by Richard W. Murphy and F. Gregory Gause

About the authors: Richard W. Murphy is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and F. Gregory Gause is an assistant professor at the University of Vermont.

Is democracy a policy goal of the United States in the Middle East? Officials are reticent to use the word democracy in their statements on the Muslim Middle East. However, they do not explicitly exclude the region from their general foreign policy goals of expanding the number of democracies and market economies throughout the world. In speeches and policy statements to Congress, administration officials put democracy on the list of good things Washington wants in the region, along with peace, “moderation,” “stability,” economic development and the...