Ted Galen Carpenter — Washington's Fondness for 'Friendly' Dictators

Whatever enthusiasm the Obama administration may have once had for the democratic upheavals of the Arab Spring has virtually disappeared. That point was underscored with Secretary of State John Kerry’s just-completed meetings with Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The administration’s decision to deliver a shipment of F-16 fighter planes to Cairo on the eve of Kerry’s trip further emphasized that Washington’s affections lie with Egypt’s military autocrats, not the supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the elected president Sisi and his fellow generals deposed and imprisoned.

The Obama administration’s Egypt policy is a microcosm of a troubling pattern in U.S. foreign policy. At least with respect to the Third World, throughout both the Cold War and the so-called war on terror, U.S. policy makers seem to prefer compliant autocrats to feisty, unpredictable democratic leaders.…

The enthusiasm for corrupt, thuggish autocrats has been a bipartisan phenomenon. A few years after Carter’s astonishing toast to the Shah, Vice President George H. W. Bush engaged in similar behavior toward Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos. Bush emphasized the U.S. government’s respect and admiration for Marcos: “We stand with you sir . . . . We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic processes.” The reality was that the Philippines strongman had been a full-fledged dictator since his imposition of martial law in 1972, and he had displayed pronounced authoritarian tendencies and practices for several years before that official proclamation. His rule was also so astonishingly corrupt that it nearly destroyed the Philippines’ economy.…

Unfortunately, there are few signs that U.S. officials have learned that their preference for authoritarians is both sleazy and counterproductive.… 

That is because a society under capitalism is just a pretend democracy. It is really an oligarchy, specifically plutonomy.

The National Interest
Washington's Fondness for 'Friendly' Dictators

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to the National Interest