Democracy Rising?

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Since America's tragedy on September 11, 2001 the Middle East has been the epicenter of international attention. Cries for democracy and freedom in the region have permeated the western media. When Iraq was found to be devoid of the Weapons of Mass Destruction, bringing democracy to the country became the new reason for the war. Nearly every first world country in the world is a democracy if not in name then in practice. It would be forgivable to think that democracy is the cause of wealth, civil liberties, and all the things associated with first world countries, for there is almost no wealthy nation today that is not a de facto democracy. However while democracy is undoubtedly a tremendous invention of mankind and works well in many nations that, does not mean it is universally correct and should be applied to every nation in the world. For if democracy were forced upon many Middle Eastern nations it would not be a harbinger of increased civil liberties, wealth, and peace, but a step towards secular extremist regimes, far less friendly to each other and the west than their moderate authoritarian predecessors.

In the early nineteenth century after world war one, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. It encompassed much of the middle east and Arab world, the League of Nations, a group of imperialist western nations which had fought on the winning allied side during the war had grand intentions of preventing future wars. However some of their actions are credited with directly leading to the second world war. One of their mandates that would have grim consequences for future generations was ratified in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, this treaty effectively divvied up the middle east into new colonies for the victorious Eu...

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...rative Political Studies 43.11 (2010): 1442-1470. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.

Falk, Richard. "America's Pro-Iraqi Neutrality." Nation 231.13 (1980): 398-401. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.

Guida, Michelangelo. "The New Islamists' Understanding of Democracy in Turkey: The Examples of Ali Bulac and Hayreddin Karaman." Turkish Studies 11.3 (2010): 347-370. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.

Tibi, Bassam. "Islamism and Democracy: On the Compatibility of Institutional Islamism and the Political Culture of Democracy." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10.2 (June 2009): 135-64. Print.

Weiffen, Brigitte. "The Cultural-Economic Syndrome: Impediments to Democracy in the Middle East."Comparative Sociology 3.3/4 (2004): 353-375. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.

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