Bush Democracy Vows May Take Time to Bear Fruit

By publicly prodding Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to respect political liberties and a free press, President Bush made good Thursday on his inaugural vow to push for democracy around the world.

But Americans should not expect quick change, in Russia or anywhere else. Administration officials say they have only begun to grapple with the specifics of how and where to try to turn Bush’s promises into a credible foreign policy. They say progress may take years.

“There are people thinking, but it hasn’t reached a systematic level,” said a State Department official, who added that strategists had yet to draft a formal framework or policy paper.

What is clear is that the U.S. approach will be different for each country, officials said. Initially, at least, promoting democracy will be an exercise in what they called “gentle suasion.” U.S. officials will make the case that it is in the interest of autocratic leaders to reform, lest they be toppled by their citizens.

Punishment for procrastinators is not on the agenda -- yet.

“There has been no discussion of the ‘or else,’ ” the State Department official said. “And now is not the time, with the international tensions that still exist” over the Iraq war.

“It won’t be entirely kid gloves,” the official added. “It’s going to be measured, but it will be deliberate and steady. The more strategic the country, the more measured it will be.”

Analysts say that U.S. power to influence events in Russia or key Middle Eastern countries is distinctly limited.

“Putin’s Russia right now is not very amenable to American criticism and it’s not very subject to American leverage,” said Celeste A. Wallander, a Russia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The oil-rich country is no longer economically dependent on U.S. aid or the International Monetary Fund loans that buoyed former President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. In fact, Washington is now looking to Russia as an increasingly important supplier of energy.

Meanwhile, most Middle Eastern autocrats favor the Chinese model of reform, trying to spur economic growth and development without relinquishing political power, argued Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. They may hold elections -- but only for positions on powerless parliaments or councils.

If Bush wants real reform, he will have to apply “considerable economic leverage,” Takeyh said.

Human rights advocates warn that unless Bush matches his words with deeds, the United States will lose credibility as a champion of global liberty.

Administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were well aware of such pitfalls, and stressed that real change, especially in the Middle East, could be a “generational process.”

Nevertheless, they said, hard thinking was underway at the White House, the State Department and the vice president’s office about how and where U.S. encouragement, economic incentives, blandishments or, eventually, unvarnished pressure could be used to maximum effect.

U.S. policy toward Egypt will pose one of the first tests for Bush’s pledge.

Egypt is crucial to the Mideast peace process, officials say. It was the host of this month’s summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and it will be key to stabilizing the Gaza Strip, with which it shares a border, after Israel’s planned withdrawal this summer.

At the same time, U.S. officials see the corruption, economic failures and repression of President Hosni Mubarak’s government as an incubator for extremism. Mubarak is believed to be preparing to seek a fifth term this fall and to be grooming his son to succeed him.

On Jan. 31, Egypt jailed the country’s most prominent opposition leader, Al Ghad Party’s Ayman Nour, for 45 days and U.S. officials fear he is being treated roughly. (The Egyptian ambassador to the United States said Nour was receiving medical treatment.)

The Bush administration responded forcefully. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher and other officials repeatedly protested the arrest. Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, standing beside the visiting Egyptian foreign minister, expressed “very serious concern” about the Nour case.

It was a rare public rebuke. Egypt responded by canceling a U.S.-backed conference in Cairo among Arab League and G-8 foreign ministers to discuss political reform.

Administration officials said they were not contemplating cuts in foreign aid to Egypt, which before the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan was the second-largest recipient of American aid. Under Bush’s latest budget request, $1.8 billion in economic and military assistance is earmarked for Egypt.

Human rights groups point to the success of an earlier U.S. threat to withhold an increase in foreign aid to Egypt unless it released another dissident, human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. That threat was a first for the Middle East, according to Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. Ibrahim was acquitted of charges that he defamed the government and embezzled funds and was released in 2003.

“That was a big deal,” Malinowski said of the U.S. threat. “It was symbolically very powerful.”

Malinowski said the Mubarak government controlled every U.S. aid dollar going to Egypt -- even money going to private groups working for democratic change. No other country had such an arrangement and the Bush administration should halt it, he said.

“It means it is hard to fund efforts that are politically threatening to the government,” including programs to build political parties, Malinowski said.

Other countries likely to get the least arm-twisting include Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. Pakistan is so crucial in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that “we can’t afford to dislike them,” the State Department official said.

But over time, autocrats who dig in against reform may see fewer invitations to the president’s ranch in Texas or even high-level meetings in Washington, other officials said.

“For years, we were guilty of raising this stuff once a year in the [annual] Human Rights report, and not really following up on it, and the countries got used to blowing us off,” the State Department official said. “They’ve come around to realizing that this is a core objective of the administration.”

Of less strategic importance, and thus more likely to face stronger U.S. pressure, are countries such as Algeria, the Persian Gulf states and perhaps Yemen, the official said.

But even strategically important countries are no longer exempt from U.S. criticism.

In the last month, the administration protested to Saudi Arabia after it rounded up peaceful demonstrators and sentenced them to flogging. The protesters were calling for the monarchy to be replaced with an Islamic parliamentary democracy.

On Libya, spokesman Boucher urged the government to free dissident Fathi el-Jahmi, who has been in prison for 11 months without charges. However, the U.S. acknowledges that its top priority with Libya is to ensure the country’s continued cooperation in dismantling its nuclear program.