Peter Berkowitz on The Arab Awakening: America and the
Transformation of the Middle East by Kenneth M. Pollack, et al.
Kenneth M. Pollack, et al. The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East.
Brookings Institution Press. 381 Pages. $26.95.
President obama entered the White House determined to overcome what he and his supporters
regarded as the Bush administration’s poisonous legacy in the Middle East. And yet, though loath to acknowledge it,
since the advent of the Arab Spring in Tunisia in December 2010 and January 2011 and its rapid spread throughout the region, the Obama administration has been
struggling to formulate and implement its own version of the Bush Doctrine,
according to which it is in the interest of the United States to promote freedom and democracy in the Arab
world.
This unacknowledged reversal came at a time in which the
president’s major policy initiatives in the Middle East were in
disarray, in significant
measure because they were ill-conceived and clumsily executed. Touting
engagement with the Iranians, Obama’s smart diplomacy went nowhere.
Tehran mocked him, flouting deadline after
deadline set by the president for ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program
was limited to civilian purposes by subjecting it to
international supervision. And while the United States was reduced to
silently
observing the carnage, Iran brutally suppressed large public
demonstrations
against the corrupt presidential elections of June
2009.
Having lost two years in fruitless efforts to sweet talk the Iranians,
the
Obama administration has over the last year expanded and intensified
sanctions
imposed by the Bush administration. By the president’s own secretary of
defense’s estimates, Iran is on a path to developing the capacity to
make a nuclear
weapon within a year.
The president’s June
2009 Cairo
speech, intended to open a new era in relations between America and the
Muslim world, has led to no discernible improvement in America’s
standing among Muslims worldwide. Indeed, in many parts of the Arab
Middle
East Obama is less popular than was Bush. Moreover, by grounding his
Cairo
speech in a fundamental tenet of radical Islam — that the world is
politically divided into Islam and the rest — the president played into
the hands of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the mullahs of the
Islamic Republic of Iran while simultaneously undermining the
liberal and democratic reformers throughout the Arab world whose
primary
political allegiance is not to Islam but rather to the protection of
individual
rights, democratically accountable nation-states, and generally
applicable
international law.
The uprisings sparked by
the self-immolation of a
Tunisian street vender that
swept the Arab world last
year seemed to have
caught just about
everybody by surprise,
including Arab people
themselves — and
Arab rulers.
The president’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict has foundered on
misunderstandings of the region. He seems to subscribe to the view
common among
progressive intellectuals that the fundamental source of instability in
the
Middle East is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians —
rather than, say, Iran’s exporting of Islamic revolution and drive to
dominate the region through
acquisition of nuclear weapons. And that the key to resolving it is
ending
Israel’s control of the West Bank — rather than, say, Hamas terrorism
and intransigence, and the refusal of the
Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the
Jewish
people and eliminate from its educational system the teaching of hatred
of Jews
and Israel. Accordingly, President Obama made the achievement of a
comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians the
centerpiece of his Middle East strategy. At the same time, he injected
into the
peace process the novel idea that Israel should freeze all building
beyond the
Green Line (the
1949 armistice lines agreed to by Israel and Jordan), including in East Jerusalem, to
lure the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. This unprecedented
requirement had never been demanded by the Palestinians themselves over the
course of nearly twenty years of direct negotiations with the Israelis and came
unaccompanied by the president’s insistence on matching concessions from the Palestinians. It greatly
complicated domestic coalition politics for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu while forcing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to adopt
a hard line on Israeli West Bank construction, since he could not be seen to be
less aggressive on behalf of Palestinian claims than the president of the
United States. The predictable result has been the breakdown of negotiations.
In Iraq, President Obama proceeded with the drawdown of American troops and in
late
2011 made good on his campaign promise to complete it. Given the fragility of the
government left behind in Baghdad, the porous border between Iraq and Iran, and
Iran’s determination to stir up trouble and perhaps even foment a Shiite takeover,
there is good reason to worry that the president has set back America’s long-term interests in a stable and democratic Iraq.
Captive to its misconceptions about the Middle East, the Obama administration
was caught by surprise by the Arab Spring. Then again, the uprisings sparked by
the self-immolation in December
2010 of Tunisian street vender Mohammed Bouazizi that swept the Arab world last year
seemed to have caught just about everybody by surprise, including Arab people
themselves, Arab rulers, the Israeli security establishment, and diplomats and
foreign policy experts in the region and around the globe. Throughout
2011 and into
2012, the Obama administration has had to improvise. It watched as Tunisia swiftly
replaced President Zine al-Abidine ben Ali. When beginning in late January
2011 hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo, it
dithered, at first giving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak whole-hearted
support, and then flatly demanding his ouster. It “led from behind” in Libya, eventually supporting a
un Security Council resolution authorizing the imposition of a no-fly zone over
the country that officially aimed at protecting civilians but which in reality
was directed at the overthrow of dictator Muammar el-Qadaffi. In Syria, as
protests have steadily spread since the spring of
2011, the Obama administration seems to have slowly come around to the view that
President Bashar al-Assad must go, but even as Assad has stepped up the killing
it has yet to formulate a clear policy on how to hasten his departure or ease
the transition.
In short, the Obama administration is desperately in need of serious and
informed thinking about the Middle East, and in their new book, Brookings
Institution Senior Fellow Kenneth M. Pollack, who serves as lead author, and
seventeen of his Brookings colleagues provide it. Their illuminating volume
offers, as they intend, a “sober analysis” of the momentous events of
2011
in the Middle East and sensible recommendations concerning how the
Obama
administration might most effectively respond. A product of Brookings’
Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which Pollack directed from
September
2009 through February
2012, the book is not, despite its eighteen authors, an edited volume presenting a
variety of viewpoints on a common theme. Rather, it advances a well-organized
and sustained analysis of the Arab Spring by drawing on the specialized
expertise of a group of affiliated scholars, based in both the United States
and the Middle East, who share a sensibility and perspective. The view that
unites them might be described as a hard-headed liberal internationalism.
Understanding the Arab Spring, Pollack explains in the Introduction, begins with understanding the
“stagnation of the Arab economies.” Economic stagnation in turn is connected to the failure of education in the
Arab world to transmit knowledge, cultivate critical thinking, and develop
skills necessary for success in the contemporary economy. And the deep defects
of both Arab economies and educational systems are inseparable from the costs
of Arab autocracy, which has been for the most part repressive, inefficient,
and corrupt.
Accordingly, Arab peoples’ frustration with the status
quo was understandable, as were the initial
demands, when that frustration exploded early last year, for government
that
provided greater economic opportunity and showed real responsiveness to
the
will of the people. Nevertheless, those who initiate revolutions often
cannot
control their outcomes. Large questions loom — in relation to Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya, Syria, and throughout the region — about the balance of
power between the young secular democrats who gave the
revolutions their initial impetus, and the traditionalists and
Islamists who
are seeking to take advantage of the overthrow of dictators to advance
their
visions of political Islam.
To be sure, the revolutions, Pollack observes, embody an enticing promise of
progress:
If Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia eventually emerge as stable democracies —
perhaps joined by a similar kind of state in Iraq — they will exert a
profound influence on the internal politics of the region, by
demonstrating successful alternative models to the autocracies and
theocracies
that have previously been the only choices on offer.
However, as Pollack knows, that’s a big “if.” It is characteristic of the book as a whole to both generally understate the
prospects for the hijacking of the revolutions by Islamists and, should they
prevail, the dire consequences for the region and for American interests, while
at the same time giving the assiduous reader adequate information to conclude
that that the threat is considerable and the results would be extremely
destabilizing and constitute a dramatic setback to American interests.
Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of
Maryland and a Saban Center
nonresident senior fellow, gives reason for optimism. He notes that the
transformation of the regional television market and the rise of the
internet
and social media have dramatically diminished the ability of the
regimes to “control the narrative.” Polls in Egypt show that large
majorities support freedom of religion and
speech, and somewhat smaller majorities support freedom of assembly,
even
though much of the population regards the United States as a hostile
threat
inclined to prop up Arab dictators and to provide cover for Israel to
pursue
expansionist policies at the expense of the Palestinian people.
Saban Center fellow Stephen Grand reiterates that “more than anything else, the Arab Spring has been about a yearning for
democracy.” But he argues that a long, hard road lies ahead. Democracy involves much more
than free and fair elections, which in themselves would be no small feat for
peoples who have known only despotism. It also involves the establishment of
democratic political institutions and the creation of a democratic political
culture which, Grand emphasizes, is the work of many years.
Shadi Hamid, Saban Center fellow and director of research
at the Brookings Doha
Center, argues that the overthrow of Mubarak has brought the Muslim
Brotherhood
in Egypt “newfound power and responsibility.” What Islamist parties
want — and most such parties in the mainstream Arab world are branches
or descendants
of the Muslim Brotherhood — is in one sense clear and in another
uncertain. They all want “the promotion of Islamic values throughout
society.” The huge question is whether, or to what extent, they regard
democracy as
consistent with Islamic values. Hamid worries that the rise of Salafist
groups
in Tunisia as well as Egypt will push the Brotherhood toward more
extreme
interpretations of Islam. Given the electoral successes enjoyed by the
Muslim
Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt over the past year — between
them they took three quarters of the seats in the recent parliamentary
elections — Hamid concludes that political Islam is here to stay and
that the United States
has no reasonable choice but to learn to do business with its
representatives.
One particularly
valuable feature of the book is its demonstration, by means of
chapter-by-chapter analysis of the particular challenges arising out of
the
Arab Spring, that the Middle East is anything but monolithic and that
it is
therefore a serious error to attempt to address the Arab people of the
region
under the single rubric of Islam. The authors divide the countries of
the Arab
Middle East into three categories: those — Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, and
Libya — which have experienced regime change; those — Saudi Arabia, the
small Gulf monarchies (Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the uae,
and Bahrain), Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria — whose regimes appear to be
intact but now find themselves under substantially
increased pressure to adopt liberalizing and democratizing reform; and
those in
immediate crisis, specifically Yemen and Syria, which face anarchy and
civil
war. In addition, the authors survey the changing reality confronting
other
regional actors — Israel, the Palestinians, Turkey, and Iran. And they
review how the Arab Spring
has affected the regional interests and ambitions of external powers —
Europe, China and Russia, and the United States — and the organization
of the international order more generally. The reader is
left with a refined understanding of, and sense of foreboding for, the
region.
In the concluding chapter Pollack, who before moving to Brookings served as
director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council under
President Clinton, distills the grand strategy that undergirds the book:
We believe that to secure America’s interests in the Middle East,
the United States must embrace a long-term commitment to help the
countries of the Middle East pursue a process of
political, economic, and social transformation. One that grows from
within,
rather than being imposed from without. One that reflects the values,
traditions, history, and aspirations of the people of the region
themselves,
not a Western guess at them. One that recognizes that change and
stability are
not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing — and ultimately
mutually essential. But one that also acknowledges that change
is most likely to be constructive, rather than destructive, when it is
deliberate, planned, and properly resourced. This will be a difficult
course to
pursue, but it is ultimately the only good path to follow.
Pollack’s formulation leaves hazy two crucial matters
that while also undergirding the
book deserve greater highlighting. The “process of political, economic,
and social transformation” that he and his colleagues believe it is
critical for the United States to
support in the Arab Middle East is not any old sort of transformation
but a
transformation, however gradual and incremental, to greater freedom and
democracy. And encouraging and sustaining that transformation will be a
daunting task because of the complex and varying relation between Islam
and
various Arab peoples of the Middle East. Pollack’s hard-headed liberal
internationalism could stand a few degrees more of hardheadedness.
Admirable in scope, ambition, and timeliness, the book
would have profited from
addressing a few more issues. Oddly, in a volume in which most Arab
states are
so honored, the authors omit a chapter on Lebanon, where Iran-backed
Hezbollah
threatens an Islamist takeover and could at any moment drag the country
into
another ruinous war with Israel. In addition, the book suppresses the
extent to
which the Arab Spring itself, the Obama administration’s developing
response to it, and the Brookings scholars’ own grand strategy reflect
concerns at the heart of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda. And,
the authors fail to grapple with the substantial changes
that must be made in the United States domestically to cultivate the
kinds of
policymakers, diplomats, and holders of high office with the
understanding of
the culture, history, and languages of the region necessary to carry
out Saban
Center–style policy recommendations for the Middle East. One place to
begin would be
with proposals to encourage the study of critical foreign languages
such as
Arabic and Persian, much as the federal government did with Russian and
Chinese
during the Cold War.
It is rare to combine rapid response to unfolding events with scholarly care and
depth as does the Saban Center’s substantial contribution to understanding the seismic shifts set in motion by
the Arab Spring. The framework it has developed and the case studies it has
undertaken can serve as a sound basis for advancing the systematic and reasoned
inquiry so critical to understanding the elusive and strategically vital Middle
East.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and
Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at
the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University. His writings are posted at
www.PeterBerkowitz.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment