The Climate of Anti-Americanism in Arab World.

Throughout the Cold War, the US policy towards the Middle East was pervaded with the “feeling” of “Middle Eastern exceptionalism”. In other words, as pointed out in detail in the second chapter, Orientalism and its successor, neo-Orientalism, provided the cultural grounds and justification for a US policy built on the premise that the Middle East was intrinsically incompatible with democracy. As Daniel Neep underscores, “after all, if the Middle East was impervious to democracy, then the only choice the US had was to accommodate Middle Eastern regimes, however oppressive. ” This acquiescence of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes has reached its climax with the support granted to the Saddam Hussein regime; besides this glaring fact, many other instances have been registered by history and are currently evoked in order to inflame anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

In addition to this well-known cause of resentment towards the US in the Middle East, Arab scholars list a host of other US actions that have further augmented Arab bitterness :
 Political, military and economic support for Israel (in the context of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is regarded as a pan-Muslim cause of the entire umma)
 The air strikes and sanctions against certain Arab countries (such as Libya, Sudan, Iraq), while other undemocratic regimes are granted overt support (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan)
 The US military bases stationed in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain and the common military exercises conducted with troops in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco
 The attitude towards democracy and human rights that is regarded as hypocritical-the Arab population perceives the US economic aid not as support for social-economic development, but for security development only
 The war in Iraq

For all these reasons, the rhetoric of the post-9/11 shift that prompted President G.W. Bush to state that “stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty ” is deeply mistrusted by the Arab population. The commitment to freedom that the US holds as a core value of its Foreign Policy is regarded as purely “instrumental, a tactic in a wider strategy to accomplish political objectives. ”
What is more, this enables Middle Eastern regimes to further exploit the population’s deep-seated anti-Americanism on the one hand, and to play the card of the population’s resentment in order to counter US pressure for democratization. Most importantly, this vilified reputation that the US holds in the Middle East means that the organizations that associate with US-funded programs are also tainted in the grassroots perception.

The issue of anti-Americanism is cited in almost every possible academic work, article or speech related to the topic of democracy in the Middle East. In the US camp, it seems that resignation about this fact prevails: both those criticizing the US policy in the region and those supporting it believe it is naïve to expect the United Sates to be well liked when in fact it goes on to impose its will on weaker states. In the words of Noah Feldman, “the realists think that the US should accept resentment as the cost of doing business, while the critics think the US should stop being a superpower altogether; but they agree that superpower status breeds inevitable resentment. ”

Nonetheless, even if anti-Americanism is taken as an inherent upshot of the weight it carries as an international actor, the present analysis cannot overlook the implications of “the climate of resentment in which the US is attempting to promote democratic reform. ” The implications of anti-Americanism in the Middle East are significant at all levels: it means that the US’ stature as an embodiment of democratic principles is spoiled by the charge of double-standards. In turn, this diminishes its legitimacy to exert influence and offers non-democratic governments the pretext they need in order to resist pressure for democratization. Ultimately, it means that the society’s response to the initiative of concrete policy-implementation will be mostly negative, since it will be regarded as unlawful and dishonest interference.

Two caveats must be signaled at this point: firstly, the Arab population is mostly bitter about the “vehicle” of US involvement, about the concrete policy prescriptions (that are heavily distorted by regimes and some Islamists by anti-American propaganda), and not about democratic basic values, such as freedom and equality. It is the “messenger” that is resented, not the message. Secondly, this wave of anti-Americanism has also risen because “it is much easier to unleash frustration against a distant America ” when the population has no voice in its own country.
Feldman points out the exact same thing when he states that “the intensity and trajectory of anti-Israel
and anti-American opinion in the Arab world are connected not only to Arab perceptions of Israeli and American actions, but also to the absence of democratic politics in Arab countries .” Therefore, a long-run perspective of democratization would mean that the population would be provided with the much-needed valves to express discontent and would hence redirect it towards the domestic regimes and no longer towards a distant “enemy”. From this vantage point, it may be argued that democratization, if correctly-managed, would bring about a considerable decrease in anti-American feeling among the Arab population.