"Representing US Foreign Policy as Popular Sovereignty Renewal: Nonviolent resistance and the Arab Revolts of 2011.

The United States frequently represents its foreign policy as a strategy of democratic renewal by focusing on the processes involved in creating popular sovereignty in other nation states. It has added rhetorical force and, in some cases, empirical reality to its claims of democratization by using the language of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance in its support for popular uprisings around the world (Chile, Indonesia, Philippines, Serbia, Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt to name a few). Yet, this language is relatively new. America overtly changed its policy of supporting dictatorships into a policy of supporting democratic regimes after the fall of the Shaw in Iran and the overthrow of the U.S. supported Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, according to William I. Robinson (1996). The so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011 offers an opportunity to further pay attention to this representational shift by comparing the U.S. treatment of Arab and African states in revolt. This paper devises three categories of nonviolence in order to better understand and evaluate the United States' policy of supporting those who struggle nonviolently. By interpreting and evaluating the Arab and African Uprisings in terms of both the literature on nonviolence and democracy promotion, and US foreign policy it is hoped that this essay will contribute to debate between mainstream scholars and those participating in more critical analysis. Ultimately this essay's focus on democracy and nonviolence seeks to bring people back into the discussion of international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]