THE ARAB BACKLASH

 Editorial de   “The Washington Post” del 10/03/2004

The Bush administration's new democracy initiative for the "greater Middle East" is prompting an animated and occasionally contentious discussion across the region and between Europe and the United States. For a part of the world that has resisted change for decades while breeding poverty, religious extremism and terrorism, that is already progress of a sort. Much of the debate, however, has taken on a disappointingly familiar cast. Entrenched Arab autocrats, such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Syria's Bashar Assad, have tried to stop the initiative by denouncing it as an outside imposition or by claiming that no liberalization is possible before a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- which, they insist, can occur only by outside imposition.

Such decades-old rhetoric is as empty and exhausted as the nationalism and socialism on which the Egyptian and Syrian regimes are based. Yet it has been swallowed and retailed at face value by some European diplomats and Democratic critics of the Bush administration. Their resistance may in part be motivated by election-year partisanship or lingering transatlantic tensions, but it also demonstrates that thinking about the Middle East has ossified outside as well as inside the region. Of course Mr. Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt under emergency law for 23 years, is opposed to the democratization policy -- and would be regardless of how it was put forward, or whether or not peace had arrived between Arabs and Israelis. Far from being an argument against the administration's effort to organize a push for reform by the Group of Eight industrial countries, NATO and the European Union, such obstructionism should make clear why the effort is needed. Unless change is encouraged by the United States and Europe, it will be blocked indefinitely by the strongmen, most of whom depend on Western aid and alliances.

The good news is that many people in the Middle East, and at least some governments, appear ready to embrace the liberalization movement. Some of the smaller Persian Gulf emirates, such as Bahrain, have been supportive. Though more cautious, Jordan and Morocco also accept the idea that reforms must move forward. Even the Arab League, normally ruled by reactionaries, has decided to make reform a centerpiece of its summit meeting this month. Civil society groups around the region are also mobilizing. A regional conference of such groups next week at Egypt's Alexandria Library could produce a call for change. Meanwhile, the administration's proposals for an expanded security relationship between the NATO alliance and the Middle East received a mostly positive response at a meeting in Brussels last week.

Administration officials nevertheless have reacted to the backlash by scaling back some of their ambitions. For example, rather than seek agreement on a "democracy charter" for the Middle East by the G-8 summit in June, the group of rich countries is likely to settle for embracing the agendas that emerge from the Arab summit and other regional meetings. A programmatic proposal being circulated among the G-8 governments is small-bore and familiar, emphasizing training and technical support for existing Arab groups and institutions, rather than promotion of fundamental change. Such a modest start might be worthwhile if it serves as the basis for a broad alliance among the United States, Europe and Arab reformers. Yet the Bush administration will not encourage transformation of the Middle East until it breaks with old-style rulers and old ways of thinking. Until it is prepared to use its considerable leverage with allies such as Mr. Mubarak to promote political freedom, as opposed to stability, its democracy initiative will lack credibility.