Kenneth M. Pollack's Blog, page 17
June 29, 2009
Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran
Introduction
What should the United States do about Iran? The question is easily asked, but for nearly 30 years, Washington has had difficulty coming up with a good answer. The Islamic Republic presents a particularly confounding series of challenges for the United States. Many Iranian leaders regard the United States as their greatest enemy for ideological, nationalistic, and/or security reasons, while a great many average Iranians evince the most pro-American feelings of any in the Muslim world. Unlike other states that may also fear or loathe the United States, Iran's leaders have consistently acted on these beliefs, working assiduously to undermine American interests and influence throughout the Middle East, albeit with greater or lesser degrees of success at different times. Moreover, Iranian foreign policy is frequently driven by internal political considerations that are both difficult to discern by the outside world and even harder to influence. More than once, Iran has followed a course that to outsiders appeared self-defeating but galvanized the Iranian people to make far-reaching sacrifices in the name of seemingly quixotic goals.
Despite these frustrating realities, the United States is not in a position to simply ignore Iran, either. Iran is an important country in a critical part of the world. Although Tehran's role in creating problems in the Middle East is often exaggerated, it has unquestionably taken advantage of the growing instability there (itself partly a result of American missteps) to make important gains, often at Washington's expense. Meanwhile, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, properly understood, warned that Tehran was likely to acquire the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons at some point in the next decade.1
Authors
Kenneth M. PollackDaniel L. BymanMartin S. IndykSuzanne MaloneyMichael E. O'HanlonBruce Riedel
Image Source: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl
July 28, 2008
Middle East: A Path Out of the Desert
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.
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Philadelphia, Pa.: If we, and most of the rest of the world, are able to reduce our demand for oil, is the Iraqi economy prepared to move into other sectors? What will happen to their economy should there be a significant drop in demand for oil?
Kenneth Pollack: Iraq will succeed or fail long before the United States significantly reduces its oil exports, so I think it useful to broaden the aperture of this question a bit, because it does get at a few issue facing the region.
There is no question in my mind that the United States must reduce its dependence on energy from oil and we need to be LEADING a global effort to help other countries do the same. Burning hydrocarbons is environmentally and economically foolish, and the dependence on unstable countries like those in the Middle East, with which my new book deals, is potentially disastrous. For that reason, there is absolutely no reason not to do so, and every reason to do so.
Nevertheless, you have raised an important question that gets at the long-term future of the Middle East. All of the economies of the region are dependent on oil to a greater or lesser extent, because even those without oil rely on remittances from their citizens working in the oil states, aid from the oil-producing states, and trade with them. As I describe in the book, all of the states of the region (except for the smallest and richest of the GCC states like Kuwait and the UAE) are experiencing serious economic problems of one kind or another and those economic problems are already causing severe social and political unrest. The oil revenues flowing in help mitigate that unhappiness, but if the developed world does begin to shift toward alternative energy sources, as I sincerely hope they will, this will remove that as a crutch for these Middle Eastern states. It raises grave fears about the long-term stability about the states of the region, which is one of the principal problems I argue in Path Out of the Desert that the U.S., our allies, and the states of the region need to fashion a long-term grand strategy to address. And the reason that we and our allies will still have to worry about it is that even 20 years from now, if we have halved our dependence on oil, we and every other nation in the world will still be dependent on oil. So major problems in the Middle East will still be a threat to our vital interests, and the threats may be worse if the economic, social, and poltical problems have not been addressed but the price of oil is plummeting because of conservation efforts in the developed world. Again, it is why we MUST think long-term about our approach to the Middle East and get away from our typical, short-term approaches.
Harrisburg, Pa.: How has Iraqi oil production been affected by the war? How much of Iraqi oil profits have been able to be channeled into the reconstruction of Iraq?
Kenneth Pollack: The chaos the U.S. created in Iraq hurt Iraqi oil exports in three ways. First, the disastrous dismemberment of the Iraqi bureaucracy meant that for many months, no one was taking care of the Iraqi oil infrastructure which reduced production and exports. Second, the insurgents (principally Sunni groups like al-Qa'ida in Iraq) actively attacked Iraq's production and export infrastructure which further depressed oil production. Third, because of the misguided way that the Bush Administration handled the oversight of the Iraqi government initially, HUGE amounts of oil and money from oil was stolen by a vast range of people-from guys pulling up to refineries with tanker trucks and demanding that they be filled at gunpoint, to bureaucrats funnelling millions to Swiss bank accounts.
Today, thanks to a whole series of new initiatives by the U.S., led by our very able ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, in his team, and the greater security created by the "Surge" Iraqi oil production is now at about pre-war levels. Because the price of oil is so high, the Iraqis are now making a lot of money and paradoxically, many of the measures that we demanded they put in place to prevent theft and corruption in the oil sector is now hindering their ability to use that money to pay for reconstruction. This is being further hamstrung by political differences and the still-limited capacity of the Iraqi bureaucracy. As a result, there is something like $50 billion of Iraqi money sitting in New York just waiting for the Iraqis to spend it. That's why a lot of American Congressmen are demanding that we cut our own spending and force the Iraqis to pay not only for their own reconstruction expenses but for the costs of our troops and our programs as well. So the bottom line is that while the Iraqis are doing better on exporting oil and using it to pay for reconstruction, there is still a long way to go.
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Authors
Kenneth M. Pollack
Publication: washingtonpost.com
July 12, 2008
Will Oil Profits Reshape the Middle East?
You might think that $140 per barrel oil would be good for at least one part of the world, the Middle East. It's too soon to tell for certain, but the region may well turn out to be the part of the world that suffers the most.
As painful as the current (or coming) oil-driven recession will be for Americans, it does seem to be convincing us to make the sacrifices necessary to diminish our reliance on oil. Over the long term, that could prove a huge boon for our economy, our environment and our national security.
In the Middle East, the situation may be reversed. Right now, the region is experiencing an economic boom, creating the opportunity to address the deep-seated political, economic and social problems that have spawned terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. That's certainly what the people of the region hope.
The danger is that the way that the rising revenues are being spent will more likely worsen the region's instability over time.
And that's a problem, because problems in the Middle East have a bad habit of becoming big problems for the rest of the world. The Middle East isn't Las Vegas: what happens there doesn't stay there.
In the 1970s and '80s, during the first great oil boom, the Middle Eastern producers largely squandered their wealth. Some did set up vast social-welfare networks that improved health care (an important reason for the explosive population growth of the past 30 years). But by and large they sent the money overseas, putting it in foreign real estate and Swiss bank accounts. This did nothing to develop (let alone diversify) their economies, and so when the boom turned to bust in the 1990s, economic problems mushroomed. With them came political discontent, terrorism and rebellion.
This time around, some Middle Eastern oil producers are trying to be smarter. They are investing billions of dollars at home, building industries, repairing roads and factories, and expanding social services. This has led regional elites and many in the international financial community to proclaim a new era in the Middle East — one in which the new oil revenues will diversify the region's economies, create jobs for everyone, and make the Arab states the world's economic superpower.
If this sounds unlikely, it's because it almost certainly is. More oil money is being re-invested in the region, but it is not being spent where it is most needed. As a result, it is having little impact on what really matters, and is even creating problems.
The macroeconomics often do look great: gross domestic product, trade and foreign direct investment are all rising substantially. But unemployment and underemployment have declined very little and inflation is rising quickly. At a microeconomic level, critical problems belie the rosy picture painted by the superficial macro indicators.
In addition, much of the money is being re-invested in projects intended to produce quick profits for investors rather than long-term political and economic gains. A great deal of it is going into non-productive sectors like real estate and oil refining. Many of the factories being built with the new oil revenues will be heavily automated plants that will employ few people.
The industries that create lots of new jobs, like tourism, agriculture and construction, import workers from southern and southeastern Asia rather than hire locals. Similarly, the oil revenues are being used to expand educational systems but, with a few exceptions, not to reform them. Consequently, more students are being educated — and their expectations of a better life whetted — only to find out that they lack the skills to get the jobs they believe their schooling entitles them to. Across the region, youth unemployment averages at least 25 percent, close to double the global average.
Both the rise in energy prices and the flood of oil revenues have stoked inflation. Qatar's current rate is 14 percent, up from 2.6 percent in the 2002-2004 period. As always, inflation hits the middle and lower classes hardest, and in many Arab states it is destroying the middle class, driving its members to the levels of the poor. That is pushing many into the arms of Islamist extremists seeking to overthrow the regimes.
The rise in global food prices has also hit the Middle East hard. Bread riots have convulsed Egypt and Yemen (not major oil producers, but two of the Arab world's most populous states and cogs in the regional economy). In Saudi Arabia, fear of riots led the government to threaten to detain or confiscate the businesses of bakers and store owners who sell flour above the government-set subsidized price.
To combat the effects of inflation, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have raised government salaries by 15 percent to 70 percent. In the short run this could help civil servants, but it also further increases inflation and does nothing to deal with the structural economic problems.
The foreign workers whom Arab states increasingly rely on because they tend to be cheaper and more productive than their own citizens are also beginning to show signs of unhappiness with their shoddy treatment. Foreign workers, who make up 80 percent to 95 percent of the private sector work forces in the small Persian Gulf states, have gone on strike in recent months in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to protest inflation, which is eroding their earnings. With foreigners making up roughly 40 percent of the population of the Arabian Peninsula, such labor unrest is ominous.
Meanwhile, the region's rich have grown obscenely more wealthy through their ability to tap into the windfall oil profits, both legally and illegally. The wealthiest measure their wealth in the billions, while the poorest are so poor that growing numbers cannot even afford to marry.
Money pouring in but not trickling down tends to create a dangerous social imbalance. People hope their country's oil windfall will alleviate their own economic problems only to find that vast sums are being siphoned off into graft; redirected out of the country to private accounts; spent on luxury items, military hardware or "white elephant" projects; or simply wasted.
It is worth keeping in mind the worst case from the history of the first Middle Eastern oil boom. Under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran tried to use the influx of oil revenues after the 1973 oil-price increases to build new industries, eradicate unemployment, transform the economy and modernize society.
On paper, the shah's efforts seemed superbly enlightened. As in the Arab states today, the macro indicators of Iranian progress — per capita gross domestic product, education expansion, foreign investment — seemed phenomenal. But the projects were mismanaged and riddled with graft. The royal cronies became fabulously wealthy while the plight of the average Iranian worsened because of protracted unemployment coupled with soaring inflation. Rather than solving Iran's problems, the oil boom sparked the Iranian revolution.
A few in the region seem to be heeding that lesson. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia continues to demonstrate a keen grasp of what is in his country's best long-term interests. He has poured money into economic cities that serve as "centers of excellence" to attract the kind of meaningful investment that, over time, could lift the Saudi labor force out of its dangerous doldrums. He is establishing the King Abdullah University, bringing in professors from all over the world to develop a curriculum emphasizing science, technology and innovation. But even here there is a dark lining: Abdullah is 83, and it is doubtful that his successors would continue such projects with the same progressive determination.
How can the region turn things around? For starters, those charged with managing its sovereign wealth funds and private investments need to shift from bankrolling capital-intensive industries that guarantee a high return for the investor to financing labor-intensive industries that could increase employment and develop a more capable work force.
At some level, this means thinking of regional investment as a form of deliberate wealth redistribution, social engineering and charity. It will certainly cut into the bottom lines during the short term, but if those who hold the purse strings are wise enough to do it, it should yield priceless political rewards in the years ahead — political rewards that are probably going to be necessary if they are to avoid being swept out of power by angry mobs.
Avoiding those kind of internal upheavals and eliminating much of the anger and despair upon which the terrorists and extremists prey would be a major boon to a world that is likely to remain addicted to Middle Eastern oil, and therefore vulnerable to its vicissitudes, for decades to come.
This opinion was originally published with the title "Drowning in Riches."
Authors
Kenneth M. Pollack
Publication: The New York Times
Image Source: Reuters/Anwar Mirza
February 1, 2007
10 Questions on Iran: The Next War?
We really don't know just how close Iran is to acquiring the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, and that is part of the alarm. They are certainly a lot closer than most people believed even five years ago. However, the latest information from the UN watchdog agency indicates that it is not an imminent development—at least three years and probably more like 5-10 seems to be the consensus estimate of most experts.
2. Our intelligence about the internal situation in Iraq was so deeply flawed. How can we be sure of anything we're told about the internal situation in Iran?
Iran is a much more open society than Iraq was under Saddam Husayn. Saddam's Iraq was a totalitarian police state where all information was controlled and most people feared for their lives for saying anything other than what they believed Saddam wanted to hear. Iran is very different. Iranians do live under some onerous restrictions and do have to be somewhat concerned that what they say doesn't cross the authorities, but these concerns are rather mild—at least by the standards of many other authoritarian regimes. As a result, Iran's press is more open, Iranians are more willing and able to criticize their government, and Westerners have much greater access to Iranian society and what Iranians are thinking. On the other hand, we do have to be careful: the regime tries to prevent public opinion polling by outsiders, and the Iranian government itself is extremely secretive. In addition, Iranian politics are maddeningly complex, which makes Tehran's behavior very hard to predict—even by Iranian officials themselves. So we can have greater confidence that we know more about what the Iranian people are thinking than was true for Iraq, but we should not assume that we have perfect knowledge about them. And when it comes to understanding the Iranian regime, we are all reading tea leaves.
3. President Bush has said repeatedly that our argument is not with the people of Iran—it is with the government of Iran. How did relations between our government and theirs become so strained?
This is a long and sordid story. Most Iranians date their estrangement from the U.S. back to 1953, when the CIA and British intelligence overthrew Iran's wildly popular prime minister, Muhammad Mossadeq in a covert operation. As part of that, the U.S. re-installed the Shah to his throne and then became a primary backer of his regime. The Shah mismanaged Iranian affairs badly, creating a police state of his own, overheating the economy, destroying the livelihoods of many lower and middle class Iranians through bad policies badly implemented, and allowing a high degree of corruption in his regime. All of this alienated and then enraged his people, and because the United States grew ever closer to the Shah during this time, Iranians generally held the United States responsible for the Shah's many failings. When this widespread disaffection turned into a revolution against the Shah in 1978, many Iranians saw it as a revolt against both the Shah and the United States. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who eventually came to lead the Iranian revolution, was also part of this disaffection. He saw the world in clear divisions of good and evil, and believed that the United States was the champion of evil in the world (that is where the term "the Great Satan" comes from) who Iran—the champion of good in the world—was destined to fight for the fate of mankind. Khomeini's hatred of America, general Iranian anger at America, and a fear that the United States would try to repeat its 1953 coup again to turn back the Iranian revolution, led a group of zealous Iranian students to seize the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and take 52 American diplomats and Marine guards hostage in November 1979. This shocked the American people, who saw it as an unprovoked act of terrorism (if not war). The 444-day hostage crisis that followed embittered Americans against Iran just as badly as the 1953 CIA coup against Mossadeq had turned Iranians against America. That's nothing more than a thumbnail sketch, and those wanting more might take a look at my book The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America (Random House, 2004) for a fuller account.
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Authors
Kenneth M. Pollack
Publication: Couric & Co.
July 21, 2006
Grand Strategy: Why America Should Promote a New Liberal Order in the Middle East
At West Point, Annapolis, Sandhurst, St. Cyr, and wherever else strategy is taught, the first lesson is that any strategy must begin with an idea of the end state the strategy seeks to create. The end state that America's grand strategy toward the Middle East must envision is a new liberal order to replace a status quo marked by political repression, economic stagnation, and cultural conflict.
During the Cold War, policymakers worried about conflict among the region's states escalating into conflict between their superpower backers. It was assumed that the best way to achieve stability in the region was to focus on its international relations. Consequently, America ignored problems festering within Middle Eastern states and let Arab autocrats rule as they saw fit. Those problems have produced Islamic terrorists seeking to harm the United States and its allies and desperately unhappy populations increasingly willing to challenge illegitimate and insecure regimes.
The Arab states' economies are stagnant. Many have failed to diversify beyond oil and now suffer from crippling unemployment and underemployment. Many of their citizens have retreated into religious revival, often of particularly noxious new hues. Arab educational systems, meanwhile, produce graduates qualified to do little of value to society. The problem is not just the predominance of Islamic learning in their curricula, but a teaching method that reveres rote memorization and smothers creative thinking, interdisciplinary learning, and other entrepreneurial skills. Politically, the Arab autocracies have largely ossi- fied into massive bureaucracies that provide virtually no services to their people, no outlets for them to express their grievances, and no hope for political action to address their many difficulties.
This situation is not unique to the Middle East, or even new. Indeed, it is broadly similar to the problems that have beset many traditional societies confronted by modernity. In most cases, transformative reform of virtually every sector of life has been the only "solution." That means economic reform in accordance with free-market principles. It means educational reform to produce graduates who can compete in the global economy. It means social reform that adapts traditional values to modern necessities. It means establishing the rule of law. And it means making government more responsive to people's needs and more reflective of their beliefs and aspirations.
East Asia, Latin America, and now South Asia and Eastern Europe are all in some phase of this reform. While hardly a panacea, reforms have vastly improved conditions in all of those regions. There is no reason why they cannot do the same in the Middle East. There is every reason to believe that they will -- and, quite frankly, no one has ever proposed a better alternative. Helping the Muslim Middle East undergo such a transformation will be a long and daunting task. Change must be led principally from within the region's states, will require overcoming countless obstacles, and will have no guarantee of success. But until someone can pose a better solution, transformation is the only one that we know can work.
To harmonize the cacophony of its current policies in the Middle East, the United States must now make political, economic, and social transformation -- of friends and foes alike -- its foremost objective. On some fronts, most notably in Iraq, the administration is obviously committed to transformation, though it has been plagued by poor tactical decision- making. On other fronts, the administration's policies have actually been antithetical to the cause of reform.
Iraq. For better or worse, whether you supported the war or not, it all starts with Iraq now. All of America's policies and interests in the region are tied to Iraq's fate.
The issue can be stated fairly simply. If some day Iraq becomes a stable, pluralist society, others in the region will eventually follow. Democratic dominoes would not begin to fall overnight, of course. Rather, Arabs (and others) would finally have a model of a "liberal" Arab state that reflects Arab history, traditions, culture, and values. Its existence would provide a powerful counterargument to the claims of the region's autocrats and Islamists. And as has been the case elsewhere in the world, its success might slowly help convince others to adopt a similar system in their own countries. It would be akin to how Japan showed other East Asian nations over a period of decades that democratic principles can coexist with East Asian traditions, values, and aspirations, and so made the transformation of East Asia possible.
On the other hand, liberal reform in the Middle East might well be doomed if Iraqi reconstruction fails. Autocrats and their Islamist opponents alike could claim that if America cannot make democracy work in Iraq with 150,000 troops and $300 billion, there is no chance it can work anywhere else in the Muslim Middle East. And many other Middle Easterners (and Americans and Europeans) will agree.
If America fails in Iraq, the most likely scenario would also be the worst-case scenario. Iraq almost certainly would slide into chaos and civil war and destabilize many, if not all, of its already fragile neighbors -- the great oil-producing states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran; our NATO ally Turkey; our Jordanian friends; even our Syrian foes. America and the world would be lucky if those governments merely survived, let alone reformed themselves as the grand U.S. strategy should seek.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Keeping the Arab-Israeli peace process moving forward is central to the grand strategy for transforming the Middle East. That will be doubly difficult with Hamas in power. The United States must now exert itself to curb Hamas' violence and undercut its appeal to the Palestinian people. Above all, policymakers must hold the new Palestinian government accountable for its behavior. The Palestinian Authority signed a series of important agreements with Israel that created the foundation for eventual statehood and immediate benefits in the form of trade, aid, and political engagement. Washington must make crystal clear to the Palestinians that the continuation of those benefits is contingent upon the new government's continued adherence to all of the terms of those agreements (including those requiring the disarming of militias). The onus must be on the Hamas government and its supporters: Either they give up their terrorist war against Israel, or the international community will give up on their new government.
At the same time, the United States should lead an international effort to increase all forms of assistance to nongovernmental organizations and civil society groups within Palestinian society to provide the Palestinian people with basic services and necessities, coupled with micro-enterprise loans and infrastructure development. The goal should be to jumpstart the Palestinian economy, and so weaken Hamas' hold on average Palestinian families for whom it provides jobs, money, food, and medical care.
Rogue regimes. Iran, Libya, and Syria have long been among the biggest supporters of a range of international terrorist groups, and all have participated in terrorist attacks against Americans at one time or another during the past 25 years. Likewise, all have supported efforts to subvert and destabilize various governments in the region. In short, they have helped cause or exacerbate terrorism from and instability within the Middle East.
After a decade of sanctions, the United States and Great Britain used economic and political incentives to persuade Libya to stop supporting terrorism and give up its nuclear program in a verifiable manner. It was a triumph for Western diplomacy and should be a model for U.S. dealings with Iran, and perhaps Syria as well. However, while the Libyans have largely kept up their end of the bargain, the Bush administration has been rather niggardly when it comes to making good on its promises to Tripoli. Such stinginess makes it more likely that the Iranians and Syrians will reject something like the Libyan deal and continue to defy U.S. diplomatic pressure. It also makes it less likely that America's European and Asian allies will back such deals, if they question our commitment to provide benefits in return for good behavior.
In the case of Iran, after losing many opportunities over the past four years, the Bush administration finally appears to be taking important steps in the right direction. Helped greatly by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's offensive rhetoric, the United States has succeeded in isolating Tehran and convincing the U.N. Security Council to address the Iranian nuclear program. It has, meanwhile, gained a degree of diplomatic credibility with the international community by making some small but important concessions. These are encouraging developments. But it is absolutely vital that the United States be willing to make larger concessions, if necessary, to lock in an agreement under which the Europeans, Russians, Chinese, and Indians -- Iran's biggest trading partners -- would wield the big stick of economic sanctions if Tehran does not change course, and offer generous rewards if it does. If the administration is unwilling to make the concessions necessary to secure such an arrangement, then it will squander all of the recent momentum -- a pattern it has repeated too often in the past.
Friendly regimes. Since 9/11, America has finally faced up to the fact that even its friends in the Muslim Middle East are part of the problem. It is worth remembering that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and much of al Qaeda's core leadership is Egyptian. In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and other countries allied with the United States, economic distress, political stagnation, educational failings, and a sense of cultural threat have combined to produce terrorists and populations sympathetic to their goals (and sometimes even their methods). It is not enough just to press unfriendly countries in the region to end their support for terrorism and halt subversive activities that destabilize the Middle East. It is critical that friendly governments embark on a gradual process of reform as well.
The Bush administration has embraced this cause rhetorically and has even made some small steps in the right direction. Washington pressed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hard enough to convince him to hold elections that were more competitive than any previously seen in Egypt, and the administration even followed the French lead in demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, thereby sparking the "Cedar Revolution." Likewise, the administration created a Middle East Partnership Initiative designed to funnel modest amounts of money to some regional states to help them move in the direction of change, and is planning other initiatives as well.
These are useful steps. But they are so tentative and so under-resourced that they mostly demonstrate the administration's failure to make this effort the centerpiece of American strategy toward the region. The Bush administration has a bad habit of saying all the right things but failing to live up to its own rhetoric.
As with its adversaries in the region, the United States must use big carrots and big sticks to promote reform among its allies. America must provide very sizable inducements to governments that adopt progressive reforms, and penalize those that refuse.
The handling of U.S. aid to Egypt is an obvious example. Although the Bush administration pressured the Mubarak government, it was only willing to use small sticks and no carrots. The result was an election that was certainly better than any in the past, but hardly a great leap forward for democracy. What's more, many of the rules governing this election could actually make the long-term prospects for democratization worse, not better. It would be much better to work out a long-term plan for political and economic changes in Egypt and then tie American aid to such a "road map." The precise nature of these steps could be left largely to Cairo, to ensure that average Egyptians do not believe the United States is forcing changes on them. But Washington would still need to certify that the steps were progressive. Of greatest importance, America should be willing to increase its aid to Egypt beyond the current level of $2.1 billion per year, as long as Egypt moves along a progressive path, and decrease it if Egypt fails to do so.
Likewise, America must move aggressively and creatively to help reformers throughout the Arab world. Prodding governments to move in the right direction is barely half the battle. Ultimately, the West cannot impose reform on the Middle East, U.S.-led efforts to do so in Iraq being the exception that proves the rule. If some form of liberalism is to take hold in the Muslim Middle East, it will have to emerge from Arab society itself. It will have to be seen as authentic, and that automatically disqualifies "made in America" reforms. It will also have to be consonant with Arab traditions and values, and that too can only come from Arabs themselves.
Authors
Kenneth M. Pollack
Publication: Blueprint Magazine
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