democracy platforms.