ABSTRACT
The Bush family has a particularly long legacy of engagement with the Middle East, whether in corporate terms or in political and diplomatic ones. So, when one speaks of the Bush Doctrine in this region, one has to draw a distinction between the policies and policy environment of the 41st president of the US and the 43rd. While the analysis of the latter's policies will form the core of this chapter, it is of some importance that we do so with the benefit of a much wider backdrop that can place President George W. Bush's doctrine, policies and policy implications in the more appropriate broader regional context. The Middle East has been at the heart of the Bush Doctrine, which has, not surprisingly, generated a series of regional responses. 1 On the whole, the actual responses have been less than positive, but in practice it is possible to argue that the Bush agenda of reform, as a democratization–security nexus, has been yielding impressive results. It is of course impossible to identify cause and effect in the relationship between the Bush strategy for Middle East reform and regional responses to it. But what it is possible to do is to argue that the Bush administration's emphasis on democratization and wholesale reform has helped in pushing the agenda forward within the region, shifting the mindset of all the players, leaders and activists alike. While the responses to the war on terror have been rather defensive, at the policy level, several Arab states – Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Co-operation Council neighbours, Tunisia, Yemen – have chosen to bandwagon with the US and curry favour with it by joining in the battle to contain and then defeat Islamic-inspired violence at home. The war on terror offered them a golden opportunity to tackle their own Islamist radicals with US support. The Iraq war and the democratization drive of the Bush administration, on the other hand, have been seen as nothing more than American-style neo-imperialism.
