A Strategy of Engagement
It is worth recalling that Kennan made a sharp distinction between the Soviet leaders and the Russian people. His strategy of containment was aimed at the regime, whose aggressive impulses needed to be countered. But he also argued for a strategy of engagement with the Russian people, whom he refused to see as our permanent enemies. Hard as it may be to get beyond the anti-American sentiment so prevalent in the Muslim world today, it is important for us to undertake a similar strategy of engagement and to do so with reasonable hopes of finding a meeting place.
The latest Pew Research survey of attitudes around the world revealed sharply rising anti-Americanism, especially in the Muslim world, but it also found that people in Muslim countries place a high value on such democratic values as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, multiparty political systems, and equal treatment under the law. Large majorities in almost every Muslim country favor free market economic systems and believe that Western-style democracy can work in their own country.
As President Bush put it in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy last November,
It should be clear to all that Islam the faith of one-fifth of humanity is consistent with democratic rule
. More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. They succeed in democratic societies, not despite their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability
is fully compatible the rights and responsibilities of self-government.
Taking note of hopeful signs of reform in Morocco, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, the President stressed that modernization is not the same as Westernization. Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own cultures. They will not, and should not, look like us.
What these countries and peoples need from us is not a Made in USA blueprint but rather encouragement and support for initiatives coming out of the region itself, as was the agenda of the U.S.-Muslim World Forum in Doha, Qatar, this January. The last two UN Arab Human Development Reports also provide an authentic agenda for change written by prominent Arab scholars, policy analysts, and government officials. Such efforts can help produce a set of core principles, consistent with democratic aspirations and universal human rights yet also authentic and in harmony with Muslim faith. This should include reaching out not only to pro-reform elites within governments but also to nongovernmental activists and civil society leaders.
This strategy of engagement also needs an economic component, for the alienation of many Muslims is fueled by the failure of their countries to reap significant economic gains from globalization. The Middle East Partnership Initiative, announced by Secretary of State Colin Powell in December 2002, aims to help extend those benefits to this regions, as does President Bushs initiative (May 2003) to create a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Zone. We need to recognize, however, that the problem is not just one of poverty but the legacy of closed, state-dominated political and economic systems that breed apathy, alienation, and anger. Overcoming those legacies is not the work of a few years but of a generation or longer.
There is also a need to help build a regional security framework. NATO can potentially play an important role here, through a deepening and broadening of its Mediterranean Dialogue with North African states. What is needed over the longer term, however, is something analogous to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe a region-wide framework that was created in the 1970s and helped pave the way for the end of the Cold War. It was, in a sense, the logical culmination of Kennans strategy for Europe, and it could be applied with profit to the Middle East as well.
Finally, again borrowing from Kennan, we need to build cross-cultural contacts not in the sense of a p.r. campaign to sell our policies, but as part of a longer-term effort. Just as our cultural and exchange programs in Europe after World War II helped overcome old animosities, a new wave of programs needs to be put in place as an investment in the future of our interaction with the Muslim world.
