| BEYOND WAR Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East David Rohde New York: Viking, April 2013 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-670-02644-9 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-670-02644-1 | 220pp. | HC | $27.95 | |
By the time this book went to press, 6,600 American lives had been lost in a partially successful campaign of "nation building" in Iraq. The effort had cost over $1.2 trillion. Both numbers are still rising today. So are the numbers of Iraqis being killed by the resurgent Taliban. The country is in many ways worse off than it was under Saddam Hussein: It has less electricity, less clean water, less infrastructure generally.
Afghanistan is in somewhat better shape. American troops have mostly withdrawn, except for a contingent training native military and police forces. Multiple elections have been held, multiple levels of government are in place. Paved highways, medical clinics, schools are plentiful. Commerce is widespread. Eighty-five percent of Afghanis have mobile phones. Yet here too success is mixed. Much of the government is corrupt. Opium production has returned. Many coalition projects lie uncompleted, and attacks by Taliban raiders have doomed others.
This book is an effort to describe a new, more pragmatic, and more effective approach to the Islamic world. I believe that a more economic and less military-oriented effort will achieve more than the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan did. In some instances, drone strikes, covert operations, and lethal force may be necessary, but investment, education, and normalized relations are equally potent weapons. We must develop a more multifaceted understanding and approach to the region. – Pages xiii-xiv |
The author contends that economic engagement should be a bigger part of U.S. policy in the Middle East. If he's right (and he makes a good case) then Tunisia is Exhibit A.
Yet USAID and the State Department, recoiling from the waste of huge sums in Iraq and Afghanistan, have swung to the other extreme. Late in 2010, a delegation of American entrepreneurs and angel investors went to Tunis — travelling on their own dime.
In truth, the post-Cairo initiative that brought them to Tunisia operated on a shoestring. The program—Partners for a New Beginning—was so poorly funded that members of the delegation had to pay their own airfare and hotel bills. The U.S. government did not propose, fund, or carry out the training of the winning entrepreneur. Members of the delegation did. And the prize? Three months in the TechTown incubator in Detroit, Michigan, courtesy of TechTown, Wayne State University, and the American Arab Chamber of Detroit. The administration's tepid effort showed how the United States was missing an opportunity in Tunisia to create a post-Arab Spring success story. More broadly, it was evidence that the administration was taking the wrong lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and squandering the opportunity that the Arab Spring created. – Page 108 |
Elsewhere in the Middle East, things are not favorable to the U.S. Iran continues its nuclear weapons program and support for Hezbollah. That insurgent organization is taking a greater hand in Syria, competing with home-grown rebels to topple Bashar Assad as he continues his father's brutal battle against indigenous revolt. Egypt overthrew its tyrant Hosni Mubarak but replaced him with a Muslim government, which was then replaced in a military coup whose leaders mercilessly suppress the Moslem Brotherhood. Generous aid keeps Pakistan's leadership on America's side, but 97 percent of Pakistanis disapprove of the continuing drone strikes.1
Turkey has become the model Western authorities point to as an example of what Middle Eastern countries could be. A Muslim nation with a government secular for decades, it is led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He broke the military's grip on political power, liberalized the treatment of women, and presided over a dramatic expansion of Turkey's economy. By 2012, forty million people — 60 percent of the population — were solidly middle class. Yet Erdogan grows increasingly authoritarian and has a tendency to throw dissenters in jail.2
Turkey is a cultural powerhouse as well as an economic one; its televised soap operas are hugely popular across the Middle East. But I believe it is Tunisia that the author sees as the most promising nation in the Middle East. In a chapter titled "The Silicon Valley of the Arab World?", he describes the enthusiastic response of local entrepreneurs to a high-tech delegation from the U.S. (See sidebar.) It is an illustration of how the U.S. government fumbles the ball by relying on military power and big, showy projects like power plants and dams when the people in the field consistently recommend small-scale, incremental efforts with substantial involvement of locals, even local direction.3
However wonderful the potential results of American economic and cultural engagement may be in the Middle East, the author feels that the State Department and USAID are no longer capable of sustaining an effective program. He observes that over time these agencies — civilian agencies of government in general — have become less well funded, less ably staffed, and more politicized.
Later I learned that Grader was right about USAID. The agency was a shell of its cold war self. Exaggerated accounts of American aid being poured down "foreign rat holes" prompted Congress to slash its budget. USAID's worldwide staff had shrunk from a high of seventeen thousand during the Vietnam War to three thousand in 2004. Following the 9/11 attacks, the agency's budget doubled, but it received virtually no additional staff to manage a torrent of spending. Overwhelmed USAID officials bundled contracts together, creating enormous contracts that could be implemented only by large contractors. Grader said that when he ran USAID in Afghanistan in 1977, one hundred Americans managed roughly $250,000 in spending each. In 2004, sixty Americans managed roughly $80 million each. Staffers struggled to design, put out to competitive bid, and administer hurried and sprawling reconstruction projects. – Pages 12-13 |
Fewer people managing more contracts made the larger contracts harder to administer and to change when conditions warranted it — such as when waste or corruption occurred. The large contractors, of course, were better-connected politically. Meanwhile, in the wake of 9/11 the Pentagon budget swelled and the mindset in Washington fostered an overreliance on military solutions.
The opportunity that arose in Tunisia on 10 December 2010 when a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi poured gasoline on himself and ignited the Arab Spring was squandered by the Obama administration. Its cautious approach to Egypt's Mubarak led him to suspect the U.S. no longer supported him, while Egyptian citizens protesting in the streets became convinced they could not trust America's president.
The author makes a cogent case for a greater civilian role in America's foreign policy and less reliance on the military and on large projects, and he documents it well. The book has extensive endnotes and a good index. Its bibliography is broken down into articles, books, and documents & reports. While I wouldn't rate it a must-read or a keeper, it is very much worth reading for those interested in the future of the Middle East.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.