ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the regimes of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia
managed to take advantage of new opportunities offered by the Bush
administration’s ‘‘global war on terror’’ (GWOT) while minimizing the risks.
Stepped-up US aid and military cooperation strengthen the regimes’ coer-
cive capabilities but risk distancing them further from their respective pub-
lics, which view the United States as most responsible for the bloodshed and
military occupation of Iraq and, even worse, complicit in the Israeli occu-
pation of Palestine and destruction in the summer of 2006 of parts of Lebanon.1 The chapter also discusses how the GWOT has redefined the
region’s ‘‘strategic rents’’ and suggests how the United States might re-evaluate
them if promoting democracy were really taken to be a central strategy of
the GWOT.
