Tag: Saudi Arabia
Have we got the Arab Spring right?
The Middle East Institute, which kindly lists me among its “scholars,” asked me to address the question of whether President Obama has established the right policy in his May 19 speech in his May 19 speech for reform and democracy in the Middle East and whether implmentation is adequate. This MEI meeting was part of a broader effort to look at the implications of the Arab Spring. Here are the notes I used yesterday to respond, slightly embellished with hindsight (see especially note 19).
Reform and Democracy
Middle East Institute
July 29, 2011
1. President Obama was clear enough in May: he said, “it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.”
2. And he added: “our support must also extend to nations where transitions have yet to take place.”
3. Nor was there any doubt what “reform” means: “The United States supports a set of universal rights…[including] free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders.”
4. This he made clear is on top of our “core” interests in the region: “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.”
5. So is the Administration living up to its own rhetoric? Is the policy framework right? Is the bureaucratic response adequate?
6. My view is that basically the policy framework is correct. As someone whose foreign service career was spent mainly in Europe, I in fact am a bit surprised that this was not the policy framework all along.
7. Values and interests have always been pursued in tandem in Europe, though not always without conflict and tradeoffs. I served 10 years in Italy, where we often compromised our values in favor of our interest in keeping the Communist Party out of power.
8. Of course there is more conflict between values and interests in the Middle East, especially when it comes to countries that have not yet seen much of the Arab Spring: the GCC countries in particular.
9. I see no sign that we’ve really adjusted our bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates to this policy framework.
10. Nor do I see signs that Saudi Arabia has embraced reform: this week’s Economist reports on efforts there to restrict new media by “inciting divisions between citizens”, “damaging the country’s public affairs”, or insulting senior clerics. The Shura Council is considering a draft anti-terrorism law that would criminalize “endangering national unity” and “harming the interests of the state,” imposing harsh penalties. Our embassy won’t be encouraged to reform by the fact that this proposal originates with Prince Nayef; repression can’t be more of a problem for us than for the Saudis.
11. As for other countries, I would hesitate to make the judgment on my own.
12. In Tunisia, we seem to be doing the right things. But the Project on Middle East Democracy/Boell Foundation report suggests effectiveness is spotty in a lot of other places:
- Aid is restricted by US policy concerns (Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, fifth fleet in Bahrain)
- Host government concerns (Yemen, Egypt)
- US aid is a declining percentage of the whole (Egypt $17B from Gulf)
- Indifference (Morocco)
- Violence (Yemen and Libya)
- Excessive focus on government bodies and not enough on real democratic development
14. I think part of the problem is the bureaucratic structure, which is not only fragmented but also too much under State Department and chief of mission control.
15. If you are going to get serious about supporting reform, especially in coutries where interests militate in the other direction, you are going to have to break the strait jackets diplomats put on you. I am not a fan of interagency mechanisms when it comes to democracy support.
16. We are going to see a whole lot more support for reform the more independent the sources of funding are—ask anyone (except George, who was disappointed in the results) whether Soros was effective in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
17. I would rate NED and its family of organizations as a preferable conduit for democracy assistance (relative to State or USAID), at least until the revolution has actually occurred. And yes, Fulbrights should be regarded as part of our democracy and reform support efforts.
18. In the end, though, the most important instrument for influencing the course of events in some countries will not be our democratization support efforts, but the U.S. military, whose training and assistance were certainly influential in Egypt and could be in places like Bahrain and Iraq.
19. It goes without saying that we can only be effective if there is an indigenous movement for democracy and reform, one that has taken on the responsibility of defining for itself what those words mean. We should not be imposing systems that we invent, but helping others to discover what will suit their needs for accountability, transparency and inclusivity.
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The rich get richer
Yesterday’s conference on investment prospects in the wake of the Arab Spring over at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was a lively couple of hours–these economic types are briefer and more to the point than their political counterparts–but the bottom line was gloomy: the GCC states and Iraq are likely to attract the lion’s share of investment while Egypt and Tunisia (Syria, Yemen and Libya weren’t even mentioned) go begging in the short term. There was disagreement on longer-term prospects, with Ian Bremmer registering a strong minority view that the geopolitics are unfavorable, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
An upbeat and indefatigible Afshin Molavi started off underlining that we live in a world of surprisingly interconnected risk, that there is a lot of diversity in what we should not really label “Arab Spring,” and that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a young population, many unable to get married because of the lack of jobs and looking for “dignity.” Growth has now slowed, hurting their prospects.
Citibank’s Hamid Biglari said investors have adopted a wait and see attitude toward the more revolutionary part of the region and are shifting their attention towards the GCC and Iraq, whose prospects are good if Baghdad can get security under control. Multinationals are not pulling out. Egypt is a larger and better known market than Tunisia, which however is more homogeneous, more secular, more middle class and better educated. Tunisia is more likely to succeed economically, but Egypt is the bigger prize. The immediate concerns of investors are about legitimacy and whether the new governments will treat the old elite decently, but it will be a decade before “equilibrium” returns.
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group admitted enthusiasm for the Arab Spring (“it feels good”) but noted that Ukraine and Georgia felt good at first too. Tunisia seems to be moving in the right direction, Egypt less so but will likely muddle through. Iraq is the most exciting investment opportunity in the region. U.S. influence is declining, and Saudi influence is increasing. Saudi policy objectives and conditionality will differ from those of the U.S. Overall though the immediate political risks have been overvalued. The problem is in the longer term, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict. Europe and the U.S. will increasingly be occupied with other problems.
Cairo-based Walid Bakr of Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj Capital, was more optimistic in the medium and long term. Egypt’s big market and tourist attractions are not going away. Half the population is under 24, well educated and internet savvy, with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The revolution has unleashed strong feelings of national pride and dignity. Youth is the engine of growth and can contribute to the all-important creation of small and medium enterprises so vital to job creation and wealth distribution.
Dubai-based Yasar Jarrar of PwC Middle East underlined that we are still at the beginning of the changes in the Middle East, which suffered a long period of stagnation (not real stability). The GCC countries are moving well to kickstart job creation for youth, major infrastructure investments and dialogue between their governments and the citizens. But it is going to be a long spring in a region that really does matter. Philip Haddad of Mubadala Infrastructure Partners agreed that we need to take the long view, but in the meanwhile as much as $38 billion is being invested in infrastructure, which is not bad.
The Omani ambassador, Hunaina Sultan Ahmed al-Mughairy, led off with a very upbeat assessment of the Sultanate’s prospects. The message was “yes, we can” reform ourselves, if we put our minds to it. Jean Francois Seznec of Georgetown said he was very pessimistic about Bahrain, where the basic issue is governance. In recent weeks, only 5% of the hotel rooms in Bahrain have been occupied.
There was a good deal of agreement that the issue everywhere is at least in part governance. Citizens did not feel they were benefiting under the old regimes, because of a lack of accountability. Political and economic reform need to go together, but it is not clear that new parliamentary democracies will credit competence and choose economic reform, which is discredited because it is associated with the old regimes.
Wrapping up, Ravi Vish of MIGA confirmed the importance of governance, addressing social inequality and the income gap, and job creation, mainly through a stronger and more entrepreneurial private sector. He also reviewed MIGA’s portfolio of political insurance products, for which demand is naturally rising in the region.
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Avoiding a September Israel/Palestine train wreck
Doom and gloom over at Woodrow Wilson this morning: Shai Feldman and Aaron David Miller in particular foresee no prospect of agreement under current conditions. Train wreck is more likely, Feldman believes: what happens in New York will trigger youth demonstrations in Palestine. This will threaten the Palestinian establishment (Fatah especially) and force it into a more radical posture. Politics in both Palestine and Israel militate against a conflict-ending settlement. In the absence of some unexpected event, or act of unusual statesmanship, prospects are not good.
Nevertheless, Hussein Ibish suggests that there is some possibility of incremental progress in the fall at the General Assembly. Palestine will not become a member of the UN, because the U.S. will veto. What is important, according to Ibish, is that Palestinian progress in state-building be preserved and sustained. He believes there are real possibilities for avoiding a counter-productive clash at the UN. The Palestinians will not press a General Assembly resolution if negotiations are restarted, and they can accept something less than UN membership in order to back off.
Palestinian unity is not really on the horizon, Ibish suggests. The Hamas/Palestine Liberation Organization agreement is nothing more than an agreement to agree, but in fact there is still no agreement on anything important. They can’t even agree on who should be prime minister, much less on things more important than that, like how to deal with Israel.
Jackson Diehl suggests the U.S. has a good deal to lose from vetoing Palestinian membership in the UN. The Saudis have already warned that they will react. Aaron David Miller asks if there is a way to avoid Washington being put in this position? Is this sufficient reason for Obama to launch a grand initiative to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict? Or, Shai Feldman asks, is there something more modest that could be done, like adopting the Obama parameters (from his speech in May) as the basis for future negotiations? Aaron David Miller suggests this is a real possibility, with the Obama speech (including 1967 borders) as a common frame of reference.
But how close are they to a deal, Diehl asks? Shai Feldman thinks Netanyahu may be focused on demographic trends, which have been presented recently to the Israeli cabinet. The issue for him is not Palestine, whose population he envisages in a separate state, but rather the Arab population of Israel. This is the issue that may pull Netanyahu toward the center, as it has other Israeli leaders, and push him into serious negotiations.
Hussein Ibish thinks the sides are far apart on the issues. There will be no quick breakthrough. But once gaps start closing, they could close quickly. Nothing will happen without restarting the negotiations, so that is the way out of the September train wreck, even if Aaron David Miller suggests though there is nothing worse than another failed negotiation effort.
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A soggy version of the Arab spring
Big Carnegie Endowment/Harvard discussion of Arab Spring yesterday. Outcome: pretty gloomy. But these are experts, who admittedly failed to see the budding of the Arab Spring and are unlikely to be able to predict its course either. They all acknowledged the many unknowns and the difficulties of prediction.
Marwan Muasher, who prefers reform from above, thinks doing nothing in response to the protests is no longer an option but also noted there is more “empire strikes back” (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and “buying time with money” (the Gulf) than “promises of reform” (thin in Jordan, a bit more serious in Morocco). And his criteria for successful reform from above were exacting: it has to be holistic and inclusive, power has to be shared seriously, it should be gradual and measurable. Nothing makes the cut yet.
No optimism from Marina Ottaway either. She noted that even in Tunisia and Egypt there are problems of political will to complete the reform process, that some of the politicians formerly associated with the ruling parties will be able to recycle themselves, that secular parties are weak and fragmented, that Islamists may be a bit stronger but also fragmented, with Salafi influence rising. It is not clear yet what the protesters will be able or willing to do politically, and it is too early to count the military out.
Tarek Masoud did not like what he sees in Egypt. He noted the intense conflict among political forces and between political forces and the military, with the military wary of democracy. They don’t want democratic oversight, fear the demand for justice and don’t want to break with past policy on Israel and the U.S. The military would like to reign without ruling, keeping out of the public eye and avoiding responsibility for governing. They have already made mistakes by scheduling the constitutional referendum, then having to fix the amended constitution with their own constitutional declaration. Early elections will favor Islamists, and opening the constitution to a constituent assembly will open the question of the relationship between state and religion, which is not a good idea. The future holds more discord.
So spring wasn’t so cheery. How about the U.S. policy response?
Nick Burns praised President Obama’s relatively rapid and thoroughly nuanced response in a difficult international situation. He was not too late to support the Tahrir protesters, correctly hesitated about Libya but signed on in response to the Arab League appeal in light of Gaddafi’s threat to Benghazi, and gave the Gulfies more slack because there was no rebellion to sign on to in Saudi Arabia, Oman or Qatar. Only under questioning did Nick state baldly that he could not understand why we hadn’t zapped Bashar al Assad earlier and admit that in Bahrain Washington had chosen interests over values. Nick urged that we focus on Egypt, decrease out focus on governments and security, increase our focus on development and outreach to people, move on Israel/Palestine and shift to a containment policy on Iran.
Agreeing that the case-by-case contextual approach was the right one, Steve Walt concluded that we would soon face Arab governments more sensitive to public opinion, that there would be no easy fixes for the problems of over-centralization and corruption in the Arab countries, Western governments are not flush and would find it hard to ante up, Israel’s position would be weakened as Egypt and Jordan became less compliant to U.S. wishes and that U.S. strategy in the region is obsolete even if its interests are the same as always: unhindered flow of oil and gas, nuclear nonproliferation, countering terrorism and protecting Israel. A more effective policy would pay more attention to Arab public opinion, embrace reform, sustain multipolarity in the region, get U.S. troops out (to an offshore balancing role, naturally, that would still prevent others from exerting control), internationalize the Israel/Palestine peace process (including encouragement of European support for the Palestine resolution at the GA and a possible settlement imposed by the Security Council). Most importantly: we need to stop threatening Iran, which gives Tehran incentives to build nuclear weapons and attempt more creative (unspecified) diplomacy. In response to a question, Walt said he also thought we need a residual force in Iraq to counter Iran.
Chris Boucek, focused mainly on Yemen, warned of economic meltdown, suggested we manage the Saudis better and noted that the youthful protesters are espousing our ideals.
There was a good deal more, but this gives you the flavor: the U.S. focus on stability, peace and democracy has failed: no stability, little prospect for peace and not much for democracy either. Burns and Walt, each in his own way, thought the U.S. could still play an important role, but no one was sanguine about the prospects for the Arab spring or U.S. interests in its aftermath.
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Driving the Saudis crazy
The Saudi authorities are cracking down on the spreading women’s protest, which intends to flood the streets June 17 with women driving. This is not the first time women have challenged the authorities on this issue, but the Arab Spring gives the protest a decidedly sharper edge this time around.
Religious conservatives worry that women driving will inevitably lead to breaks in the strict segregation of genders practiced in the Kingdom. They are correct. It will make women’s faces visible, reduce their dependence on male relatives and allow them higher-profile roles in the society. More than half the university students in Saudi Arabia are women, and have been since 1984. The Kingdom recently opened what is intended to be the largest women’s university in the world. It is high time that they come out from under the burkha, if they want to do so. And not just because they might need to drive if a husband suffers a heart attack, as the courageous Manal Sharif says disingenuously:
I wouldn’t want to suggest that the United States needs to fix this or any number of other respects in which Saudi Arabia’s policies are inconsistent with human rights standards. We’ve got our own problems recognizing that all people are created equal.
But we should not make the mistake of viewing this as a peripheral issue. It is not. Nor is Saudi Arabia completely immune to the infection we have come to call the Arab Spring, though it may be more resistant (as Chas Freeman believes). The King’s efforts to inoculate his population with hard cash and frequent consultation may not work with women.
I don’t know whether this protest will catch on or not, but if it does I am going to hope the women not only drive, but drive the Saudi men crazy.
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Saleh won’t go
President Saleh of Yemen today again refused to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council agreement that would have him step down in 30 days. This time he is insisting on a public signing, while flooding the streets with loyalists who have trapped the American and EU ambassadors along with others in the United Arab Emirates embassy in Sanaa.
It is anyone’s guess how today will wind up. Brian Whitaker, who certainly knows Yemen better than I do, sees little possibility of the president wriggling out, mainly because the Saudis won’t let him. But I think it is a pretty good bet that we are more than 30 days from Saleh stepping down.
If he is smart–and generally he is at least wily–his security forces are likely to “rescue” the American and other ambassadors, after letting them stew a while. Even if he ends up having to sign the agreement, implementation is going to be difficult. He has slipped the leash before and will certainly try to do it again. Only when he sees the real possibility of needing the immunity provided for in the agreement will he go.
In the meanwhile, there are tensions between the opposition political parties and the protesters who have sustained the effort to oust Saleh. They have never really been united. It is the opposition parties, not the protesters, who have signed the agreement. They will need to retain the capability of putting large numbers of people in the streets if they want the transition to be a real one and not just a reshuffling of the Yemeni elite.
That is certainly what the Saudis have in mind, though that may give them more credit for a coherent view than Ginny Hill of Chatham House did in an appearance last week at the Middle East Institute. The aging and health problems of the Crown Prince seem to have cut off payments to the Yemeni tribes and reduced Saudi Arabia’s ability to impose a solution in Sanaa. Maybe Saleh’s latest maneuvers will awaken them to the need for decisive action by the GCC. Failing that, Saleh could continue to not go for a while yet.
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