BEIRUT — I heard about the death of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara this week just as I was researching two different news events: the fresh American and NATO military offensive in Afghanistan, and the Byzantine backroom negotiations among Lebanese, Syrians, Saudi Arabians and maybe even a few stray Michael Jackson fans to form the next Lebanese government. The moment was ironic for highlighting a perpetual reality of world politics: Countries try to influence each other by using various combinations of military force and political negotiations, with mixed results over time.

In later years, McNamara genuinely anguished over the cost of the Vietnam War that he was so instrumental in managing during the period 1961-1968. I was at university in the United States in 1966-68, and followed events there with fascination as the power of the American military was slowly neutralized by the determination of North and South Vietnamese fighters and the skepticism of American citizens. Over 58,000 Americans would die in that war. We learned later that McNamara had concluded even while serving at the Pentagon that the war was futile. Only in the mid-1990s would he admit in public that the war was “wrong, terribly wrong.”

So what does this have to do with Afghanistan, Lebanon and Syria? It reminds us that countries everywhere feel they have the right to use all available means to protect their national interest or extend their influence — and they use very different means to achieve those ends. The fact that the United States today has several hundred thousand troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with dozens of new military basis throughout the Middle East and Asia, suggests that Washington is slow to absorb the lessons of McNamara’s life. Foreign troops in distant lands tend to generate resistance among the natives, not acquiescence. The foreigners also always leave at some point, reverting the local terrain to the indigenous players to battle it out for power.

In the universal quest for answers on how major powers achieve influence or protect their national interests in distant lands, McNamara’s life and policies were inconclusive. They provided only a costly lesson in failed policies, more unanswered questions, and a gripping tale of one man’s tortured attempt to come to grips with his own moral responsibilities.

Negotiating power relationships in the Middle East is a very different process, offering a southwest Asian counterpoint to the Southeast Asian lessons from the Vietnam War. Syrian influence in Lebanon is an important example of how neighbors try to influence each other. Syria’s military dominance and control of Lebanon for a quarter century ended ignominiously in 2005, with both a Lebanese popular uprising and a unanimous UN Security Council resolution making it clear that Syria’s rule over Lebanon was no longer acceptable.

Damascus — ancient and Middle Eastern — understands power and its shifting realities. Syrian troops left Lebanon four years ago, but Syrian influence remains a constant factor. How Damascus tries to exercise that influence, after its army left Lebanon, now evolves in a manner that Robert McNamara would never have understood.

It seems outrageous that the formation of a Lebanese government should depend so much on Syrian-Saudi Arabian relations, or sensibilities in Tehran, Washington, Paris, Tel Aviv or Cairo. It is Lebanon’s harsh fate to be the proxy chessboard and battlefield for Middle Eastern and world powers. So both waging war and forming a government after a lively election tend to be exercises in regional and global power politics.

Syria has core national interests in Lebanon that it defines in a combination of strategic, commercial and emotional terms, most of which are widely disputed by a majority of Lebanese who seek normal, friendly ties with their large neighbor. Some Syrian interests are valid, reflecting uncomfortable historical realities — such as preventing Beirut from being a hotbed of anti-Syrian plots, a global springboard for anti-Syrian pressure, or a local conduit for Israeli machinations.

Syrian and Saudi contacts, among others, to shape the new Lebanese cabinet reflect a much wider dynamic than merely protecting one’s real national interests or narrow selfish ambitions. Four principal regional powers — Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — are engaged in a lively but secretive process to influence the formation of the Lebanese cabinet. This process can be seen as either a delicate diplomatic dance, or a crude case of national smash ball. A new, credible, legitimate and determined Lebanese prime minister-designate, Saad Hariri, is working overtime to form a government that subtly acknowledges the sentiments and interests of these regional players, while restoring core legitimacy and independence to the battered Lebanese governance system. He, now, is the latest novice who learns how to dance and smash, in the timeless game of negotiating power relationships.

Remembering McNamara’s ways half a century ago and watching Hariri’s deliberations today should remind us that military power, political legitimacy and national influence are three different things — beautiful when they converge, and catastrophic when they collide.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 08 July 2009
Word Count: 820
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ROME — One of the big questions that will be with us for some time is about how countries around the world, especially the United States and other Western democracies, should deal with the government and ruling elite in Iran. This follows international condemnation of the regime’s behavior in falsifying the presidential election results and then harshly ending the street demonstrations that broke out in protest.

This is understandable, but slightly hypocritical, which is nothing new in how Western democracies deal with Middle Eastern autocracies. I and many others in the region do not quite understand why the United States and the West rightly debate how to deal with Iran, while they make no parallel effort to explore options on how to deal with the many other countries in the region and the world that apply the same tough standards of state heavy-handedness, rigged or no elections, and harsh means to control what people think, hear and say.

Two important issues are at play here. The first is the problem of double standards, of making a big show of how one should interact with Iran while simultaneously ignoring the anti-democratic behavior of most other countries in the Middle East or dictatorial states like North Korea and Burma. Probably the most common criticism of Western powers from around the world is that they often apply two different standards to countries that act in the same manner, such as rigging elections, ignoring UN resolutions, or restricting their citizens’ basic freedoms. Many will ask: Why the fuss over Iranian electoral and human rights abuses, when the same or very similar behavior in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Libya, Sudan and other countries in the Middle East is quietly ignored?

The second and more significant issue here is about how foreign countries, especially the United States and leading Western democracies, can and should behave in the face of blatant abuse of power and suppression of citizens’ rights in countries like Iran. There is not much to debate here, in view of recent history. The best way to deal with regimes you do not like is to engage and challenge them through diplomacy. Isolating and punishing governments via sanctions has limited or no impact. The more the West pressured or threatened Iran, using the legitimacy of the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the more Iran dug in and speeded up its nuclear technology development.

One of the important lessons of the past decade has been about the limits of the use of both military and political force to bring about changes in the behavior of regimes. Governments that want to stand their ground in the face of Western pressure — such as Iran and Syria — indicate that threats and sanctions are incapable of achieving the sort of regime policy changes that Western powers seek. This question now arises again even more dramatically with Iran. Should the United States and the Western world punish and isolate Iran, or continue to negotiate with it?

On a speaking visit to the NATO Defense College in Rome this week, I was not surprised that this issue surfaced repeatedly. The colonels and generals from NATO countries, in their relaxed academic setting that fosters reflection and analysis, seemed to echo the more frenzied posture of their politicians back home in asking how one should deal with Iran.

NATO, in particular, has the advantage of its members’ own experiences in how they resolved this issue in their confrontation with the Soviet Union decades ago. The Soviet Union was a police state of epic and tragic proportions, which used force to suppress its citizens’ rights and also to subjugate neighboring countries. It was far more dangerous than Iran can ever be. Yet the West correctly adopted a combination of approaches that included fighting wars through proxies around the world, applying diplomatic pressure, waging propaganda media battles, and engaging deeply in diplomatic endeavors.

The most important of the latter was the East-West process of détente that started in the early 1970s, including the launch of the “Helsinki process” to establish a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Thirty-five countries in August 1975 signed the Helsinki Final Act. It included three “baskets” dealing with political relations (including outlawing the use of force and prohibiting intervention in the internal affairs of any state) economics and environment, and “cooperation in humanitarian and other fields” that promoted greater people-to-people contacts. A decade and a half later, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Iran is ripe for change from within, as we have witnessed in the past decade, through several elections and now in the behavior of many brave street demonstrators. Negotiating with Iran cannot be any more difficult than it was with the Soviet Union. So why the hesitancy — and the anguished, hypocritical debate in the West?

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 July 2009
Word Count: 804
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BEIRUT — What is the most significant development now underway in the Middle East? Hint: It’s not the events in Iran, or the American troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities, or efforts to re-launch Arab-Israeli peace talks — important as these may be. Given the political realities that have defined the modern Middle East and maintained its destructive legacy of widespread and chronic autocracy, political violence and insecurity, the development that could change history for the better in our region is taking place quietly and slowly in Turkey. Broadly, it is the gradual control of the military by the elected civilian government. More specifically these days, it is the current discussion among the leading political parties in parliament to amend the constitution to allow the trials of military officers who carried out coups that toppled elected civilian governments in the recent past.

I am impressed by the historic consequences of the continuing, slow motion civilian control of the Turkish military because it represents the only instance where the power  of military, police, and intelligence-security agencies is being checked by democratically-elected civilian authorities. This is important because the single most debilitating and retarding influence on the development of peaceful, prosperous and secure societies in our region has been the lack of accountable, effective governance systems — which is due mainly to the dominance of autocratic leaders linked to military and security authorities. The vicious circle must be broken, if our societies are to aspire to any kind of normal life.

Having civilians — rather than military officers — running governments is crucial if we are to overcome the various sources of national tension and distortion throughout our region, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, foreign interference, natural resource imbalances, ethnic strife, as well as economic mismanagement and corruption. As long as security agencies and generals run our countries, we will never enjoy stable governance systems based on credible forms of representation, pluralism, and accountability.

The Turkish transition to a stable democracy in the past dozen years has been fascinating and important for many reasons. I believe the single most important one has been the gradual assertion of power by the elected civilian government, and the armed forces’ slow retreat to their barracks to play their important role of protecting the country, rather than running it.

Now, an even more significant step is about to be taken, as the parliament ponders amending the constitution so that military generals who led a 1980 coup against an elected government can be put on trial. This is important because it would offer a degree of home-grown, civilian, judicial accountability for the armed forces that would be both legitimate and democratic. It would provide an example of how Middle Eastern countries could control the behavior of their military and security sectors, and end the impunity that armed forces, police forces and intelligence agencies now enjoy in doing virtually anything they want within their borders, without constraints and accountability.

Holding military officers accountable for overthrowing a civilian government would be refreshing, and an important precedent. It would provide the only kind of deterrent — home-grown constraints and legal accountability — that would possibly sustain long-term development of rational, stable, humane government systems in the Middle East. Foreign invasions, coups and street agitation will occasionally change governments and rulers, but they generally do not generate the kind of indigenous constraints on abuse of power that are effective and legitimate. Putting generals on trial for overthrowing an elected government would do that, and would probably reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the chances of other power-hungry autocrats trying to seize power unconstitutionally. Generals are usually very smart, and they react rationally to legitimate power that is used to generate stability.

The constitutional amendment issue is one of several dramas being played out in Turkey these days between the civilian elected government and the armed forces. Another pertains to accusations that some people in the military continue to plan coups or destabilizing acts against the elected government. How these two issues resolve themselves will be historically important for the entire Middle East. They might help end the legacy of out-of-control military, police and security systems that have long dominated the modern states of the Middle East, resulting in the dysfunctional nature of many of these states that are little more than graveyards for human rights, constitutionalism and respect for the dignity and rights of citizens.

The Arab world has not always had a happy history with Turkey. But in this case, this Arab is cheering on the Turks and wishing them strength and success in achieving what the rest of us in the Middle East have failed to do: assert civilian control over our police, intelligence and military sectors, rather than allow them to run our societies and define the limits of what citizens can do and think.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 July 2009
Word Count: 803
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BEIRUT — The stark contrast between the street demonstrations in Iran in the past two weeks and the absence of any such popular revolts in the Arab world during the past half-century is more than just fascinating in terms of political anthropology. A major question that hangs over the Arab world like a ton of bricks is: Why do the top-heavy, non-democratic political control and governance systems of the Arab world persist without any significant popular opposition or public challenge?

The events in Iran — the second major popular rebellion in the past 30 years — accentuate the relative quiescence in the Arab world, but this is not for lack of grievances among Arabs. The same pressures and indignities that annoy many Iranians and push them to openly challenge their rulers are prevalent throughout much of the Arab world:
• abuse of power by a self-contained ruling elite,
• absence of meaningful political accountability,
• dominance of the power structure by security-military organs,
• prevalent corruption and financial abuse,
• mediocre economic management,
• enforced leadership hero-worshiping and personality cults,
• strict social controls — especially on the young and women.

Only once has a popular revolt forced a change of government in the Arab world, which was the 1985 overthrow of Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiry. All other coups and regime changes in the Arab world have been the work of a small number of military officers or foreign governments. Mass Arab uprisings have occurred against foreign occupation or domination, such as the two Palestinian intifadas against Israeli occupation, the anti-Syrian uprising in Lebanon in 2005, and assorted anti-colonial rebellions. Small militant groups have also challenged Arab regimes — such as violent Islamists in Syria, Egypt and Algeria in the 1980s and 90s — but were always beaten down.

The sheer power of police and security organizations is not a sufficient explanation of Arab popular passivity, because angry populations around the world have confronted and toppled equally powerful security forces, such as the Shah’s Iran or most of the East European Soviet states. Lack of courage also is not a satisfying explanation, either, because Arab men and women throughout the region have defied and confronted their governments in many ways over the past half century — yet always falling short of taking to the streets in mass demonstrations aimed at toppling the regime.

One of the possible explanations is that angry or frustrated Arab men and women do not relate to their central government in the same way that Iranians do (or Turks, also). Indignant Iranians or Turks who are fed up with their government’s abuse of power demand a change in government behavior, and use available means to bring about that change. Arabs in a similar situation seem to largely ignore their governments, and instead set up parallel structures in society that offer them the same practical and intangible services that central governments normally provide in more coherent countries.

Massive movements of discontented citizens throughout the Arab world have channeled their energy into several arenas that coexist in parallel with the state. These include Islamist and other religious movements, tribal structures, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to a lesser extent. Some of these movements, like Hizbullah and Hamas, grew briskly and have become parallel states in every respect, including military power, social services, economic clout, and international diplomatic engagement.

One possible explanation for why discontented Iranians or Turks try to capture and reconfigure their state governance machinery, while Arabs tend to avoid it and simply build their own parallel structures, may have to do with the most basic factors of nation and state legitimacy, efficacy and credibility. Iran and Turkey enjoy powerful, ancient legitimacy as nation-states, while most Arab countries do not, because most of them are modern creations of brazen, slightly eccentric, Euro-colonialists.

Rather than wanting to manage the very difficult socio-economic challenges that define countries like Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Algeria and Sudan, it is much more attractive for discontented political and social movements to carve out a space for themselves in society, mostly ignore the central government, and get on with the business of catering to the needs of their constituents. Consequently, central governments in most Arab countries beyond the oil states are finding that their impact and footprint in society are slowly narrowing, in line with their often-diminished legitimacy. Arab regimes to a large extent are not being challenged by their own people, they are being contained and shrunk.

It is possible that the lack of popular Arab revolts against the state is less a comment on the passive nature of Arab citizenship and political psyche, and more a comment on the declining allure of the prize of political incumbency in Arab state governance systems whose impact and legitimacy continue to fray at the edges, and that cater to a smaller and smaller constituency of true believers at their core.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 June 2009
Word Count: 802
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AMMAN/BEIRUT — I started writing this column Sunday in Amman, Jordan, and finished writing it Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon — a short journey that captured how the dynamic events in Iran are playing out in very different ways in a largely passive and vulnerable Arab world. Jordan and Lebanon capture the two extremes of the Arab world, including pro-American and pro-Iranian sentiments, Islamists, monarchists, and an assortment of tribal, Arab nationalist, state-centered and democratic values.

All of them, without exception, react to events in Iran with fascination, confusion, and concern, reflecting self-inflicted political incoherence and mediocrity that are hallmarks of the modern Arab world. Broadly speaking, the Arab world has maneuvered itself into a lose-lose situation vis-à-vis developments in Iran, despite different views of the Islamic Republic.

The uncomfortable common denominator is that for both the people and the ruling power elites of the Arab world, whatever happens in Iran will largely be perceived negatively by the majority in our region. This is a sad commentary on the condition of Arab political culture, which remains autocratic and rigid at the top, and passive and frustrated at the grassroots.

Most Arab regimes do not like Iran or even fear it, because of its capacity to inspire revolutionary Islamism or at least mildly insurrectionary movements within Arab countries. A few Arab leaders even speak of Iran’s predatory or hegemonic ambitions in the Gulf region, Lebanon, Iraq and other lands. Only isolated pockets of power in the Arab world like or support the Iranian regime, including Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and some other Islamist or nationalist forces. Yet even the few isolated exceptions like Hamas and Hizbullah that have effectively carved out small domains of their own sovereignty are in an uncomfortable zone regarding events in Iran.

Arab public opinion, for its part, views Iran with much more nuance. Many Arabs cheered the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah 30 years ago, and continue to enjoy Iran’s defiance of the United States, Israel, UN sanctions and conservative Arab leaderships. Others in the Arab world see the Iranian Islamic revolution as a nasty export commodity that only spells trouble for Arab societies. Places like Lebanon and Palestine, especially, are offered the unattractive option of perpetual warfare with Israel, which entails the regular destruction of swaths of their society.

The irony today is that the Iranian regime and its policies are viewed very differently throughout the Arab world; but removing or reconfiguring the Islamic regime through street demonstrations or even through democratic elections seems problematic for virtually everyone in Arab society.

Most Arab governments dislike the current Iranian regime, so you would think they would be pleased to see it toppled, or tempered by its own people. Yet, if such change were to occur through street demonstrations choreographed via a web of digital communications, whispered messages, and rooftop religious chants in the middle of the night, Arab leaders of autocratic regimes would be unhappy — because they would sense their own vulnerability to similar mass political challenges. The fact is not lost on anyone that the Iranian regime effectively withstood and defied American-Israeli-European-UN pressure, threats and sanctions for years, but found itself much more vulnerable to the spontaneous rebellion of many of its own citizens who felt degraded by the falsification of election results by the government.

(An intriguing side note: Events inside Iran picked up steam at the same time as the Iranian presidential elections coincided with the Obama administration’s change of policy — as Washington backed off the threats and aggressiveness of the Bush years — and offered to engage with Iran on the basis of mutual respect. Would a more detached US policy towards Arab autocrats similarly open space for Arab domestic effervescence and indigenous calls for more liberal, honest politics?)

Arab regimes and leaders have worked themselves into a lose-lose situation whereby they would be unhappy if the Iranian regime stayed in power, and unhappy if it were removed through popular challenge. The same awkwardness defines the perspectives of Arab citizens. Most Arabs do not want to live in an Iranian-style political system that blends theocracy with autocracy; but many were pleased to see the pro-American Shah overthrown by Quran-carrying demonstrators. They would also be unhappy to see the Iranian regime overthrown because they enjoy its defiance of the United States, Israel and the UN in particular, along with its development of a nuclear capability.

At the same time, ordinary Arabs would feel jealous were the demonstrators in Iran able to topple their regime for the second time in 30 years — because this would highlight the chronic passivity and powerlessness of Arab citizens who must suffer permanent subjugation in their own long-running autocratic systems without being able to do anything about it. Whether Iranian street demonstrations challenged the Shah or the Islamists who toppled him, Arabs watch all this on television with a forlorn envy.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 June 2009
Word Count: 808
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BEIRUT — The ongoing street protests and other political events in Iran have generated massive amounts of speculation in the Middle East and abroad about the real nature and significance of what is taking place. Learned scholars, experienced diplomats, and others with little knowledge of Iran or the region have made their views known, usually on the basis of speculation and assumptions rather than clear facts that reflect access to the people in Iran driving the events on the ground. No problem: Historic developments are large political barns, accommodating a wide range of beasts.

Iran today is profoundly important, if still imprecise in its outcome. This is uncharted territory to a great extent in the context of contemporary Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah. It is perfectly routine behavior, though, in the wider context of human beings who do not like being treated like idiots by their own government, and resist the process when it takes place. Over and over, in lands around the world, human beings who are grossly mistreated by their own government eventually stand up and refuse to take it any more.

The phenomenon of hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in defiance of their government’s orders has occurred in many places in recent decades: Iran, the Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine, and other lands where dictators were forced to leave office by popular demand. The latest manifestation of this in Iran today is linked to the widely contested results of the presidential election. But that is incidental — just the trigger that shoots us into a wider world of political action. Everyone knows that the Iranian president is not the seat of power, and who wins the election for president is of little real consequence in Iran‘s controlled system.

The protests are not primarily about the election results per se, but rather about the indignities that ordinary men and women feel at the hands of their own government. The Iranians who are protesting are mostly younger people who were born after the 1979 Islamic revolution, so they do not always share the reverence for the revolutionary elite that continues to dominate the centers of power in the country.

Younger Iranians are the latest generation of Middle Easterners who are demanding that they be treated as citizens who have rights and as human beings who have a sense of dignity. They do not particularly care what the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says, and so they will likely keep protesting what they believe was government heavy-handedness in announcing the results of the presidential election in a manner that treated them like simpletons and chattel. They were made to feel that they participated in a farce, and normal human beings generally do not like to be humiliated like that.

The levers of economic, military, ideological, bureaucratic, and police power are very tightly controlled by the existing elite in Iran, which makes the protests all the more remarkable. The potential for significant ramifications in Iran and the wider Middle East is great, given the role that Iran plays throughout the region. Of the two most significant events that impacted on the entire Middle East in the last two generations — the Arab loss in the June 1967 war and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 — the Iranian revolution has probably had wider and greater impact in the long run. Iran impacts on many parts of the region, because of its ideological influence and logistical support to Islamist movements in the Arab world, combined with its leadership of the “resistance front” of regional forces that defy and challenge the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.

If Iran once again sets the standard for mass political protest or even revolutionary change, the impact throughout the Middle East is likely to be enormous. Arabs will not feel comfortable seeing the Iranian people twice in 30 years fearlessly challenging their own autocratic regimes, while the people of the Arab world meekly acquiesce in equally non-democratic and top-heavy political systems that treat their own people as unthinking fools who can be perpetually abused with sham elections and other forms of exploitation.

The particulars of the Iranian situation these days are specific to Iran’s political culture, where a secretive ruling elite seems to suffer serious ideological rifts, and a major generation gap is also coming into play. The spontaneous mass defiance of the ruling power structure, though, is not Iran-specific. If this turns out to be a serious challenge to the very legitimacy of the Islamic Republic’s system of government, rather than a narrow protest about the presidential election, we should not be surprised to see the Iranian precedent spilling over into other, Arab, parts of the Middle East, in a way that the 1979 Islamic revolution did not.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 June 2009
Word Count: 800
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BEIRUT — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech Sunday outlining his views on Arab-Israeli peace-making offered nothing new, which is why it is an important challenge for the Arab world, which deserves more than perfunctory rejection. Netanyahu reiterated core, hardline Zionist positions that most of the world finds unreasonable, and that most of the Arab world finds racist — giving Israeli Jews greater primacy or rights over Palestinian-Arab Christians and Muslims.

In demanding that the Arabs guarantee a priori that the state of Israel is Jewish, secure, and militarily more powerful than its neighbors, Netanyahu has given a speech couched in biblical criteria and dimensions. He wants Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa to guarantee for the Jewish-Israelis today what God promised the ancient Hebrews in the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Exodus and Numbers: eternal, exclusive, pure, powerful, secure statehood in a land owned by others that will be miraculously ethnically cleansed with Divine mandate and legitimacy, to make room for a Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s speech was aimed at two primary and two secondary audiences: primarily, US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu’s own right-wing coalition government partners, and, secondarily, public opinion in the Arab world and Israel. The two important battles he faces are to hold together his rightwing coalition in Israel and to maintain the close US-Israeli strategic relationship. He outlined positions that he thinks will achieve this goal, and he has probably correctly read the pressures on him in both cases. He also totally ignored the rest of Arab and Israeli public opinion, in the best manner practiced by both professional politicians who care only for their incumbency, and arrogant nationalist-supremacists who view their people’s rights as being superior to other people’s rights.

Netanyahu did not offer plausible peace conditions, but merely offered to enter into a protracted negotiating process that he knows will not go anywhere due to his very harsh opening position. The idea that his “acceptance” of a Palestinian state is a breakthrough or a major step forward, as many in the West have described it, combines insult and ignominy. The imbalance in national and individual rights Netanyahu ascribes to Israel and the hypothetical Palestinian “state” is so severe in Israel’s favor that talk of a “two-state” solution becomes comical, and should be more accurately described as “slave statehood.”

Netanyahu would like us to spend years discussing what Israel means when it says it will live with a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel, a priori, as a Jewish state, accepts continued growth of Zionist colonies, and does not insist on the 1948 Palestinian refugees having their right of return recognized. These are not new positions. Previous Israeli governments have negotiated on the basis of two states being the outcome of the negotiations.

Netanyahu now wants the Arabs and the world to accept Israel’s preconditions as the starting point for talks, and he will use the American insistence on freezing all settlement activity as a key negotiating card to win concessions on other issues, especially refugees. He will also try to get us to engage in an endless round of talks that will either repeat the fruitless cycle we have experienced from the Madrid talks in 1992 until today, or wear down the Arab side until we surrender.

Neither of these options will happen, which is why the Netanyahu speech is important. It clarifies the official Israeli position, which is at great odds with the Palestinian-Arab position, and at some odds with the American position as articulated by Obama. Much faster than was expected, within just five months of Obama’s inauguration we witness important potential turning points in the Middle East. US-Israeli positions are diverging on some issues, like settlements, as Washington seems serious about renewing its role as a mediator in order to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, permanently and comprehensively.

If the US and Israeli positions are more clear, the Arab position is not. As long as the Arab world merely rejects Israeli positions, calls on the United States to do more, and sits around waiting for others to rescue us from our own diplomatic incompetence, we should not be surprised to hear the kinds of things we heard from Netanyahu last Sunday. The Americans have declared their intent to re-engage. The Israelis have declared their intent to dig in and cement their supremacist and colonial ways. The Arabs have declared nothing other than repeating old positions that have impressed and moved nobody.

The combination of the new American posture in the Middle East and the reaffirmation of hardline Israeli positions should be an opportunity for the Arab world to work more seriously than before in generating momentum for progress towards a negotiated peace, in a manner more eloquent and effective than merely rejecting Zionism’s colonial ways.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 June 2009
Word Count: 797
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BEIRUT — One of the fascinating developments taking place before our eyes these days is the evolution of American power and presence in the Middle East — though it remains to be seen if this is a truly constructive change in policy or merely a temporary cosmetic repackaging of failed old ways. Nevertheless, two important points should be noted: American power is a constant factor in the Middle East, regardless of whether one likes or dislikes how it is applied; public perceptions of the United States throughout the Middle East are not fixed in stone, but rather respond in tandem to evolving American policies.

Changes in American policies and rhetoric are already triggering intriguing responses from different parts of the Middle East, as we can see in four separate issues: Lebanon, Palestine-Israel, Iran, and American attitudes toward Islam and Muslims.

Many analysts have suggested that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo a week ago played a role in promoting the ascendancy of “moderate” or “pro-Western” voters in the elections in Lebanon and Iran this week. There is a link for sure, but I suspect the cause-and-effect relationship is the opposite of what many American and Arab commentators are saying.

If we look at public opinion in this region and the policies and words of the US leadership, we find that change has occurred first and more clearly in the United States than it has in the Middle East. The more accommodating tone and some adjusted policies by the new US administration are largely a response to realities on the ground.

The signs of change are real, if still limited in scope: Sending rhetorical love notes to Iran — and dropping uranium enrichment-linked preconditions on talks with Iran — sending envoys to Syria, lowering the rhetoric on Hizbullah in Lebanon, speaking out forcefully on the unacceptability of continued Israeli settlement activity, and making dramatic public diplomacy gestures on American relations with Islamic societies.

Sincere people can disagree on whether the changes in US policy are a sensible reconfiguration reflecting acknowledgment that the old policies did not work in America’s interest, or are a response to the widespread opposition to the United States that defines large swaths of public opinion in our region. My guess is that it is a combination of the two.

A more realistic, less ideological bunch of political managers in Washington surveyed US policy in the Middle East, saw it was not working well, and recognized the ability and willingness of people and governments throughout the region to stand up to the United States and its proxies. So they started to make changes that could respond more rationally to the interests of the United States as well as the principal parties in the region — namely the Arabs, Iran, Turkey and Israel.

As the United States started to adjust its rhetoric and policies, people and governments in the Middle East reciprocated the capacity to act sensibly. Even Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, in his statements in Cairo earlier this week, acknowledged the new tone in Washington’s language and approach, and spoke more about diplomatic possibilities than eternal resistance.

In Lebanon, where the US-backed March 14 alliance won last week’s parliamentary elections, analysts disagree on whether Obama’s lofty and loving rhetoric on Islam and Arab-Israeli peace-making played a role in the victory. My sense of US attitudes toward Lebanon is that both the Obama speech and the recent virtual visits to Beirut by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden revealed a clear toning down of public rhetoric against Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. As the United States changed its attitude toward Iran and Syria and started talking to them, it also pulled back to some extent from its brass knuckles-style diplomacy of threats and dire warnings in Lebanon.

A more relaxed regional context in which, most notably, the United States, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia spent more time recently exploring diplomatic opportunities — rather than plotting new bombing targets and sanctions — has triggered both the toned down rhetoric from Washington and the revived dynamism of centrist politics in the Arab world and Iran. (Though as I write, Iran appears to be producing an Iranian version of the 2000 US election.) Life on the edge, in a world of perpetual brinksmanship and confrontation, has proven both uncomfortable, and widely unsustainable, for most players in the Middle East. So, wisely they are exploring other ways.

It is comforting to witness the capacity for real change in the United States and among Arabs. It is also refreshing to hear so many in the region wonder whether the softer, gentler Obama approach is eliciting reciprocal common sense from different parts of the Middle East. Transformative moments like this remind us how important it is to acknowledge two key realities: public opinion, popular perceptions and foreign policies are intimately linked in a perpetual embrace that sees them evolve together, and, it is both immature and inaccurate to ascribe all good or bad things to one side or the other.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 June 2009
Word Count: 828
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BEIRUT — We can draw many lessons from the Lebanese parliamentary elections Sunday, which saw the selection of a new parliament reflecting almost precisely the same distribution of seats among the country’s two main political groupings as the pervious parliament (68 seats for the Hariri-led March 14 movement, 57 seats for the Hizbullah-Michel Aoun-led March 8 group, and three independents). Here are my conclusions about what happened and what it means:

1. The elections were important, but inconsequential. Why an individual, a party, or an ethnic-religious group decides to vote for one side or the other is endlessly fascinating and constantly evolving. It is also totally meaningless in Lebanon’s case, because the whole is more important than its parts. Power, governance and decision-making in Lebanon are defined by the crushing imperative of consensus-based rule, which means that any combination of majorities and minorities will always need to achieve consensus on major national decisions; drivers change, but the engine of this bus does not.

2. After Turkey, Lebanon becomes the second Muslim-majority country in the Middle East that can boast holding elections combining logistical efficiency with political credibility, including some surprise results that could not be predicted. Three cheers for Lebanese parliamentary elections.

3. None of this really mattered much, however, because the balance of power in Lebanon (as in the entire Arab world) is not really anchored in parliament, but in power relations that are negotiated elsewhere. The most important political contest in Lebanon happened in May 2008, not June 2009. Hizbullah and its armed allies won that brief battle on the streets, and power-sharing contours in Lebanon have been defined ever since. This is ugly stuff — young men shooting RPG’s at each other in the city and mountain villages — but in the Middle East the modern exercise of power, like the condition of most Arab statehood, consistently has been a messy endeavor.

4. The elections generate validity and credibility, not ideological triumph. The March 14 movement affirmed that its core values reflect those of about half the population of Lebanon — though precisely what those values are remains slightly imprecise. Much of the movement’s success reflects its opposition to the March 8 forces that include backing from Syria, Iran, Islamists and others in the region who are often critical of the United States, Israel and conservative Arabs. We always knew that March 14 represented many Lebanese; now we also have proof that it is resilient and strong. But we do not know what it represents in ideological terms other than opposing the Hizbullah-Aoun alliance.

5. We have seen again that tribe triumphs policy. The massive turnout of Sunni voters seems to have been one of the decisive reasons for the March 14 victory. This is perfectly normal and legitimate; but it tells us more about the anthropology of blood ties among the human species than it does about the contestation of power in a modern society. Faced with a do-or-die scenario, March 14 and its Sunni core rose to the electoral and tribal challenge.

6. Swift-boating is universal. Just as George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004 by tarnishing him as a coward in the Swift boat incident in Vietnam decades ago, March 14 successfully frightened many voters with its theme that a Hizbullah-Aoun victory would dry up Saudi and American financial support for Lebanon and bring the economy to a grinding halt.

7. All politics in Lebanon is local, regional, global and cosmic. March 14 won and March 8 did not do as well as the pre-vote polls predicted because of a neat convergence of: a) local identities (Sunni, Shiite, assorted Christians, Druze, Armenian) battling to claim their share of the national pie in parliament, b) regional Arab players (mainly Saudi Arabia and Syria, and Egypt slightly) exerting their influence through their respective Lebanese partners and proxies, c) non-Arab regional and foreign forces (Iran, the United States, France, Israel) also backing their favorites, and, d) cosmic forces in the form of the Maronite church hierarchy constantly advocating for righteousness among voting Lebanese that would accurately mirror God’s will on Earth.

8. Key regional and global players started speaking and negotiating with each other in the past year, rather than using threats and subversion as their main form of engagement, which lowered regional tensions and thus prompted some Lebanese to see their future as one of calm, security and prosperity. It is a mistake to see the election results as mainly an American triumph or Iranian defeat, though elements of those views are relevant. Unraveling the distinct local, regional, global and cosmic strands of this election offer a better conclusion than a simplistic United States vs. Iran approach.

9. Fatigue matters. Some independent or undecided Lebanese voters clearly remembered the 2006 war, the 2007 Gaza war, and the May 2008 fighting in Lebanon, and did not want to put the country on a permanent diet of confrontation, bickering, resistance, warfare and destruction. March 14 successfully presented itself as the antidote to perpetual war.

10. The relative decline of Michael Aoun’s movement, while the Hariri-led, Sunni-based Future Movement and Shiite-anchored Hizbullah both held their ground or improved, suggests that tribes and triumphant armed movements will always out-perform one-man shows. Aoun is a historic phenomenon that may or may not persist. Shiites and Sunnis competing to preserve their communal power will be forces in Lebanon for a long time.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 10 June 2009
Word Count: 897
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BEIRUT — President Barack Obama in Cairo Thursday provided a combination Bible and Quran class mixed in with some American civics lessons — a touching, sincere performance that gets high marks for boldness and empathy, but nevertheless leaves a lingering hollowness in some areas.

We should judge him by his intentions, measured by what can emanate from a single speech. In this respect, there is good news and bad news. The good news reflects a new approach and a change in tone, rhetoric and style, offering some hope where haplessness and hypocrisy once ruled Washington’s work in the Middle East.

Obama sketched out a series of issues — including Arab-Israeli peace, democracy, Iraq, development, political violence, women, pluralism — that are important to Arabs and Muslims. He grasped the grievances of ordinary men and women, and captured the nuanced, multi-sectoral realities of our societies. He spoke of our worlds as they are, not as Fox television, Israeli zealots, or Neo-conservative simpletons try to paint us.

Most significantly, his acknowledging our historical grievances about the conduct of Western powers in our region — colonialism, exploitative proxy relationships, the 1953 coup in Iran — and tacitly admitting past culpability, are tremendously important for removing the burdens of the past and starting afresh in our relations.

He also articulated virtually equal national rights for Israelis and Palestinians. He asked both sides simultaneously to move on their commitments to making peace (i.e., guaranteeing Israel’s security on its own is no longer the starting point for talks), and he reaffirmed his personal involvement in this quest. His comments on Hamas will be seen correctly as the start of an American public dialogue with Hamas, which is welcomed. Equally heartening was his pledge to work with any democratically elected government that respected all its citizens’ rights — a possible quiet nod to Hizbullah and Hamas.

Framing his entire approach was his plea and pledge that we listen and learn from each other, and interact on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect. This is why we love American values, which we mostly encounter in our societies on the level of words.

The bad news is that none of this is really new; he offered no substantive indication of whether this declaration of principles of American policy would be followed up with practical policy implementations; he continues to reflect basic contradictions and insensitivities in some aspects of American policies towards the Arab-Islamic world; and, he persists in allowing Osama Bin Laden to drive Washington’s agenda, which is obsessed with “Islam” at the expense often of pursuing sensible policies.

The core weakness of Obama’s speech and approach is his continuing confusion between religion and politics. He eloquently spoke of the place of Islam and Muslims in American society and history and his own life story — which is impressive, but totally irrelevant. We who know and love both societies also know that Islam and America are soul brothers, a religion and a country deeply linked through values and faith. He wastes our time and his in preaching on this. He would do better to focus on the policy issues that are the cause of tensions between American policy and many Muslims, i.e., the foreign policy of a country and the sentiments and rights of individuals in other countries. Here, we need action, not just fine rhetoric — but it sure is nice to hear positive, sensitive, comprehensive rhetoric for a change.

It is awkward for Obama to make violent extremism the number one issue in a list of challenges in a speech about and for the Islamic world. An absolute commitment to equal rights and justice as the number one issue would have been smoother. Similarly, mentioning Iran only in the context of the nuclear proliferation threat was un-cool.

Obama joins Jimmy Carter as the only American president since Kennedy who speaks from the heart, and whose sincerity is beyond doubt. His mentioning the American civil rights movement as an example of how nonviolent resistance can succeed was powerful and pertinent — perhaps though, we receive it slightly differently than he meant it. His sincere review of the principles the United States will pursue in the Arab-Islamic world appears to the Arab world today the way the US Constitution did to African-Americans in 1956: a stunning commitment to human rights and values that is grievously contradicted by realities on the ground.

The fact that almost every fine principle articulated by Obama in Cairo was contradicted by harsh American policies throughout the region should not detract from the importance of his visit or the potential power of the ideas in his speech. Washington’s hard policies still smother its soft power out here in the swamp. Obama’s speech in diplomatic terms was more than putting lipstick on a pig — perhaps closer to aftershave lotion on a camel.

He sought a new beginning, though, which we all badly need. So let’s now put away the Bible and Quran classes, and get down to the tough business of forging better policies. Obama’s gesture deserves return gestures of equal magnitude from Arabs, Iranians, others in the Islamic world, and Israelis, starting with great but sincere speeches.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 June 2009
Word Count: 854
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