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| International-UN-NGOs |
| The False Promise of Arab Liberals |
| 2004-06-09 |
| From Policy Review, an article by Jon B. Alterman is director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. .... It is not to dispute the desirability of democratization and reform in the Arab world to point out that the U.S. government is going about it the wrong way. The U.S. strategy, as it has been executed, is based on building out from a core of like-minded liberal reformers in the Arab world. In many ways, it is an obvious way to start. As a group, such reformers are intelligent, congenial, well-educated, and English-speaking. Americans are comfortable with them, and they are comfortable with Americans. But if we are honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that, as a group, such liberals are increasingly aging, increasingly isolated, and diminishing in number. These liberals are losing a battle for the hearts and minds of their countries, and populations are increasingly driven toward younger and more disaffected personalities. Americaâs problems do not stop there, however. The United States faces a paradox. Liberal reformers in much of the Arab world are already seen as clients of foreign powers and as collaborators in a Western effort to weaken and dominate the Arab world. Focusing attention and resources on these reformers runs the risk of isolating them still further, driving a deeper wedge between them and the societies we (and they) seek to affect. In such an event, U.S. efforts are not only ineffectual; they are counterproductive. U.S. efforts to promote political openness and change in the Arab world would be far more effective if they stopped trying to coax the disparate sparks of comfortable liberal thought into a flame and instead concentrated on two targets: regional governments and mass publics. .... Elites play many roles, but one of the most important for the purposes of the present discussion is their role of mediation. Elites often serve as a lubricant between foreign and domestic systems, using commonalities in travel, education, and language to bridge national divisions. .... Early twentieth-century Levantine elites were a worldly bunch, often multilingual and tolerant if often also a bit corrupt. .... But as we know, in the Middle East many of the stories of the elites ended badly. Tales of self-indulgence and profligate spending on their part only sharpened dismay at the Arab worldâs continued subjugation to European powers. .... When nationalist revolutions swept the Arab world in the 1950s, those revolutions were a repudiation of that weakness. Elites were tossed out as foreign fops, and new indigenous elites ... set about defining a new and âtruly authenticâ form of Arabism. Whereas the old elites transcended the local through their travel and knowledge of foreign languages, newly emergent elites participate in a global culture .... The collaborative role that traditional elites have played is less mysterious, and the interests of foreign powers are more obvious to local audiences. The rise of an increasingly independent popular culture has an important effect on our discussion. Elites have lost much of the agenda-setting role they enjoyed in years past. What matters most in attracting an audience now is having a message, not merely having an outlet. Stolid state-run broadcasters have seen their audiences desert them, and they have had to change what they do. Audiences now control what they pay attention to, not information bureaucrats. .... Many heirs to the liberal elite tradition in the Arab world live and work in Washington, dc. They often fill posts in the World Bank and other international institutions, work for the U.S. government, or labor in academia. They despair of the misdirection of the Arab world, and they speak movingly of the need for change. We notice their accents when they speak English, and we hail them as authentic voices for change in the Middle East. But what Washington doesnât hear is that many of these people have accents when they speak Arabic as well. Their speech marks them as Arabs who have left .... Three additional points are in order. The first is to make clear that not all Arab liberals come from elite backgrounds. A good number â although probably a minority still â come from modest backgrounds. But the fact remains that support for liberal ideals as they are promoted and articulated in the West remains almost entirely an elite province, whether that of those born into elites or those who have come to pass into such ranks. What we often refer to as âlike-minded individualsâ form a distinctive group, and a decidedly elitist one. The second point is that as old elites are pushed aside, new elites are emerging. Such elites come from religious backgrounds, the media, the military, or some combination. What is important to note here is that the new elites tend to come from sectors of their societies that are often illiberal, while old liberal elites are increasingly marginalized. The last point has to do with the remarkable passivity of many Arab liberals, who either throw up their hands or hope that the U.S. will deliver their countries to them. Conservative groups conduct an active, creative, and impressive array of activities and services that affect peoplesâ daily lives: providing care to the sick, food to the hungry, and spouses to the unmarried. They seek leadership positions in professional organizations and civic groups. All too often, Arab liberalsâ activity ends when they deliver copy to their editors. .... What is happening in the Arab world today smacks a bit of what the sociologist William Julius Wilson described as happening in black neighborhoods in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas segregation had created all-black communities that had both rich and poor, desegregation created black communities that were uniformly poor and had far higher incidences of violence and crime than had obtained heretofore. In the Arab world, liberal elites cluster ever more closely around Western embassies in capital cities and work in international institutions while the bulk of the Arab world grows more angry, more desperate, and more estranged from those liberal elites with whom Western governments deal most often. .... to be effective, efforts must be concentrated in three areas. The first is on the government-to-government level. As countless U.S. government officials have recognized, the U.S. government cannot go on doing what it has been doing, relegating reform issues to the bottom of a long list of agenda items for bilateral discussions. .... The second is that the U.S. government needs to push consistently and aggressively for greater freedom of association in the Middle East, even for those whose views it finds despicable. .... Some may say things the U.S. government doesnât agree with on issues relating to women, Israel, or any of a number of other issues. The U.S. government needs to abandon the idea that cooperation with an individual or group means embracing their every belief. .... A third area of activity is coordinating more with other countries and groups of countries, particularly the European Union. .... The EU doesnât carry the stigma in the Middle East that U.S. policy does, making it a less threatening actor on the domestic stages of the region. Equally important, however, coordinated pressure and incentives stand a far better change of working than competing ones, diminishing the possibility that targeted countries would seek to play the United States and the European Union off against each other and increasing the likely efficacy of outside efforts. What should one do with Arab liberals in all of this? None of this is to argue that the U.S. government should abandon them or cast them off. They continue to play valuable roles in our society and in their countries of origin. But Americans need to recognize that such liberals are insufficient catalysts for the change that all agree is necessary. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |