Last night I watched an episode of “Writers,” a program on Al-Jazeera. They were actually in London, speaking to two Arab writers, one an Egyptian novelist who lives in London, Ahdaf Soueif (see this article for an interview with her), and an editor with the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi (whose full name I can’t remember, Amjad something I think, not Abd al-Bari Atwan, their managing editor). They talked about a number of things, but the guy made a comment on which I want to focus to the effect that when we speak of democracy in the Middle East, “the West has two faces” – democracy and authoritarianism (these are his words, when I hear things like this it is usually “democracy and colonialism”). He went on to discuss the British empire in the 19th century and then briefly its successor, the United States. Some variation on this argument is made often – the United States is a democracy at home, but supports autocracy abroad.

My response to this in the past has usually been that, yes, the United States does business with autocratic regimes when it suits its interests, just as any country would. And yes, at times it has even supported them, just as Europe has. Yet autocracy predated the entrance of the United States into the Middle East for a very long time – millennia, actually – and the U.S. is simply making the best of the situation with what is there.

Over the past few years I’ve started to come to the view, however, that the “Two Faces Theory” may be wrong on its face, at least to an extent. That is, a liberal imperial power would use military force to maintain free trade, defend basic civil and humanitarian rights, and set up governments that use a lighter hand than otherwise. Examples abound of this with the British Empire – its free trade policy from the mid-19th century, the campaign against slavery, or the fact that there was more economic freedom and freedom of the press in Egypt (and Iraq and elsewhere) in the 1920s when Britain ruled than there has been in recent decades. One may also point to illiberal elements in the British Empire as well, so the Two Faces theory has some validity.

As to U.S. foreign policy, imagine an imperial power which (a) maintains open shipping lanes but does not attempt to monopolize them, allowing other countries to benefit, (b) protects access to natural resources necessary for modern economies, but itself still pays above-market rates for the petroleum it gets, and (c) pressures governments to give their citizens more economic and political freedom. The former two characteristics have been true of U.S. foreign policy since 1945, and the latter has been true inconsistently, and more consistently in the last few years.

Thus, there are not two faces to Western democracy, there is only one – a muscular foreign policy that protects U.S. interests, but also provides benefits to the world as a whole as well. Those familiar with the writings of Niall Ferguson will recognize this argument; for a more in-depth look at the issue, I suggest his book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.

Incidently, when the guy from Al-Quds – an Islamist newspaper – was discussing the “democratic West,” as opposed to the “authoritarian West,” he mentioned a couple of specific writers as examples – Hegel and Marx. I don’t know if these two names just came to mind as great writers, or if this was reflective of the extent to which Marxism has infiltrated modern Islamist thought. It was an interesting comment, though.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell of Window on the Arab World, and More!