OxBlog

Monday, May 05, 2003

# Posted 2:25 PM by Patrick Belton  

DOBRIANSKY VS. CAROTHERS: In this month's Foreign Affairs, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobrainsky defends the administration against Tom Carothers's criticism that the war on terrorism has impelled the Bush administration to seek friendlier relations with many authoritarian regimes for the sake of their cooperation on security measures. Carothers specifically points to China, Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan), Pakistan and Malaysia, and the Arab world (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen) as examples of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes with which the US has sought closer ties and enhanced security cooperation.

Carothers wins this exchange, hands-down. Dobriansky completely ducks Carothers's key criticism, and rather than defending the administration's ongoing attempts to strike a balancing-point between security and democracy promotion, she instead bats down the straw man that Carothers was, she claims, arguing the administration should only support democracy promotion and ignore pressing security exigencies. Carothers rightly takes her to task for this dodge. I've in other contexts (especially Russian policy) been an admirer of her thought and analysis, but with regard to this debate - Dobriansky's done better.
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