The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 resident George W. Bush made democracy promotion the cornerstone of what he described as his “freedom agenda” and, in a departure from previous U.S. practice, the focal point of his Middle East policy. The policy was equally central to second-term Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s call for “transformational diplomacy.” Yet with the exception of the Iraq War, few of the administration’s foreign policy initiatives have been as bedeviled and confused as that one, at least in terms of its execution. F O C U S O N T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L D I P L OM A C Y T HE B RAVE N EW W ORLD OF D EMOCRACY P ROMOTION U.S. DEMOCRACY PROMOTION POLICY APPEARS TO BE AT A CROSSROADS , WITH BIG DIVISIONS WITHIN BOTH PARTIES OVER HOW MUCH OF IT WE SHOULD BE DOING . B Y R OBERT M C M AHON David Wink P