This month's Arab Reform Bulletin was just released; Oussama Safa, Director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, has an article therein called “How Should the U.S. President Pursue Democratization?”. He bravely puts a positive spin on the admittedly troubling circumstances under which Barack Obama will assume the Presidency:
This angry, hostile, and unstable Arab region will give the new president the benefit of the doubt because they expect him to change course from policies that the outgoing Bush administration has pursued under the Freedom Agenda, the war on terror, and other lofty but largely rhetorical foreign policy goals.
In sum, the Bush administration left the Obama administration with one small advantage: it is highly unlikely that they could do worse. Safa calls for consistency and modesty in defining foreign policy goals in the Middle East; consistency meaning supporting democracy when it empowers groups hostile to US interests as well as those considered friendly. Modesty is slightly more complicated: theoretically, it could mean the US accepting the limits of its own power and influence in the region. I’m inclined to think, though, that a more productive interpretation of the idea of modesty would be one that is more honest about the US’ limitations given its domestic constraints. Given that oil prices have dropped significantly since the presidential primaries, and ‘green-collar jobs’ has been thrown out in favor of 'stimulus package’ and ‘bailout’, ending US dependency on Middle East oil may end up lower on Obama's list of priorities than anticipated. Modesty, to me, would be admitting the impossibility of imposing any kind of democratic reform on a region where 1. America (and the world) receives a majority of its fuel and 2. America finds a government willing to help isolate and prosecute terrorist groups. Safa does not go so far as to suggest that the United States’ ideal ‘modesty’ requires admitting that, in pursuing (or claiming to pursue) goals directly at odds with one another the government diminishes its ability to accomplish any of those things, but I would bring his argument to its logical conclusion and assert just that.
Safa's optimism colors his other advice – specifically, to demilitarize Middle East policy in favor of investing in civil society, as well:
According to an old Chinese adage, in every crisis there is danger and opportunity. Arabs see the severe economic crisis in the United States as an opportunity for the new president to shelve the military option as a primary foreign policy tool and concentrate on listening to actors who have been hitherto untapped. This requires culturally fluent and sensitive diplomats who listen more than they dictate to people in the region. It also requires working with businesspeople, professional syndicates, and other sectors of society largely ignored over the past few years who, if engaged, could help nudge regimes to reform and democratize.
Thomas Homer-Dixon elaborates this idea (that crises, if properly managed, engender creativity and renewal) in his book The Upside of Down; Safa's piece identifies the ways in which the United States’ foreign policy needs to play a role in that proper management. The tragedy of the Bush administration, though, and the crux of the challenges for the Obama administration are reflected in this article: simply doing things differently is not going to be enough to properly manage the myriad issues that the Middle East and United States must in their intertwined relationship face in the near future. It is not enough to say “expecting to create democratic regimes in the short term is unrealistic”. Of course that is true – but ‘modesty’ is not a foreign policy. The bar for effective analysis of the issues in the Middle East seems to have been set so low that Obama can only rise above – but let's bear in mind that that attitude will only last for about five minutes.
