Journal of Human Security | 2013 | Volume 9 | Issue 1 | Pages 15–26

DOI: 10.12924/johs2013.09010015

ISSN: 1835-3800

Research Article

The United States and the Arab Spring

Timo Kivimäki

Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 54, 00014, University of Helsinki,

Finland; Tel.: +358 503081270; E-Mail: [email protected]

Submitted: 25 April 2013 | In revised form: 29 May 2013 | Accepted: 5 June 2013 |

Published: 3 July 2013

Abstract: This article reveals, by studying correlative relationships between US regime support

and regime properties, that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally helped

governments to limit the political participation of Islamists, communists, enemies of Israel and

populations that could be hostile to the US oil interests. This way the US economic and

strategic security interests have contributed to human insecurity in the region. With the

exception of the last interest, the US has relaxed its support for repression of the above-

mentioned groups. This seems to be one of the international factors that made the Arab Spring

possible.

Keywords: autocracy; democracy; human security; Middle East; sovereignty; United States

1. Introduction

Human security of individuals depends on many

things, not just on political systems. Yet, restrictions

to political participation, lack of openness and com-

petitiveness of executive recruitment, and especially

the lack of constraints on the chief executive's policies

and actions all predict authoritarian violence, which is

definitely a threat to human security. According to

Rudoph Rummel, more than six times more people

were killed by their governments than by all the wars

combined during the 20th century [1]. In this sense,

the fall of brutal autocrats during the Arab Spring

constituted progress for human security.

Human security and the change of a repressive

government can be brought about in many ways. In

the Arab Spring ordinary people took center stage. At

the same time, political discourse on the Respon-

sibility to Protect (R2P), let alone the discourses giving

legitimacy to international military interventions in the

name of democracy, also highlight the role of

international state actors in the promotion, and

destruction of human security. Recently up to 60% of

people killed in wars were killed by wars (Libya, Iraq

and Afghanistan) that were justified by references to

human security, democracy and human rights

(calculated by the author on the basis of best

estimates for 2011, the last year of the data published

yet [2]). This is why it is still relevant to ask how

states really influence each other and what human

security implications this influence could really have.

This article will focus on these questions in the

context of the Arab Spring and argues that the ending

of the US support of authoritarian suppression of the

under a Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

political participation of Islamists and anti-Israel

movements in the Arab world could have affected the

downfall of autocracy in several Arab countries.

Furthermore, this article argues that greater openness

provided by WikiLeaks about this change in the US

policy possibly triggered this change.

2. Earlier Studies and the Argument of This

Study

The successful toppling of autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt,

Libya (and Yemen) has often been attributed to the

popular motives of opposing despots. The failure to

bring about development (legitimacy by means of

performance) has been pointed to by several scholars

[3–8]. Filipe Campante and Davin Chor and Katerina

Dalacoura specify the argument by showing that

grievances, especially that of unemployment, held by

well-educated people foreshadow problems for auto-

crats [9,10]. According to Samuel Huntington "The

higher the level of education of the unemployed,…the

more extreme the destabilizing behavior which

results" [11]. In addition to unemployment, economic

policies that discriminate against the well-educated

middle class have been associated with the success of

change in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya [12].

Nonetheless, grievances that motivate and initiate

revolts can also be purely political. Abrams applied the

logic of relative deprivation to political grievances by

explaining the appraisals of the Middle East as a

response to the increasingly violent repression of the

non-violent political opposition and also to the

reversal of the modest beginnings of early democratic

signs [11].

Some explanations emphasize the resources and

opportunities of the potential rebels. This article will

focus exactly on the modalities of democratic revolt.

People are able to topple autocratic regimes, only

when the autocrat fails to keep his/her order intact

[13] and this condition is partly dependent on

whether or not the opposition has the resources, the

education and the time for mounting such a challenge

[9,14]. The availability of new communication media

with Facebook, text messaging etc. have been

considered to have been among the facilitators of

change in the Middle East [4,14–17]. In contrast, an

ideational emancipation, the ability to imagine

democratic models that are not copied from American

textbooks on political science, has also been seen as a

necessary condition to the process of democratization

[18]. Finally, a successful challenging of the rulers

also required the political awakening of the young

people [15,16,18], and the political (rather than

militant) mobilization of religious groups. The wisdom

of Przeworsky [19] about the impact on perceptions

of the feasibility of democratic revolution in

democratizing regions was also utilized in the analyses

of the opportunities available for the toppling of

autocrats in the Middle East [20].

3. External Action…and Inaction

Opportunities for a democratic change are not always

created domestically. External political influence and

intervention in domestic power battles is another

factor that affects the opportunities of peoples who

might have other motives for toppling their respective

autocratic regimes. On the one hand, much attention

has recently been paid to international efforts to help

the opposition topple their despots. Vali Nasr, for

example, criticizes Obama's administration for

rejecting the initiatives of the State Department for

greater activism in support of democracy. Instead, he

claims, the White House is "in a retreat" from the

region [21]. At the same time these efforts at

democratization often end up as imperialism that does

not serve the human security in dictatorships [22].

This article will focus precisely on those inputs into

those opportunities that topple autocrats that

emanate from the political interventions into the

domestic power struggles of democratizing states

made by the big powers. Seven out of the ten most

spectacular changes towards democracy that occurred

after the First World War were at least partly

influenced by international manipulation of the

military power balance of the affected country [23].

However, in most cases the change was related to the

ending of support for an autocrat by a foreign power.

In Latin America, the US support of autocrats ended

with the human rights campaign of President Jimmy

Carter, and with the anti-drug warfare of President

Ronald Reagan and what followed was a wave of

democratization throughout the region. The wave of

democratization in Eastern Europe, again, was made

possible by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its

support for the communist autocrats. The ending of

the Soviet intervention for the communist autocrats in

Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia

resulted in the democratization of half of the ten

countries that had experienced the most profound

democratization after the First World War [23].

4. Can It Be the WikiLeaks?

The question related to foreign impacts is, whether

there was a foreign power that withdrew its support

from the autocrats. If such support from a power

existed in the Middle East, it had to be from the US

since only the American influence can have had such

a decisive role in the shaping of polities in the region.

A thesis that this was the case has already been

presented. Ruthie Blum surprisingly accuses the US

for abandoning its autocratic allies and thus making

available space for anti-Israeli Islamists to take over

[24]. In contrast, other scholars have been more

critical of the US with its support for autocrats in the

past, and more recently they have been critical of the

US policy that has not supported the democratic

movements sufficiently [21], and these scholars are

now pleased to have seen the autocrats overthrown.

The thesis of the Arab Spring being influenced by the

refusal of the US to support its old allies was well

presented by the advocacy group of the main

whistleblower, WikiLeaks. This organization allegedly

leaked the information about the unwillingness of the

US to continue its support for President Ben Ali in

Tunis:

"The US campaign of unwavering public support for

President Ali led to a widespread belief among the

Tunisian people that it would be very difficult to

dislodge the autocratic regime from power. This

view was shattered when leaked (WikiLeaks) cables

exposed the US government's private assessment:

that the US would not support the regime in the

event of a popular uprising. While extreme

economic hardship and popular discontent with

(human) rights abuses had already set the stage

for an uprising, this new information played a

critical role in transforming the landscape of

political possibilities in Tunisia. The Tunisian people

finally realized that, contrary to the US

government's public relations efforts, they weren't

really up against the full force of the world's

superpower" [25,26].

Could it be that the main international push for

democratization in the Middle East came as a negative

act? The negative act, or non-action in this case was

the refusal of the US to continue support for Ben Ali

against his democratic challengers. In Egypt the US

abandoned President Hosni Mubarak, who until the

turmoil had received financial support matched only

by the US support for Israel. In Libya the United

States participated in a military operation involving the

heavy bombing of Muammar Gaddafi's troops. In

contrast, during President George W. Bush's regime,

the country solicited Libyan support in the war on

terror, tried to persuade Gaddafi to accept intelligence

sharing arrangements and hoped to add Libya to the

Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership [27]: a

venture that was undoubtedly aimed against some of

the individuals in the current Libyan government. It is

not within the scope of this article to prove that the

US policy towards some of its Middle Eastern allies,

especially in the war against terror, has dramatically

changed. Instead, this is taken as a given. Such a

change is considered to be a subject that this article

will not analyze. In addition, no proof for the

argument that the sudden inaction of the US

regarding support of its autocratic allies was one of

the reasons for the emergence of the opportunity for

the Arab Spring will be provided either. Instead the

topic that this article will focus on, is the question of

whether the former US policy indeed contributed to

the durability of Middle East autocracy.

Thus, the main question this article tries to answer

is whether or not it is true that former US support of

regimes in the Middle East supported autocrats more

than it did democrats. If the answer to this

controversial question is no, then it will not be

possible to say that the ending of such support

contributed to the toppling of autocrats. Only if the

overall balance of US interference and intervention in

domestic affairs of the Middle East tilts in favor of

autocracy, can US inaction be said actually to have

helped to oust the dictators. This is why this article

focuses on the question of what the overall balance of

US support to domestic forces was: Was the support

of the US in general in favor of democrats or

dictators?

5. Quantitative Design

In order to answer this challenging research question,

it is necessary for the analysis to go beyond gut

feelings and qualitative analysis that aim at

quantitative conclusions. It is known that there are

cases where the US has supported democratic

regimes and there are cases where the US has

supported autocrats. Of these claims there are no

doubts. Nevertheless, the crucial question is which

pattern is the rule and which is the exception with

regard to US interaction with the countries of the

Middle East. In addition to revealing incidents and

support and opposition of different types of regimes,

one needs to reveal how often the US influence

supported autocrats, and how often it supported

democrats. This can be done by correlating data on

polities with data on US military support and political

support for regimes. The Polity IV dataset will be used

for the data on polities. This database is the most

used data on polities among specialists of comparative

study of democratization. The definitions and

operationalizations of the variables that will be used in

this article will be discussed as and when these

variables are introduced. The data on US support

have been derived from historical analyses that will

not be discussed here. However, for the sake of

transparency, the coding of Middle East countries to

various contemporaneous categories of US support

during the years after the Second World War are

shown in Appendixes 1 and 2 of this article.

Previously, I examined the relationship between

changes in polities and changes in the qualities and

quantities of US support [28]. My conclusions

suggested that the US has generally rewarded

changes towards autocracy whereas it has punished

democratization. Examination of the events reveal

that this was because the processes of

democratization have often been spearheaded by

groups who are either against Israel, against the US

economic interests (mainly oil-related), or are

geopolitically problematic as Islamists or socialists

[28]. However, this time I wish to establish whether

US support for regimes has been important for the

stability of autocrats per se (and whether the ending

of such support can be a crucial reason for the Arab

Spring). It is also important to analyze how support

and autocracy correlate, i.e. what is the overall

balance of US influence with regards to autocracy in

the Middle East. Thus, the hypothesis of this study is

that it is possible that the ending of US support for

autocrats facilitated the Arab Spring because the

overall influence of the US regional power previously

was in support of autocracy.

The temporal focus of this examination begins from

the beginning of independence of the Middle East

countries and also after the US became hegemonic

over the region, i.e. after the Second World War. This

analysis period ends at the end of the year 2010, the

last year of Polity IV at the time of writing this article.

Using the year 2010 as the last year of the analysis

also reveals the policy of the US before the beginning

of the Arab Spring. For this reason, the decision for

using the year 2010 as the last year for analyzing the

research question, is academically robust.

In my quantitative analysis I will reveal two sets of

results, one dataset in which Turkey is treated as a

Middle East nation, and the other in which Turkey is

not treated as a member of the region. Iran is another

borderline state. Yet it is more often than not included

in the region of the Middle East and this is why I will

also consider it as a Middle Eastern power in my

analysis. After all, in political terms Iran is a most

central actor in Middle East politics, and its experience

of US influence is crucial in the construction of the

political reality of power in the Middle East region.

Iran, as one of the members of the "axis of evil" and

the group of "tyrannies", has been central to the US

argument for the need to interfere in domestic policies

in order "to rescue populations". The focus is on

Muslim countries, as this is the cultural and

geographic area where the Arab Spring took place.

Lebanon has not been dominated by Muslim regimes

even though currently Muslims constitute a majority

of about 60% of the population. Lebanon is naturally

included in the Muslim Middle East area due to its

integral affiliation within the group of the Middle East

states. Since the study leaves out the examination of

Israel (since the focus in on Muslim countries), there

is an inherent bias against US policies of support for

democracy: Israel is a democracy (within its core

territory), and the US tends to support Israeli

governments.

6. US Support for Democracy…and Autocratic

Violence

Democracy in this article can be defined as the

following essential interdependent elements: open-

ness and competitiveness in executive recruitment,

and competitive and regulated political participation.

Autocracy, in this article, is defined by the lack of

competitiveness of political participation, the reg-

ulation of participation, the lack of openness and

competitiveness of executive recruitment, and the lack

of constraints on the chief executive's policies and

actions. Both the Democracy and the Autocracy

indicator used here are an additive 11-point scale (0–

10). These definitions follow the operationalizations of

the Polity dataset [29,30]. It is important to note that

autocracy and democracy are not mutually exclusive:

a country that allows a lot of popular participation,

but rules without constraints can be relatively

autocratic at the same time as being relatively

democratic. The US military relationship means US

military aid or concessional sales of military hardware

for regimes that enable them to maintain law and

order. The US general assistance to the regime means

political support for the regime in the form of

economic aid, diplomatic support or positive publicity

for the regime. The coding of political and military

support can be accessed in Appendixes 1 and 2.

7. US Support in the Middle East Including

Turkey

Before going into correlative analysis one should make

a methodological reservation here. To assess the

significance of correlations one should focus on

observations that are independent of each other.

However, if the country is a democracy this year it is

likely to have been a democracy the year before and it

is likely to be a democracy the following year. The

same is true for US support. Yet, correlations are

relevant regardless of the interdependence between

observations of each country over time as we are

interested in whether US influence is currently helping

autocrats or democrats, rather than in whether there

is a systematic causal relationship between autocracy

and US support. Even if it can be predicted that if the

US supports one autocratic regime this year, then this

regime will still be autocratic and that the US will still

support it the following year, support over the years

for a particular autocrat does affect the US's overall

balance of support between democrats and autocrats.

There is a very weak but highly significant

correlation (0.111**, sign. 0.000, N = 1054) between

US general support (non-military support) for regimes

and democracy. However, such a correlation is missing

between democracy and US military support for

regimes. However, there is a stronger and more

significant correlation between US general help to a

regime and the regime's authoritarian character, which

is more crucial for human security (0.171**, sign.

0.000, N = 1054). Thus in general, US general sup-

port has a highly significant, albeit weak, negative

correlation with overall polity quality (–0.165**, sign.

0.000, N = 1054), which indicates that over the study

period the US supported autocracies more than

democracies. Furthermore, US military support and

authoritarianism were highly significant, even when

they were weakly correlated (0.114**, sign. 0.000, N =

1055). The US then, weakly supports popular partic-

ipation, but it supports harsh measures taken by the

authorities and thereby supports human insecurity

more. Furthermore, it seems that US support has

targeted regimes with some competitive participation,

but where the security apparatus of the regimes

restrict the openness of participation. Before going on

to a more detailed analysis of the profiles of polities

that US support for regimes favor, let us look at the

archetypal regime that the US supports or opposes.

A typical US-supported country with democracy

score of 1 was Tunisia before the Arab Spring,

whereas a typical country opposed by the US with a

democracy score 0, was the Sudan.

The first observation of these data is that the mean

scores for democracy in the Middle East area are very

low (clearly below the global averages) whereas the

level of autocracy is high (way above global averages).

The second observation, before making the

comparison between supported and opposed regimes,

is that it seems that neutral countries that are neither

supported nor opposed by the US, perform slightly

better in terms of their development of democracy. This

is clearer the closer we come to the present. Neutral

regimes tend to be countries that are relatively smaller

in importance for global energy production and/or are

situated in less strategic locations. Competition

between the global great powers has not served the

human security of peoples of economically or

strategically important countries very well.

The third observation that can be made about the

contents of Tab le 1 is that the data confirm the result

of the correlation analysis. The US supports both

participatory and authoritarian regimes. The countries

that the US opposes tend to be less authoritarian and

thus the better at protecting their own people from

authoritarian violence. Moreover, neutral countries

score better than those countries that the US

supports. Morocco (1992–1997) after its constitutional

reform of 1992 and its slow democratic progress is a

typical US-supported autocracy (with an autocracy

score 7). Sudan at the beginning of the new

millennium (2002–2004) is a typical US-opposed

country, with an autocracy score of 6. Two typical

neutral countries with an autocracy score of 6 were

Egypt during the last years of Anwar Sadat and Oman

before the discovery of oil in the mid-1960s. These

relevant periods occurred before the development of

US relations and the intensification of authoritarianism

with these two countries.

Table 1. Mean democracy, authoritarianism and

US general support scores in the Middle East,

1946–2010.

Mean level of

Democracy

Mean level of

Autocracy

US opposes 0.30 6.41

US does not support or oppose 1.29 6.38

US supports 1.06 6.94

The same pattern applies to US military support.

The US tends to support more democratic but also

more autocratic regimes than it opposes. The

differences between militarily supported countries and

those that get no military support are smaller than in

the case of general support. Consequently, it seems

that US military support is even less selective than US

general support when one looks at the general

indicatorsof democracy and authoritarianism. However,

once we look at democracy and autocracy profiles we

will realize that this is not the case, after all.

8. US Support in the Middle East Not Including

Turkey

Even though US support for autocracy is more

systematic that its support for democracy, the

difference between the two is not great. However, if

we take a narrower geographical look at the Middle

East area (Table 2) and assume that the regional

rationale of support for the NATO ally, Turkey, derives

from European rather than Middle Eastern realities,

the picture of US policies in the Middle East gets darker.

Suddenly, the difference in democratic credentials

between US-supported and US-opposed regimes

disappears. Moreover, a typical US-supported polity

has an autocracy score of eight whereas a typical

opposed or neutral country has a score of six. The

picture with military support is even worse (Tab le 3).

An average Middle East country receiving US military

assistance is clearly less democratic and much more

authoritarian than a country that is not involved in

military cooperation with the US.

9. The Difference between President Bush and

President Obama

After the end of the Cold War and especially after the

War on Terror had begun, the discourse on

humanitarian intervention gained political capital, and

thus respect for national sovereignty declined. This

does not, however, mean that the consistency of US

support for human security is greater once there is a

greater need to pursue policies that compromise state

sovereignty. Furthermore, the priorities of the War on

Terror also required continued support for pro-US

autocracies such as Saudi Arabia. An examination of

the presidency of the George W. Bush period (Ta b le 4 )

reveals how counter-terrorism affected US support to

the Middle East regimes. By way of contrast I will add

the figures during the first two years of the presidency

of Barrack Obama in parenthesis.

Clearly, the region has become less autocratic.

Since the comparison here is between countries that

the US supports and the ones US opposes, the general

development towards democracy, especially during

the past few years does not affect the conclusion

about how the US supports democracy and autocracy.

Table 2. Mean democracy, autocracy and US

general support scores in the Middle East (excl.

Turkey), 1946–2010.

Democracy Autocracy

US opposes 0.30 6.41

US does not support or oppose 1.26 6.41

US supports 0.35 7.61

Table 3. Mean democracy, autocracy and US

military support scores in the Middle East (excl.

Turkey), 1946–2010.

Democracy Autocracy

No military support 0.72 6.63

Military support 0.31 7.80

Table 4. Mean democracy, autocracy and US

general support scores in the Middle East, for

the G. W. Bush and (B. Obama) presidencies.

Democracy Autocracy

Enemies 0.75 (0.17) 5.34 (5.83)

Neutral 2.67 (4.00) 5.00 (4.00)

Allies 1.07 (1.33) 6.05 (5.63)

The general democratization happened before the US

policy changed as, during the term of President Bush, the

countries supported by the US still were clearly more

autocratic than those the US treated with suspicion and

hostility. The trend in US support did not change before

the change over to the Obama presidency. During the

Bush presidency the United States still supported regimes

that governed with slightly greater democracy than it

opposed. Nonetheless, the US also supported slightly

more authoritarian regimes than that it opposed. The

margin between the democracy scores of those supported

and those opposed diminished, whereas the margin

between autocracy scores of US friends and foes slightly

widened during the George W. Bush presidency. US

support scores for the George W. Bush era became even

less supportive of citizens when measured by support for

democracy and autocracy. If Turkey is excluded from the

analysis, the difference between the times before and

during President G. W. Bush is substantial. Then the US

clearly opposes more democratic regimes than it supports

(Table 5).

However, the Obama presidency is different. The

preference for autocrats virtually no longer exists in the

Obama presidency.

The presidency of George W. Bush was disastrous for

US legitimacy as a supporter of democracy in the Middle

East when US policy is interrogated from the perspective

of military support (Ta b le 6 ). Regardless of whether or

not we count Turkey as a Middle Eastern power, the G.

W. Bush era supported more regimes with a worse

democracy score and a higher level of autocracy

compared to regimes the US did not support. If one

looks at Table 6 on the Middle East without Turkey the

picture is grim.

As the figures in parentheses for the first years of

President Obama show, US policy towards democracy is

fluid. It seems that the autocratic bias has not changed in

US military relationships (Table 6), whereas for US

general support the bias towards supporting autocratic

regimes has disappeared (Tables 4 and 5). The Obama

administration's policy did give different signals to the

Arabs who disapproved of or opposed their autocratic

leaders.

10. Profiles of Democracy and Autocracy

If we then move from the blunt variables of democracy

and autocracy scores towards variables that detail polities,

we can illuminate some of the hidden interests and

drivers behind US support or opposition. US supportive

relationship for a Middle East regime is correlatively

associated with high levels of regulation of chief executive

recruitment. Furthermore, US support was not given to

countries with a long history of military coups (even if the

US has backed a few of them itself). Regulation of the

recruitment of the chief executive of a country does not

imply either democracy or authoritarianism, but stability.

Hereditary succession can be as regulated as institu-

tionalized elections. The correlation between US support

and the degree of regulation of chief executive

recruitment is the highest and most significant association

in this study. This association is also a characteristic of the

target country's polity regardless of whether we look at

general support (0.451**, sign. 0.000, N = 1054) or

military cooperation (0.386**, sign. 0.000, N = 1055).

Regulation of executive recruitment was an even more

vital criterion under President G. W. Bush's tenure as

president. Clearly US support strives for stability rather

than democracy or the well-being of citizens of the Middle

East countries. This seems explicable, given the economic

and strategic interests the US faces in the Middle East.

This emphasis is often central to US definitions and

objectives of its Middle Eastern strategy: "The United

States has pursued a foreign policy that seeks stability in

a region with abundant energy reserves but which has

volatile interstate relationships" [31]. Furthermore, US

strategic interests in an area that neighbored the Soviet

Union required that a military relationship had to have

some stability. US support is also very significantly

correlated with the duration of regimes, which in turn, are

associated with the predictability of developments and the

stability of the situation. For example, the emphasis on

stability in US relations with Egypt and Tunisia continued

until the very end of President George W. Bush's stint as

president. The assessment at the end of 2010 was that

the US could no longer go against people who yearned

for democracy and wanted to oust President Ben Ali. This

revelation was disclosed by WikiLeaks in January 2011

and it was an indication of a priority change in US foreign

policy in favor of giving at least some room for human

rights and human security, even if this meant

compromising the "stability-interests" of the US.

Table 5. Mean democracy, autocracy and US

general support scores in the Middle East (excl.

Turkey), G.W. Bush and (B. Obama) Presidencies.

Democracy Autocracy

Enemies 0.75 (0.17) 5.34 (5.83)

Neutral 2.67 (4.00) 5.00 (4.00)

Allies 0.54 (0.80) 6.43 (6.00)

Table 6. Mean democracy, autocracy and US

military support scores in the Middle East (excl.

Turkey), G. W. Bush and (Obama) Presidencies.

Democracy Autocracy

No military relations 1.14 (1.58) 5.16 (5.08)

Military relations 0.49 (0.78) 6.63 (6.09)

Despite the poor democracy record of the US

supported regimes, the level of competitiveness in

executive recruitment and the level of competitiveness

in political participation in Middle East states on the

one hand and US military support on the other are

clearly correlated (competitiveness of executive

recruitment: 0.241**, sign. 0.000, N = 1055; compet-

itiveness of political participation: 0.160**, sign.

0.000, N = 1055) and with general support on the

other hand (competitiveness of executive recruitment:

0.267**, sign. 0.000, N = 1054; competitiveness of

political participation: 0.128**, sign. 0.000, N=1054)

are significantly, albeit very weakly, correlated. Clearly

the centrality of democratic competition in the

American policy can be seen.

Although competitive regimes are supported, US

support is correlated with constraints on the openness

of this competition. Executive recruitment and political

participation might be competitive, but not all can

participate in this competition. The openness of the

executive recruitment concept has the strongest

negative correlation with US support, both general

and military (general support: –0.336**, sign. 0.000,

N = 1054; military support: –0.254**, sign. 0.000, N

= 1055). An examination of the autocracies that the

US has supported and opposed reveals what kind of

restrictions to democratic participation the US

supports. Recruitment and political participation are

not open as Communists, Islamists and people who

would be harmful to US political interests in terms of

policy towards oil, are often excluded from the

political process.

The problem of the lack of openness is also

understandable from the point of view of US strategic

and economic interests. Even when the US is

ideologically committed to supporting competitive

political systems, it cannot allow ideological

expressions that harm its oil interests or strategic

priorities within the Middle East. However, when

emphasizing abstract strategic security interests, the

US has traditionally contributed to human insecurity

inside Middle Eastern autocracies.

11. US Support and Democracy and Human

Rights: Extreme Cases

The rationales of US support for elements of

autocracy namely: the bias towards autocratic

stability and the imposition of restrictions on

political participation and the competition for

executive positions against Islamists, Israel-haters,

Communists and opponents of US oil interests, can

also be examined by looking at the extreme cases

of US support for autocrats and its opposition to

democrats. If we list regimes that the United

States has supported and put them in the order of

their autocracy score from the most to the least

autocratic regimes, at the top of the list we would

get the extreme cases that the US should not have

supported if it were interested in the promotion of

human security. This is what I have done in Tab l e

7: the cut-off point is the autocracy score 10,

which is the highest level of autocracy in the Polity

data. All the regimes listed below belong to that

category.

I now order the data for countries the US opposed

in the order of their autocracy scores, starting from

the least autocratic countries, in Tab le 8 .

Table 7. Most autocratic regimes that US has

supported.

Country Regime years Autocracy score

Iran 1953–1978 10

Jordan 1974–1983 10

Saudi Arabia 1946–2010 10

Kuwait 1976–1989 10

Bahrain 1971–1992 10

Qatar 1985–2010 10

Oman 1973–1990 10

Table 8. Least autocratic regimes that the US

has opposed.

Country Regime years Autocracy score

Sudan 1967–1968 1

Iran 1997–2003 1

Lebanon 2005 1

Yemen North 1967–1972 3

Yemen 2005 3

Sudan 2005–2010 4

Iran 1951–1952 4

Iraq 1958–1967 5

Yemen South 1969 5

Sudan 2002–2004 6

Iraq 1982–1996; 2004–2010 6

Many of the regimes (of Ta ble 8) demonized in the

Western media are nowhere near as autocratic as all

of the US allies of Tab le 7. In fact every one of the

regimes listed, including the currently much maligned

Iranian and Sudanese governments, is less autocratic

than the average Muslim regime that the US supports

in the Middle East. Not even the two most autocratic

regimes that US has opposed in the past, Saddam

Hussein's Iraq or the socialist, pro-Soviet regime of

Algeria of the mid-1960s ever had an autocracy score

of 10.

Each of the US-supported regimes that had an

autocracy score 10 were major oil producers, and all

of them have or have had a stable but ruthless

political system. The US is addicted to oil, and it sells

out its principles of human security to get what it

needs, as any addict would.

It seems from Ta ble 8 that the US has opposed

relatively less-autocratic countries when a) their

popular will went against the crucial interests of US

energy policies (Iran 1951–1952 being the best

example), and US global missions against communism

(South Yemen 1969) or against Islamic terrorism

(Iran, 1997–2008, Sudan 2002–2008), or b) when

their relations with the US were severed by them

having a negative stand on Israel (Sudan 1967–1968).

The pursuance of such opposition has often occurred

in ways that undermine the principle of human

security.

If we look at the countries for which Barack

Obama's regime relaxed its rule of supporting stable

regimes, and allowed people to topple their leaders,

we can see that these countries were not crucially

important oil producers. Their respective democratic

oppositions were moderately Islamist and they did

oppose Israel, but the Arab Spring in these countries

never threatened the US oil interests. It seems that

Obama could tolerate human security progress even

in countries that were likely to turn Islamist and anti-

Israel. However, the US war on terror was not to be

compromised, and thus popular pressures were not

allowed to hamper US operations in Yemen. In

addition, popular preferences were still suppressed in

those US allied countries in which the promotion of

such preferences could have helped the geopolitical

interests of Iran (such as in Iraq and Bahrain).

However, US resolve was most unyielding in the

countries in which the US energy interests where

threatened (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). Whether the

new energy solutions that will reduce US energy

dependence on the Middle East will affect this driver

for the support of stable but autocratic regimes of oil

producing nations remains to be seen.

12. Conclusions and Discussion

Comparison of polity profiles of regimes that the

United States either supports or opposes in addition

to an analysis of the extreme cases of US support and

opposition seem to produce the same conclusions.

The main conclusions of this study support the view

which can be summarized as follows:

1. In general, the United States has supported

more autocratic regimes than it has opposed. In

this sense US support of regimes seems to have

contributed to human insecurity.

2. In general the US military relationship facilitated

autocratic governments, i.e. governments whose

polity allows for a more brutal oppression of their

people than those regimes for which the US

eschews such a military relationship.

3. The US supports seven regimes with the highest

autocracy score of 10: i.e. regimes that are more

autocratic than the most autocratic regimes that

the US has opposed.

4. Many of the countries that the US has been

most passionate in opposing, i.e. those countries

that the US policy most frequently denies the

normal diplomatic rights to which all sovereign

nations are due, are relatively democratic and

much less autocratic than the countries the US

supports in general.

The polity profiles of the regimes that the US either

supports or opposes in the Middle East provide

important explanations as to why the balance of US

influence in domestic policies in the Middle East

countries favors autocratic governments. The analysis

above corroborates the findings based on the

observation of polity changes and the qualitative

analysis published by Marwan Bishara and myself

[28,32]. According to Bishara, support for autocrats is

because the US sees the Middle East through the

prism of oil, Israel, and terrorism, and that all of these

viewpoints are impediments to the US commitment to

pursuing democracy, human rights and freedom [32].

The US preferred the controlled chief executive

recruitment in Middle East countries, especially in

those countries where there was a risk of communists

(during the cold war), Islamists (during the War on

Terror), or haters of Israel taking over. The US also

supported the durability of these polities, especially in

oil producing countries. Clearly, all of these factors are

decisive in what lies behind the traditional US support

for autocrats in the Middle East.

The oil and gas-related interests for supporting

autocrats can be understood easily by integrating this

observation with the literature of political economy. Oil

is important to the US strategically, whereas oil

interests also affect the behavior of the US towards

Middle East states due to the influence wielded by the

oil companies.

Oil is a strategic commodity and a necessity of

modern industry, thus access to oil-based energy has

long been crucial for the strategic and economic

interests of the United States. In addition to it being a

necessity for American prosperity, it has been

instrumental in the setting of strategic goals, including

the ability of the US to promote democracy in the

world. This paradox between US economic interests

with regards to oil and the wider espoused US global

strategic goal of democracy was made very explicit in

the previous US president's (George W. Bush) analysis

of US policies on the Middle East [31]. This

dichotomous linkage between strategy and support

for oil autocrats explains the approach of the US in

limiting popular expression in favor of Islamism (or

Iran), and communism.

In addition to global interests, energy influences US

policies about protecting the investments of American

oil companies in Middle Eastern oil. Oil exploration

requires a huge investment before it starts producing

any profits and after this initial investment the assets

of the investors are fixed and immobile and therefore

at the mercy of any change in policy. Consequently, it

is clear that the investor is keen on rules that enable

the continuation of the business. According to

Hirschman [33], this creates a situation where the

investor is left with the strategy of trying to influence

the host country: leaving the country is not an option.

When the investment is crucial to national interest, it

is likely that the logic of power forces the country of

the investor to pursue strategies that aim at

controlling the polity of the host country. It does so to

ameliorate the vulnerability of strategically important

investments. The strong support given by the United

States to friendly dictators (regimes listed in Ta b le 7),

the American preference for controlled chief executive

recruitment in host countries, the support for the

continuity of favorable polities in oil countries testify

to this logic of immobile, fixed assets that explain the

interventions of US interests in securing access to oil

in the Middle East.

In addition to vital pressing economic motives, US

policy has to adjust regional approaches to global

priorities and this necessarily implies compromises to

optimal regional strategies. Amaney A. Jamal has

claimed in his book entitled: Of Empires and Citizens

that "democracy may not suit the strategic interests of

the United States" in the Arab world [34]. The global

conflicts against global communist dictators and

terrorism have sometimes meant that a Middle East

government's softness on communism or on terror

had to be punished or prevented or nullified by

subversive means, even when governments were

relatively democratic. Furthermore, as seen in Table 8,

some of the pro-Soviet regimes (South Yemen and

Sudan at the end of the 1960s, Iran 1951–1952) and

even more often some of the religiously oriented

governments that have had a sympathetic attitude

towards some of the organizations that the US

categorizes as terrorist (Lebanon 1985, Iran in the

2000s, and Sudan today) are somewhat less

autocratic in general than other regimes in the Middle

East. These regimes cannot win US support, as this

support, even if positive for human security in the

Middle East, could hamper the American global fight

against the forces of autocracy. Meanwhile,

governments with few democratic credentials can get

a favorable reception from the United States if they

have a favorable attitude towards the US and its

global allies.

A lesser, but still important intervening interest that

explains America's occasional support for repression,

is the US's support for the power, security and welfare

of Israel. Whether this support is due to the Second

World War's great narrative, which partly legitimizes

US leadership in the world, or to the extensive

domestic power of the American Jewish community

[35], or to something else cannot be concluded on the

basis of this study. However, what can be said on the

basis of the analysis above is that the US has had to

help autocrats stay in power to support the strategic

goal of helping Israel. The case of marginalizing the

democratically elected Hamas in Palestine, instead of

trying to isolate it from the radicals involved in civilian

targeting, is a good example of this. The subversive

punishment of the Sudan in the mid-1960s and the

refusal to endorse Iran's democratic development in

the 1980s and in the 1990s were partly related to the

upholding of this partisan support. Iran, obviously, did

not become a perfect democracy after its theocratic

revolution while the human security situation in the

country has deteriorated during the recent years. Yet,

according to Polity data, the country became one of

the most democratic and least autocratic countries in

the Middle East, and held that position even during

President Bush's campaign against tyrants (Iranian

leaders included).

Although claims that US democracy support is

corrupted by oil interests, strategic interests of

resisting Islamism (and Iran), the will of the US to

defend Israel are not new; these strategic interests,

as causal factors, had not been tested systematically

before this study. This is why there still are analyses

that assume, as a given, that the US influence overall

is in favor of democracy against totalitarian autocrats,

and that the question is just whether the US is doing

enough to support democracy [21,36]. This study

together with my study of US reactions to changes of

polities [28] clearly show that the inaction of the US in

the Muslim Middle East during the Arab Spring would

be more beneficial for human security than any

traditional US action. Thus we should not take it for

granted that the democratic superpower necessarily

has a positive effect on democracy in the Middle East.

The opposite is established here. The analysis above

suggests that the US has already done too much and

that it is a blessing for the human security and

democracy of the region that Barack Obama's US

administration is currently in retreat or less resolute in

supporting its autocratic Middle Eastern allies. Thus,

the most likely conclusion is that it has been US

inaction rather than US action that contributed to Arab

Spring.

What has been shown above is not proof that it

was the US inaction that triggered the Arab Spring. It

is obvious that other factors were crucial. However,

without the traditional weight of US influence in favor

of autocracy, the claim of US inaction giving rise to

the opportunities in the Arab world for people to oust

their autocrats would have been impossible to make.

The fact that there seems to be an overall balance of

US influence in favor of autocrats and that WikiLeaks

revealed the evaporation of US support for Ben Ali

makes it plausible that the US was, after all, somehow

behind the collapse of brutal autocrats in the Middle

East. Whether this was actually the case should be

further studied by tracing the motivations of the

democratic Arab rebels, their knowledge of and trust

in WikiLeaks, whether their facebook, and text

messages referred to the new opportunities offered by

the US inaction, and whether they talked about the

WikiLeaks revelations. Yet, such research would be

useless before it can be shown that the US had

indeed supported autocracy and that this policy had

changed with Obama. This was proven in this study

(not that the US was necessarily an influence or that

WikiLeaks was the trigger).

The crucial oil states have not lost the support of

the US, and thus they have not managed to get rid of

their autocratic obstacles to human security. Instead

the US tried to prevent them from moving against

autocracy both in Saudi Arabia and in Bahrain. Thus

the change in the US attitude towards Islamist and

anti-Israel popular movements could be among the

explanations of the Arab Spring. Also, this should be

further studied by focusing on the differences in the

US policies towards oil states and non-oil states. If

there were a clear difference between how the US

policy developed towards the two categories of states,

this could further consolidate the hypothesis that the

change in the US attitude towards potentially Islamist

non-oil states could have been one of the external

conditions of the Arab Spring. In any case, the fact

that the US used to support autocrats, and that it

stopped this support for autocrats of non-oil states

just before the Arab Spring suggests that it is already

quite plausible that the US change was one of the

causes of the Arab Spring, and that the revelation of

this change by WikiLeaks was a trigger for

considerable human security upgrade in the region. In

any case, greater transparency early on about the US

support of autocracy, despite the country's pro-

democracy rhetoric, could have increased the political

costs involved in this double standard decades ago.

This could have generated the international conditions

conducive for the Arab Spring even sooner.

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Appendix 1. US general support for the Middle East regimes.

Country US Support Neutrality US Opposition

Algeria 1979–2010

Bahrain 1971–2010

Egypt 1946–1952; 1979–2010

Iran 1953–1978

Iraq 1980–1988; 2003–2010 1946–1957; 1989 1958–1979; 1990–2002

Jordan 1957–1990; 1992–2010 1946–1956; 1991

Kuwait 1963–2010

Lebanon 1946–1958; 1983 1959–1982; 1984–2000;

2005–2010

2001–2005

Libya 1952–1968; 2003–2010 1969–2002

Morocco 1956–2010

Oman 1973–2010 1946–1972

Qatar 1985–2010 1971–1984

Saudi Arabia 1946–2010

Sudan 1972–1973; 1977–1985 1956–1966; 1986–1988 1967–1971; 1974–1976;

1989–2010

Syria 1949 1946–1948; 1950–1962;

1970–1999

1963–1969; 2000–2010

Tunisia 1959–1984; 1986–1987;

1992–2010

1985; 1988; 1990–1991

Turkey 1947–2010 1946

UAE 1971–2010

Yemen 1990–2004; 2006–2010 2005

Yemen, North 1962–1966; 1979–1990 1946–1961; 1973–1978 1967–1972

Yemen, South 1967–1968 1969–1990

Appendix 2. US military support for the Middle East regimes.

Country Military Cooperation No Military Cooperation

Algeria 1992–2010 1946–1991

Bahrain 1971–2010

Egypt 1979–2010 1946–1978

Iran 1953–1978 1946–1952; 1979–2010

Iraq 1980–1988; 2003–2010 1953–1978

Jordan 1957–2010 1946–1956

Kuwait 1991–2010 1973–1990

Lebanon 1950–1958; 1983 1946–1949; 1959–1982; 1984–2010

Libya 1951–2010

Morocco 1963–2010 1956–1962

Oman 1980–2010 1946–2007

Qatar 1992–2010 1971–1991

Saudi Arabia 1951–2010 1946–1950

Sudan 1972–1973 1956–1971; 1974–2010

Syria 1949; 1991 1946–1948; 1950–1990; 1992–2010

Tunisia 1959–2010

Turkey 1947–2010 1946

UAE 2001–2010 1971–2000

Yemen 2006–2010 1990–2005

Yemen, North 1979–1990 1946–1978

Yemen, South 1967–1990