Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are now awash in oil money, and no matter what the controls, some is surely getting to unsavory groups.
By Fareed Zakaria
Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - If I could change one thing about American foreign policy, what would it be? The answer is easy, but it's not something most of us think of as foreign policy. I would adopt a serious national program geared toward energy efficiency and independence. Reducing our dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of American power in the world. I leave it to economists to sort out what expensive oil does to America's growth and inflation prospects. What is less often noticed is how crippling this situation is for American foreign policy. "Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World." Consider:
Terror. Over the last three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, not coincidentally the world's first and second largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money and, no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals.
Democracy. The centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy—encouraging democracy in the Middle East—could easily lose steam in a world of high-priced oil. Governments reform when they have to. But many Middle Eastern governments are likely to have easy access to huge surpluses for years, making it easier for them to avoid change. Saudi Arabia will probably have a budget surplus of more than $26 billion this year because the price of oil is so much higher than anticipated. That means it can keep the old ways going, bribing the Wahhabi imams, funding the Army and National Guard, spending freely on patronage programs. (And that would still leave plenty to fund dozens of new palaces and yachts.) Ditto for other corrupt, quasi-feudal oil states.
Iran. Tehran has launched a breathtakingly ambitious foreign policy, moving determinedly on a nuclear path, and is also making a bid for influence in neighboring Iraq. This is nothing less than an attempt to replace the United States as the dominant power in the region. And it will prove extremely difficult to counter—more so, given Tehran's current resources. Despite massive economic inefficiency and corruption, Iran today has built up foreign reserves of $29.87 billion.
Russia. A modern, Westernized Russia firmly anchored in Europe would mean peace and stability in the region. But a gush of oil revenues has strengthened the Kremlin's might, allowing Putin to consolidate power, defund his opponents, destroy competing centers of power and continue his disastrous and expensive war in Chechnya. And the "Russian model" appears to have taken hold in much of Central Asia.
Latin America. After two decades of political and economic progress in Latin America, we are watching a serious anti-American movement gain ground. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela—emboldened by his rising oil wealth—was the first in recent years to rebel against American influence, but similar sentiments are beginning to be heard in other countries, from Ecuador to Bolivia.
I could go on, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In almost every region, efforts to produce a more stable, peaceful and open world order are being compromised and complicated by high oil prices. And while America spends enormous time, money and effort dealing with the symptoms of this problem, we are actively fueling the cause.
Rising oil prices are the result of many different forces coming together. We have little control over some of them, like China's growth rate. But America remains the 800-pound gorilla of petroleum demand. In 2004, China consumed 6.5 million barrels of oil per day. The United States consumed 20.4 million barrels, and demand is rising. That is because of strong growth, but also because American cars—which guzzle the bulk of oil imports—are much less efficient than they used to be. This is the only area of the American economy in which we have become less energy-efficient than we were 20 years ago, and we are the only industrialized country to have slid backward in this way. There's one reason: SUVs. They made up 5 percent of the American fleet in 1990. They make up almost 54 percent today.
It's true that there is no silver bullet that will entirely solve America's energy problem, but there is one that goes a long way: more-efficient cars. If American cars averaged 40 miles per gallon, we would soon reduce consumption by 2 million to 3 million barrels of oil a day. That could translate into a sustained price drop of more than $20 a barrel. And getting cars to be that efficient is easy. For the most powerful study that explains how, read "Winning the Oil Endgame" by energy expert Amory Lovins (or go to oilendgame.com). I would start by raising fuel-efficiency standards, providing incentives for hybrids and making gasoline somewhat more expensive (yes, that means raising taxes). Of course, the energy bill recently passed by Congress does none of these things.
We don't need a Manhattan Project to find our way out of our current energy trap. The technologies already exist. But what we're searching for is perhaps even harder—political leadership and vision.
Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9024768/site/newsweek/
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Friday, August 4, 2006
Israel's Lost Moment
By Charles Krauthammer
Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.
For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).
But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.
America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.
Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.
More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.
America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.
The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.
Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.
The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.
His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Our Orphaned Middle East Policy
Things are looking up as everyone starts jumping ship.
---
It is common now to hear of an American Middle East policy in shambles. And why not, given the daily mayhem that is televised from the West Bank, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the overt threats of Iranian President Ahmadinej(ih)ad?
Somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, with costs mounting in our blood and treasure, the United States lost the last vestiges of that wonderful sense of national unity that had swept the country following September 11. About every week now some administration official seems under pressure to resign or in fact does.
Tell-all books by disgruntled former CIA agents and ex-diplomats lament how the supposedly clueless people in power did not listen to their own Protean expertise. Those who leak from the CIA, an agency with analysts seemingly at war with their own government at a time of war, are hardly considered culpable — so long as their tips were to the "right" newspaper and for the "right" cause.
Former proponents of Saddam's removal and democratization are now unabashedly triangulating — scrambling to be recast as "I warned them" foreign-policy consultants, as they showcase their intellectual wares for the next generation of politicians in 2008. Their support comes and goes, as they wonder whether the good news from Iraq should rekindle guarded approval, or the bad news should reaffirm their belated opposition. Not since the up-and-down summer of 1864 has this country at war seen such equivocating and self-serving editorialists and politicians.
No one pauses to suggest what the region would now look like with Saddam reaping windfall oil profits, 15 years of no-fly zones, ongoing corruption in Oil-for-Food, the bad effects of the U.N. embargo, Libya's weapons program, and an unfettered Dr. Khan. If a newly provocative Russia is willing to sell missiles to Iran's crazy Ahmadinej(ih)ad, imagine what its current attitude would be to its old client Saddam.
Or perhaps, as in the 1980s when over a million perished, our realists, who seem fond of such good old days of order and stability, could once again encourage an unleashed Saddam, with Uday and Qusay at his side, to be played against Iran for a (nuclear) round two. How sad that those who once fallaciously argued that the fascist Saddam was the proper counterweight to the fascist Iran now ignore that the genuine corrective is a democratic and humane Iraq.
A few retired generals smell blood, want to even old scores, and have demanded Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. They earn not the usual condemnation from liberals for intruding into the gray area around our hallowed civilian control of the military, but praise for their insight and courage — as if speaking out on in retirement is especially brave or calling for radical change at a time of war is always wise. That they are usually Army officers long furious over military transformation is left unsaid — as is the irony that Iraq will largely be saved by the skill of their brethren U.S. ground officers currently deployed.
Scholars under the rubric of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, not the American Conservative magazine, publish a pseudo-scholarly treatise about undue Jewish influence that resulted inexplicably in a disastrous tilt in American policy toward the only liberal society in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, we are faulted for "outsourcing" the problem of Iranian nuclear ambitions when we let the multilateral Europeans take the lead in talks with Tehran. And we are then condemned as itching for more "preemption" and "unilateralism" when we sigh that at some point someone may have to act to prevent Mr. Ahmadinej(ih)ad from arming his missiles. This is a psychopath, after all, who assures those on the West Bank of his love and support by promising to send a nuke soon in their general direction. I suppose Hamas thinks that 50 kilotons can distinguish east from west Jerusalem.
But if we look beneath all these self-serving contradictions, real progress amid the carnage since September 11 is undeniable. It is not just that the United States has not been attacked again. Al Qaeda's leadership has been insidiously dismantled. Even bin Laden's communiqués are increasingly pathetic, whining about lost truce opportunities for the Crusaders while warning of more welcomed genocide in Darfur. We can be sure of his war-induced attenuated stature when some on the Left are already suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were mostly the operations of just a few criminals rather than precursors to international jihad.
Some European governments that were patently anti-American — Chirac's in France or Schroeder's in Germany — are either gone or going. The European public no longer thinks that the threat of Islamic fascism was mostly something concocted by George Bush after 9/11. American supporters in Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom were returned to power. Finally a parliament is meeting in Iraq. There have been open elections in two regions of the Arab Middle East. In one place, terrorists were voted in; in the other place — the much more criticized one — terrorists are being hunted down.
Hamas wanted power; the Americans didn't interfere, and they got elected. Now they can galvanize their people for their promised war against Israel (that they will lose), or they can find a way to evolve from thuggery to governance — it's their call. It is not the decision of the United States, which, after fifteen years, is finally freed from subsidizing West Bank terrorists masquerading as statesmen.
It is a fine thing for all to see the once swaggering gunmen now on television appealing for daily cash from suddenly stingy Middle East benefactors, as Hamas whines that Fatah is in Israel's hip pocket and decries militants who shoot without government authorization. Democracy, not more autocracy, exposed that absurdity.
Middle Easterners wish that we would be humbler, that we would let more Arabs into the United States, that we would not lecture them so, that we had not used force to remove Saddam, that we did not seem so self-righteous when promoting Western democracy, that we could express our intentions in a more sympathetic and articulate fashion. It is true that at critical junctures we did not explain ourselves well, and did not apprise the public candidly here and abroad about the range of poor options that confronted this nation after September 11.
But aside from these complaints, the people of the Middle East for the first time are watching on television a voting parliament in Iraq — and what sort of killers are trying to stop it. They know that oil skyrocketed and that the petroleum of Mesopotamia was not appropriated by the United States — and that huge windfall profits in the Middle East are still not likely to trickle down their way. They also accept that China in the Middle East cares only for petroleum, Russia only to cause others trouble, and Europe mostly to talk.
Those in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as elsewhere in the Arab world, want closer, not more distant, relations with the United States. Ever so slowly the Arab Street is grasping that the more its own governments are angry at us for prodding them, the more it is a sign that we are on the right side of history.
As for the Iranian crisis, the only peaceful solution, given Russian meddling and Western fear over oil prices, may be through the emergence of democracy in Iraq, which would then galvanize dissidents in Iran. Anyone who rules out force in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions should support unequivocally the democratic experiment in Iraq.
For all the scrambling to disown the present policies, the irony is that they are bearing fruit and always had the best chance to end the region's genesis of terror. How sad that those who supported the costly spread of freedom are written off as illiberal, and those who resigned themselves to the easy status quo were seen as wise and sober.
So there we have it: an orphaned policy with a bright future that is being claimed by fewer and fewer — we'll see if that changes when Iraq emerges as a stable democracy.
A Footnote
I spent recent days recovering from emergency surgery for a perforated appendix in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya. I owe a great debt to the skill and confidence of a general surgeon, Dr. Ayoub, who was roused at 3 A.M., and saved me from a great deal worse, along with Dr. al Hafez who offered his medical expertise and care that allowed me to get back to California. Throughout all this, I did not experience a shred of anti-Americanism, but instead real kindness from Libyans from all walks of life. There is sometimes perhaps hurt and confusion over America's intentions — but also grudging acknowledgement that for the first time in memory there is real hope for something different, something far better in the future of the Middle East.— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Source
Our Orphaned Middle East Policy
Our Orphaned Middle East Policy
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Things are looking up as everyone starts jumping ship.
By Victor Davis Hanson
It is common now to hear of an American Middle East policy in shambles. And why not, given the daily mayhem that is televised from the West Bank, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the overt threats of Iranian President Ahmadinej(ih)ad?
Somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, with costs mounting in our blood and treasure, the United States lost the last vestiges of that wonderful sense of national unity that had swept the country following September 11. About every week now some administration official seems under pressure to resign or in fact does.
Tell-all books by disgruntled former CIA agents and ex-diplomats lament how the supposedly clueless people in power did not listen to their own Protean expertise. Those who leak from the CIA, an agency with analysts seemingly at war with their own government at a time of war, are hardly considered culpable — so long as their tips were to the "right" newspaper and for the "right" cause.
Former proponents of Saddam's removal and democratization are now unabashedly triangulating — scrambling to be recast as "I warned them" foreign-policy consultants, as they showcase their intellectual wares for the next generation of politicians in 2008. Their support comes and goes, as they wonder whether the good news from Iraq should rekindle guarded approval, or the bad news should reaffirm their belated opposition. Not since the up-and-down summer of 1864 has this country at war seen such equivocating and self-serving editorialists and politicians.
No one pauses to suggest what the region would now look like with Saddam reaping windfall oil profits, 15 years of no-fly zones, ongoing corruption in Oil-for-Food, the bad effects of the U.N. embargo, Libya's weapons program, and an unfettered Dr. Khan. If a newly provocative Russia is willing to sell missiles to Iran's crazy Ahmadinej(ih)ad, imagine what its current attitude would be to its old client Saddam.
Or perhaps, as in the 1980s when over a million perished, our realists, who seem fond of such good old days of order and stability, could once again encourage an unleashed Saddam, with Uday and Qusay at his side, to be played against Iran for a (nuclear) round two. How sad that those who once fallaciously argued that the fascist Saddam was the proper counterweight to the fascist Iran now ignore that the genuine corrective is a democratic and humane Iraq.
A few retired generals smell blood, want to even old scores, and have demanded Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. They earn not the usual condemnation from liberals for intruding into the gray area around our hallowed civilian control of the military, but praise for their insight and courage — as if speaking out on in retirement is especially brave or calling for radical change at a time of war is always wise. That they are usually Army officers long furious over military transformation is left unsaid — as is the irony that Iraq will largely be saved by the skill of their brethren U.S. ground officers currently deployed.
Scholars under the rubric of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, not the American Conservative magazine, publish a pseudo-scholarly treatise about undue Jewish influence that resulted inexplicably in a disastrous tilt in American policy toward the only liberal society in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, we are faulted for "outsourcing" the problem of Iranian nuclear ambitions when we let the multilateral Europeans take the lead in talks with Tehran. And we are then condemned as itching for more "preemption" and "unilateralism" when we sigh that at some point someone may have to act to prevent Mr. Ahmadinej(ih)ad from arming his missiles. This is a psychopath, after all, who assures those on the West Bank of his love and support by promising to send a nuke soon in their general direction. I suppose Hamas thinks that 50 kilotons can distinguish east from west Jerusalem.
But if we look beneath all these self-serving contradictions, real progress amid the carnage since September 11 is undeniable. It is not just that the United States has not been attacked again. Al Qaeda's leadership has been insidiously dismantled. Even bin Laden's communiqués are increasingly pathetic, whining about lost truce opportunities for the Crusaders while warning of more welcomed genocide in Darfur. We can be sure of his war-induced attenuated stature when some on the Left are already suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were mostly the operations of just a few criminals rather than precursors to international jihad.
Some European governments that were patently anti-American — Chirac's in France or Schroeder's in Germany — are either gone or going. The European public no longer thinks that the threat of Islamic fascism was mostly something concocted by George Bush after 9/11. American supporters in Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom were returned to power. Finally a parliament is meeting in Iraq. There have been open elections in two regions of the Arab Middle East. In one place, terrorists were voted in; in the other place — the much more criticized one — terrorists are being hunted down.
Hamas wanted power; the Americans didn't interfere, and they got elected. Now they can galvanize their people for their promised war against Israel (that they will lose), or they can find a way to evolve from thuggery to governance — it's their call. It is not the decision of the United States, which, after fifteen years, is finally freed from subsidizing West Bank terrorists masquerading as statesmen.
It is a fine thing for all to see the once swaggering gunmen now on television appealing for daily cash from suddenly stingy Middle East benefactors, as Hamas whines that Fatah is in Israel's hip pocket and decries militants who shoot without government authorization. Democracy, not more autocracy, exposed that absurdity.
Middle Easterners wish that we would be humbler, that we would let more Arabs into the United States, that we would not lecture them so, that we had not used force to remove Saddam, that we did not seem so self-righteous when promoting Western democracy, that we could express our intentions in a more sympathetic and articulate fashion. It is true that at critical junctures we did not explain ourselves well, and did not apprise the public candidly here and abroad about the range of poor options that confronted this nation after September 11.
But aside from these complaints, the people of the Middle East for the first time are watching on television a voting parliament in Iraq — and what sort of killers are trying to stop it. They know that oil skyrocketed and that the petroleum of Mesopotamia was not appropriated by the United States — and that huge windfall profits in the Middle East are still not likely to trickle down their way. They also accept that China in the Middle East cares only for petroleum, Russia only to cause others trouble, and Europe mostly to talk.
Those in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as elsewhere in the Arab world, want closer, not more distant, relations with the United States. Ever so slowly the Arab Street is grasping that the more its own governments are angry at us for prodding them, the more it is a sign that we are on the right side of history.
As for the Iranian crisis, the only peaceful solution, given Russian meddling and Western fear over oil prices, may be through the emergence of democracy in Iraq, which would then galvanize dissidents in Iran. Anyone who rules out force in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions should support unequivocally the democratic experiment in Iraq.
For all the scrambling to disown the present policies, the irony is that they are bearing fruit and always had the best chance to end the region's genesis of terror. How sad that those who supported the costly spread of freedom are written off as illiberal, and those who resigned themselves to the easy status quo were seen as wise and sober.
So there we have it: an orphaned policy with a bright future that is being claimed by fewer and fewer — we'll see if that changes when Iraq emerges as a stable democracy.
A Footnote
I spent recent days recovering from emergency surgery for a perforated appendix in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya. I owe a great debt to the skill and confidence of a general surgeon, Dr. Ayoub, who was roused at 3 A.M., and saved me from a great deal worse, along with Dr. al Hafez who offered his medical expertise and care that allowed me to get back to California. Throughout all this, I did not experience a shred of anti-Americanism, but instead real kindness from Libyans from all walks of life. There is sometimes perhaps hurt and confusion over America's intentions — but also grudging acknowledgement that for the first time in memory there is real hope for something different, something far better in the future of the Middle East.— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Friday, March 4, 2005
Hopeful Signs in the Middle East
Weekly Column
That's why it was such a surprise to open my paper and find the following:
"[T]his has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power."
Why is there so much hope among policy makers currently? Freedom, it seems, is on the march.
Many pundits doubted that elections were possible in Iraq and called for a postponement until the security situation could be improved. But U.S. and Iraqi leaders concluded that before we could bring peace to the country and turn its security over to its own people, we would have to let the Iraqi people establish a government that they could truly call their own.
Once given the opportunity, Iraqi voters turned out in large numbers to select their leaders. So far, the sober work of the newly elected officials is refuting the notion that Arab culture is incompatible with democracy. Time will tell, but the signs are hopeful.
Due to the passing of Yasser Arafat, and during the run- up to the Iraqi elections, on January 9th the Palestinians held their first elections since 1996. The resulting parliament seems to be committed to negotiating peace with Israel, attacking corruption, and establishing a competent government.
In Lebanon, the assassination of an opposition leader brought a broad political coalition out in the streets to demand that Syria end its decades-old occupation of that country. The pressure became so intense that the Syrian- dominated government resigned. Lebanese citizens and the international community are saying clearly that it is time for Syria to get out so the upcoming Lebanese elections can be held without interference.
In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has agreed to allow opponents to run against him in the upcoming presidential election. Previously, voters were only going to be allowed to vote "yes" or "no" to Mubarak's continued rule. Nobody expects Mubarak to change the rules enough to make it possible for him to actually lose, but growing numbers of Egyptians are looking at the elections in Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere, and are saying, "How about us?" It's a healthy development.
Under pressure from the U.S., and with the Iraqi elections as a backdrop, Saudi Arabia's feudalistic monarchy is holding a series of municipal elections. Everybody agrees that this is just a start, but one that was long overdue.
Given the relentlessly autocratic history of most of the Middle East, even tentative advances for freedom in the area are important. Once the people of the Middle East feel that they can influence their governments through peaceful means, they will be less likely to produce extremists who express themselves through bombs and bullets at home and abroad.Source
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Challenging Rest of the World With a New Order
THE BUSH RECORD
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The change came with the Sept. 11 attacks. "My sense is that Bush lost and never regained the gift he had shown for making you feel at ease," said Mr. Castañeda, who left office last year. "He became aloof, brusque, and on occasion abrasive."
The brusqueness had a clear message: the United States is at war, it needs everybody's support and that support is not negotiable. Mexico's hesitant stance at the United Nations on the war in Iraq became a source of tension. Yet Mr. Castañeda said, "I was never asked, 'What is it you need in order to be more cooperative with us? What can we do to help?' "
It is a characterization of Mr. Bush's foreign policy style often heard around the world: bullying, unreceptive, brazen. The result, critics of this administration contend, has been a disastrous loss of international support, damage to American credibility, the sullying of America's image and a devastating war that has already taken more than 1,000 American lives. In the first presidential debate, Senator John Kerry argued that only with a change of presidents could the damage be undone.
Mr. Bush had a sharp rebuttal, just as his advisers have long told a different story. In their narrative, Mr. Bush's presidency has been an era of historic change, of new alliances bravely embraced, critical relationships solidified, rapid adaptation to a mortal threat and, above all, a bold undertaking to advance freedom in the Middle East through Iraq.
That was the best way, they argue, to confront the terrorist threat to the United States. Along the way, they say, Mr. Bush has used the North Korea crisis to deepen an American relationship with China, steered Pakistan and India away from the brink of nuclear war, and nurtured a relationship with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, even after scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"The charge is, 'You guys are unilateralists and it's a strategy of pre-emption,' " Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview. "I just don't think it's true, but it gets repeated often enough that it starts to take on the aura of truth."
The Nov. 2 election will see if Mr. Bush's approach to foreign policy - replete with images of courage and endurance, of moral certitudes and of generational struggle to defeat a new enemy while transforming an entire region - has proved persuasive to most Americans. It has clearly divided America's friends.
Some are enthused. "Relations between Japan and America have never been better than with Bush," said Hatsuhisa Takashima, the foreign ministry spokesman in Tokyo, where spines have been stiffened by the North Korean threat and Mr. Bush's blunt approach to terrorism. "We have more than 500 troops in Iraq because we believe the American-British action prodded Libya to disarm, sent a strong message to North Korea and showed the price of noncompliance with United Nations resolutions. Failure in Iraq is unthinkable."
But as things stand, failure, with its potentially dire consequences for American world leadership, cannot be ruled out. Mr. Bush has proved to be a gambler in foreign affairs. Revolutions can bring big rewards. They can also deliver disaster.
New Attitude, New Allies
The story of the Bush foreign policy is one of startling change: from the promise of a "humble" approach in 2000 through the "dead or alive" search for the elusive Osama bin Laden to the articulation of a bold, pro-active doctrine summed up last month by Mr. Bush, when he told the United Nations:
"Our security is not merely founded in spheres of influence or some balance of power; the security of our world is found in advancing the rights of mankind."
In other words, less emphasis on containment - the policy of slow-squeeze that defeated communism - and more on the contagion of liberty installed, at least in Iraq, by force of arms. This is stirring stuff that resonates in Eastern Europe, where the wounds of oppression are still felt, as well as with Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister of Iraq, and many of his compatriots. But it is also the stuff of upheaval, and a policy on which the NATO alliance, long a cornerstone of American security, has been unable to agree.
"We have been worried by the absence of debate, the presentation of faits accomplis," said Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general and now the European Union's chief foreign affairs official.
In effect, a new spectrum of relations with Washington has emerged. At one end are estranged allies like France and Germany, angered by the war, convinced it is a losing struggle, alarmed by America's use of overwhelming power.
In the muddy middle are nations like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, important allies whose leaders are sometimes supportive, but where many people believe Mr. Bush has ignited a war against Islam. Their reliability is uncertain.
It has not helped that the Mideast peace process has stalled and that Mr. Bush has appeared less engaged in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute than his recent predecessors.
At the other end are nations, including Poland, Italy, Britain and Japan, that have made the choice to fall in line with Mr. Bush after Sept. 11. Others, including Russia, China and Israel, have embraced the war on terror for reasons of their own.
These divisions get little airing when Mr. Bush campaigns for a second term. The rhetoric at his rallies is of an America unbowed and unrestrained. The day after the first presidential debate Mr. Bush said Mr. Kerry would subject decisions on national security to vetoes "by countries like France.'' The U.N. is often derided at Republican events.
This sort of talk may bring partisan crowds to their feet, but it makes the world uneasy.
"If you want to get a cheap cheer from certain quarters in America, it seems that all you have to do is bash the U.N., or the French or the very idea that allies are entitled to have their own opinions," Chris Patten, the commissioner for external relations for the European Union, said last month. "Multilateralists, we are told, want to outsource American foreign and security policy to a bunch of garlic-chewing, cheese-eating wimps."
And so the cheese-eaters ask: What would a second Bush administration look like?
Have Sept. 11 and the bitter diplomatic clashes of the past three years so changed Mr. Bush's mental map of American alliances that every nation will be measured chiefly by whether it embraces his strategy against terrorism, and sign on to the small, reluctant coalition in Iraq?
Some see small signs since the ouster of Saddam Hussein that this may not be the case. Even in western Europe, the caricature of Mr. Bush as a gunslinger has faded a bit, replaced by a more complex picture of a man who, as Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to Washington put it, "is less outlandish in his practice than his rhetoric." After all, the ambassador noted, "We have some real live diplomacy with North Korea."
In an interview in late August, Mr. Bush waved off the accusation that he had damaged alliances.
"Wait a minute, a lot of people agreed with Iraq," Mr. Bush said. "There was a diplomatic process" at the U.N., he said, "that I think the world thought was the right thing to do."
But he was unapologetic about short-circuiting that process to invade Iraq. "It became clear to me that we were never going to get a second resolution out of the United Nations," he said. He realized, he added, that it was time "for an American president to set an agenda, make it clear, not change, not get blown around because of political winds."
That, he promised, is how he will operate if re-elected next month.
A World Alienated
While many nations have criticized Mr. Bush for walking away from certain international institutions and treaties, it is doubtful that any American president would have embraced an International Criminal Court that could put American peacekeepers on trial. Even Mr. Kerry says the Kyoto protocol on global warming that Mr. Bush rejected should be renegotiated. Certainly, any American president would have used force to respond to the attacks on New York and Washington.
But the complaint often heard around the world is that from the outset the Bush administration's dismissive attitude set a pattern of take-it-or-leave-it policies that needlessly alienated friends. The Iraq war accelerated that process. Then, the acknowledgment that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and no proven links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda cemented the view in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere that Mr. Bush governed from ideology first, facts second.
"The United States had to react strongly to Sept. 11, a fact often forgotten in Europe," said Alexandre Adler, a French foreign policy expert generally sympathetic to America. "But Bush has given the image of a warmonger without subtleties and the result is no president since Nixon, and perhaps not even then, has been so unpopular here."
There is little question that if Europe were voting on Nov. 2, Mr. Bush would lose by a landslide. But Europe, of course, is not the world, a point driven home by Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, who listed several ways she thought the president had improved relations with foreign leaders.
"The best relationship that any administration has had with Russia," she said in an interview. "The best relationship that any administration has had with China. An outstanding relationship with India at the same time that you have a very good relationship with Pakistan. The expansion of NATO into the Baltics without destroying the U.S. relationship with Russia."
China and India, of course, account for more than a third of humanity, a point Ms. Rice underscored as she urged the administration's critics to think hard about who is complaining about alienation and who is not.
But the complaints are often vociferous. "The Bush administration started with a belief that in the past 500 years or more, no greater gap had ever existed between the No. 1 and No. 2 power in the world," said Norman Ornstein, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "Given this American domination, they believed, especially after 9/11, that it was enough to express the American national interest firmly and everyone would accommodate themselves."
They did not. While there was an outpouring of sympathy for the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, by the end of 2002 the sympathy had vanished. When Mr. Bush arrived this summer in Ireland, he was spirited off to a castle, miles from anyone. Protests marked Mr. Bush's most recent visit to Britain, home of his most steadfast ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair. Even Mr. Blair had to apologize for the intelligence about unconventional weapons in Iraq, something Mr. Bush has resisted.
Anti-Americanism has become a winning European platform. In the most recent Spanish and German elections, opposing Mr. Bush's policies proved central to both the upset victory of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the re-election of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, respectively.
But recently, Mr. Bush has been buoyed by the overwhelming re-election of a steadfast ally, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. For the past few days, Mr. Bush has crisscrossed Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado celebrating Afghanistan's first free election.
Still, anti-American hostility in the Islamic world is widespread. Last year, Mr. Powell asked Edward P. Djerejian, an experienced diplomat, to travel the world to examine the failures of American public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Mr. Djerejian returned shocked at the picture of America he saw on Arab television and the absence of any effective American rebuttal. "We did not have anywhere near enough people in place with the right language skills or the right sensitivities to respond," he said.
Mr. Djerejian still believes the outcome in Iraq could be positive, but he added that a chronically unstable Iraq would "set back the key goals we said we were trying to achieve on the Arab-Israeli front, on energy security and certainly on democratizing the region."
His investigation came before the photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq emerged. "The photographs shattered our reputation as the world's most admired champion of freedom and justice," said Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution. "That is grave, because without the world's trust, America cannot flourish."
So three years after Sept. 11, Mr. Bush leads a United States whose image has been tarnished, while Europeans, Asians and Latin Americans still feel far less threatened by terrorism than Americans do.
The president speaks of the threat almost daily, but leaders elsewhere do not. In Europe, terrorism is not new and so seems less menacing; in Asia, the rapid growth of China and India continues to fuel an optimism that dispels, or at least diminishes, the dark clouds from the Middle East; in Latin America, trade and economic issues seem at least as important as Al Qaeda. The shared perception of a common threat that was the cornerstone of America's cold war alliances is gone.
"This America that speaks constantly of war and designates an enemy is not really accepted here," said Nicole Bacharan, a French analyst. "Europeans have a deep desire not to feel threatened. It is sad to observe this divorce in our world views."
In Spite of Rifts, Advances
Mr. Bush is aware of the divide, and in recent months has tried to bridge it. In Istanbul in June at a NATO summit meeting where Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and terrorism were on the agenda, he dispensed with his prepared speech in favor of a direct and emotional appeal.
An American diplomat in attendance said that Mr. Bush "spoke strongly, seemed a real leader'' and pressed his case that "whatever past differences, we all have a stake in the success of an independent Iraq."
But the next day, President Jacques Chirac of France shot back that NATO would never go into Iraq. "I don't believe it's NATO's job to intervene in Iraq," he said. Mr. Bush was angry, aides say, but pushed on. This summer NATO sent a 40-person team to Baghdad and recently, after long wrangling between the United States and France, agreed to increase the team to about 300 people to train Iraqi officers.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Powell say such missions prove that any tensions with France are overblown. "The relationship's fine," Ms. Rice said, citing the French role in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Relations with France are always "better in practice than they are in theory," she added.
Perhaps, but Mr. Chirac and Mr. Bush are no closer in world views than they ever were. The French president said recently that he sought a multilateral world in which the United Nations set the laws by which all nations abide - code words for limiting American power. Mr. Bush flatly rejects this view.
Ms. Rice insisted that Iraq had not thrust all other issues to the back burner.
"You have the most comprehensive policy toward Africa that any administration has had, including trade rights and AIDS and intervention with American forces to help solve the Liberia situation,'' she said. "You have China on the front lines against the North Korean nuclear program."
Her voice began to rise. "You want me to keep going?" she asked.
Certainly, Mr. Bush can cite the democratic opening in Afghanistan and Libya's move to abandon its nuclear weapons program as achievements. An Indian-Pakistani dialogue has begun, in part because of Mr. Powell's intervention last year.
At campaign stops, Mr. Bush often mentions the six-party talks with North Korea - involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan - as an example of his diplomatic style.
"The difference between Iraq and North Korea, for example, is 11 years," Mr. Bush said in his interview. "Diplomacy failed for 11 years in Iraq. And this new diplomatic effort is barely a year old."
But the North Korean talks have also been an example of what happens when international diplomacy gets bogged down between hawks in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, and those in the State Department urging engagement. Not until it was clear that North Korea was probably manufacturing new weapons did Mr. Bush intervene.
"I give credit to Secretary Powell, who has been a lone voice of sanity on this issue, for creating the six-party talks, which now have the possibility of a potential solution," said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who was engaged in negotiating efforts as a member of the Clinton administration and is an active supporter of Mr. Kerry. "But we should have engaged bilaterally with North Korea sooner."
Elsewhere, the record seems mixed. In Africa, Mr. Bush followed Mr. Powell's lead to describe events in Sudan as "genocide." The United States is still working with African, Arab and European nations to make Sudan accept a large force of African peacekeeping troops to stabilize the western region of Darfur.
Pakistan's continued help against Al Qaeda appears solid, but Islamabad pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who had smuggled nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Mr. Bush uttered not a word of criticism, even after Pakistan refused to allow the United States to interrogate him.
A Question of Consultation
It often appears to his allies that Mr. Bush offers only a veneer of consultation. To deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Bush administration has embraced the "quartet" - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - to work on reciprocal steps by Israel and the Palestinians leading to a Palestinian state.
But Europeans, including Prime Minister Blair of Britain, remain frustrated by what they say has been Mr. Bush's failure to become actively engaged in pressing Israel to freeze the growth of settlements and to ease conditions for Palestinians living in the West Bank.
While some European states - though not France - have come around to the administration's view demanding that Yasir Arafat must step aside as the Palestinian leader, they say they are dismayed that Mr. Bush has listened to conservatives in the White House and the Pentagon on Israel policy rather than the State Department, which has always advocated more conciliatory steps.
"When Madeleine Albright spoke, you knew she spoke for the Clinton administration," said Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister. "Nowadays you never quite know."
As a result, European states no longer know how to structure their relationship with the United States. They wonder if there is enough stability in "coalitions of the willing" - Mr. Bush's favorite phrase to describe the nations that have joined the United States in Iraq.
Indeed, Iraq, many European officials say, was a costly distraction from fighting terrorism. They argue that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose images feed extremism across the Arab world, has been neglected. Iran, a more real and imminent threat than Iraq, and a source of further European-American division, was ignored for too long.
The resulting splits - those between Europe and America and those between the Arab world and America - are clear. What remains uncertain is whether Mr. Bush's policies will let terrorists exploit those divisions or whether his determination will crush them.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
How long can the Middle East economic boom continue?
The Middle East is almost four years into an economic boom. How long can this good economic fortune continue? Could this be a generational global wealth shift?
--
It began in 2000 with what everyone thought was an exceptional year for oil revenues. The tragedy of 9/11 in 2001 accelerated the repatriation of wealth to the region. But this year oil revenues will actually be higher than in 2000.
Arab stock markets have surged in 2003. Up 150% in Egypt, 87% in Kuwait, 60% in Saudi Arabia, 37% in Jordan and 31% in the UAE. Money supply has taken off and liquidity is at record levels. Real estate prices have rocketed.
Welcome to the third great Middle East Oil boom. We have been here before. But how long can it last this time?
A lot depends on one commodity price, oil. After a 20-year bear market for commodities, some analysts believe we are now into a 20-year bull market. That maybe hard to swallow but certain economic factors do support such a scenario.
China is the new force in global growth, and depends almost entirely on oil imported from the Middle East. If demand continues to grow at present exponential rates that will make China the region's customer of the future, and keep oil prices high.
We also know for a fact that oil stocks in the US and UK are now dwindling and will be a fraction of present output levels in 10 years' time. But this does not mean that either of these two major economies will cease to use oil.
That is the long-term perspective. The short-term is easier to predict. Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves, remains unstable and unlikely to attract investment from oil majors in the immediate future. This will keep supply pressures in place and allow Opec to manage oil prices towards the top of its target price range.
Fortunately Opec's management also seems to have fallen into capable hands. And while some may question the Saudi Oil Minister's attitude to foreign direct investment, his ability to support the oil price is widely acknowledged.
However, it will be down to domestic economic policy in the Arab countries to translate an oil boom into a better standard of living for residents. Massive liquidity can translate into higher inflation if money can not find another place to go, and indeed higher local stock and real estate prices are a manifestation of this factor.
But if Arab countries want a successful example of economic diversification they do not have to look very far. The UAE, or more particularly Dubai, is literally shoveling money into economic development projects and real estate. This is how to secure lasting benefit from an economic boom as this infrastructure will still be in place when the boom disappears.
How long will that be? Certainly another two years, as US economic policy will not change much until the next President has been elected to the White House. But it is possible that we are witnessing a generational shift in the pattern of global wealth, and that could prove remarkably enduring for the Middle East.
Source:
--
It began in 2000 with what everyone thought was an exceptional year for oil revenues. The tragedy of 9/11 in 2001 accelerated the repatriation of wealth to the region. But this year oil revenues will actually be higher than in 2000.
Arab stock markets have surged in 2003. Up 150% in Egypt, 87% in Kuwait, 60% in Saudi Arabia, 37% in Jordan and 31% in the UAE. Money supply has taken off and liquidity is at record levels. Real estate prices have rocketed.
Welcome to the third great Middle East Oil boom. We have been here before. But how long can it last this time?
A lot depends on one commodity price, oil. After a 20-year bear market for commodities, some analysts believe we are now into a 20-year bull market. That maybe hard to swallow but certain economic factors do support such a scenario.
China is the new force in global growth, and depends almost entirely on oil imported from the Middle East. If demand continues to grow at present exponential rates that will make China the region's customer of the future, and keep oil prices high.
We also know for a fact that oil stocks in the US and UK are now dwindling and will be a fraction of present output levels in 10 years' time. But this does not mean that either of these two major economies will cease to use oil.
That is the long-term perspective. The short-term is easier to predict. Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves, remains unstable and unlikely to attract investment from oil majors in the immediate future. This will keep supply pressures in place and allow Opec to manage oil prices towards the top of its target price range.
Fortunately Opec's management also seems to have fallen into capable hands. And while some may question the Saudi Oil Minister's attitude to foreign direct investment, his ability to support the oil price is widely acknowledged.
However, it will be down to domestic economic policy in the Arab countries to translate an oil boom into a better standard of living for residents. Massive liquidity can translate into higher inflation if money can not find another place to go, and indeed higher local stock and real estate prices are a manifestation of this factor.
But if Arab countries want a successful example of economic diversification they do not have to look very far. The UAE, or more particularly Dubai, is literally shoveling money into economic development projects and real estate. This is how to secure lasting benefit from an economic boom as this infrastructure will still be in place when the boom disappears.
How long will that be? Certainly another two years, as US economic policy will not change much until the next President has been elected to the White House. But it is possible that we are witnessing a generational shift in the pattern of global wealth, and that could prove remarkably enduring for the Middle East.
Source:
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This story was posted by Peter J. Cooper, Editor-in-Chief
Saturday, November 15 - 2003 at 08:31 UAE local time (GMT+4)
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