The
U.S. needs to discard its
old relationships in the Middle East
By JONATHAN
POWER
October 17, 2001
LONDON - As the bombing progresses the crater America has
dug for itself gets ever bigger. It is not so much that
the bombing has stirred up a hornets' nest in
neighbouring Pakistan where militant fundamentalist
allies of the Taliban and Qaida itch to get control of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, it is that it has
destabilised America's carefully nurtured tight
relationship with the main pillars of the Islamic world -
Saudi Arabia with its massive oil wealth and holy sites,
and Egypt, with its large population and inbred sense of
historical destiny.
If these long-lasting, diplomatically and militarily
tight relationships become undone, then the whole script
of the Middle East story will have to be re-written.
There will be no reliable fixer of the world oil price;
there will be no trustworthy Arab interlocutor with the
Palestinians; Israel will be totally surrounded by
enemies who have lost all patience with its
prevarications; indeed, probably, there will be no one to
hold back the stealthy preparations that both Saudi
Arabia and Egypt have made to go nuclear.
Suddenly, rather late in the day, the shrewder
American commentators have come to see the quandary they
are in. The editor of the International Herald Tribune,
David Ignatius, writes that "the U.S. has the allies it
deserves in the Islamic world". And the New York Times
editorialises that "decades of equivocation and Hobbesian
calculations have left American relations with Saudi
Arabia in an untenable and unreliable state".
The belated awakening of some of the foreign policy
cognoscenti of America to the essential fragility of the
U.S. relationship with the Arab world is long overdue. If
it had been realised earlier the growth of the power of
Osama bin Laden could have been avoided, the
Israeli-Palestian quarrel could be over and done with and
democracy, that fragile desert plant, might have sprouted
a few more leaves.
The essence of the problem is this: while on the one
hand the pro-Western Egyptian and Saudi leadership has
never had any deep sympathy for the fundamentalist
radicals, neither government has ever felt motivated to
shut down or seriously counter their ceaseless propaganda
against Israel and America. Indeed, they have regarded
the wild talk as a safety valve, more acceptable than
calls for more democracy or respect for human rights
within their own political order.
This balancing act - and it was always a precarious
one - could last only as long as there seemed to be
progress on the establishment of a viable Palestinian
state and as long as that day arrived before the
militants had made too many preparations of the kind that
led to September 11th.
But there was always a kind of inevitability about
D-Day. Everyone who followed the Middle East knew about
the growing power of the violent fundamentalists, their
handiwork has been revealed since the days of the Reagan
presidency and his disastrous intervention in the
Lebanon. But Washington, supinely followed by its Nato
allies, always had an interest in, if not suppressing the
evidence of what was afoot, minimising it.
It lived with the ambiguities of the Saudi government,
never contemplating that as long as America guaranteed
the regime's security that Saudi Arabia would ever refuse
it the right to make use of its large and sophisticated
base. It never guessed that Egypt which it has subsidized
since the days of Camp David to the tune of $2 billion a
year would not in America's great hour of need rally
itself to give America cover - a visible Arab military
ally, whose imprimatur would be sufficient to quieten the
anxieties of the rest of the Muslim world.
Instead, America has been left almost naked in its
quest. True enough, the 56-nation Islamic Conference has
roundly condemned the bombing of New York and Washington,
but their statement, if read for what is omitted, is very
much the bare bones of a supportive declaration.
Even in the West, ones senses, for all the rhetoric of
the leadership of Germany and France, a wish by much of
the citizenry to hold back from serious military
involvement. Only Britain has rushed forward, despite
Prime Minister Tony Blair's original conviction that
bombing might be counterproductive.
So now America finds itself far out on the longest of
limbs. Only good fortune can save its immediate face -
the unlikely event that the bombing does "smoke out" bin
Laden. But even his capture would no more end the
terrorism than did the capture and eventual killing of
the great drug baron Pablo Escobar halt the drug
trafficking from Colombia. Like drugs, the problems that
disturb the Middle East are demand led - in this case by
a large, if not yet a majority, slice of Islamic public
opinion.
Undoubtedly, however, his arraignment would give time
for everyone to catch their breath. Yet the bombing
offers only a small chance of such success. Meanwhile,
the longer it continues the more it disturbs and riles
public opinion. The big changes can only be momentarily
deferred. They have to happen sooner or later when sooner
is now and later is three months at the most.
It means that America has for the first time to use
its political and financial muscle to push Israel to
dismantle all its settlements on Palestinian land as a
precursor to a final agreement, not as part of it. It
means that the U.S. and Europe must stop trying to settle
the petrodollar problem by marketing sophisticated
armaments to the Middle East.
Rather they must seek truly rapid ways of cutting down
their dependency on Middle Eastern oil, unshackle
themselves from the unquestioning political support of
these governments and push more openly and honestly for a
marked improvement in human rights practices.
This does not mean not being engaged or friendly with
these governments. Quite the contrary. All out embargoes
never did anyone any good, as relations with both Iraq
and Iran have shown. (If and when sanctions are used they
must be used with discrimination and care, primarily
aimed at the military sector.)
None of this will mean that the bitter spirits of
Osama bin Laden will go away. But it will drain the swamp
in which his mosquitoes hatch. As for him, he should be
pursued with the same diligence that the Israelis once
hounded Adolf Eichmann. With quiet police work not noisy
war work.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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