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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Both menaced by terrorism and proliferation, Europeans and Americans can greatly benefit by security cooperation. Moreover, Europe has a great deal to offer to the U.S. Europe is a military pygmy and can therefore provide little help in invading countries such as Iraq. But it is not a security pygmy -- not if we take seriously the way security has been redefined since 9/11. National security has now become largely a matter of effective counterterrorism, for which military force is of only limited value. When it comes to counterterrorism, the Europeans are quite well endowed. For historical and geographical reasons, Europe's clandestine security agencies have even greater capacities than the CIA and the FBI for infiltrating and monitoring anti-American terrorist groups. The most robust and flourishing form of multilateralism today, in fact, may be international police cooperation. The Atlantic alliance could fairly rapidly be renewed and deepened on the basis of a shared understanding of common threats and the capacity for mutual assistance -- a task that America's friends in Europe expect that a President Kerry would energetically take up.
Anti-Americanism in the Middle East, of course, goes deeper and is less likely to die down than anti-Americanism in Europe. The minority of Arabs and Muslims who implacably loathe the U.S. is growing more influential by the day. Those who have traditionally felt friendly or neutral to the U.S. are siding more and more against us. Their hostility, moreover, is becoming less a matter of policy and more a matter of identity. Increasingly, it is impossible to make any claim to an Arab consciousness without railing against the U.S. This is a very dangerous development, since it means that anti-American attitudes are putting more Middle Easterners beyond the reach of diplomacy. Unknown numbers of young men, in particular, are becoming irreconcilable even by dramatic reversals of policy.
It is a mistake to belittle such fury by reciting the tag line, "Yankee go home and take me with you," a reflection of the ambiguity of Middle Eastern attitudes toward the U.S. Economic opportunity will always draw people away from their homes, but it will not necessarily render harmless the seething political anger of their children. So here we have another answer to the question, What concrete dangers does anti-American rage in the Middle East pose to U.S. national security? Anti-American rage is dangerous, as virtually every commentator acknowledges, because it increases the recruitment pool available to al-Qaida and like-minded conspiratorial terrorist bands.
Besides facilitating terrorist recruitment, the Iraq war is also likely to dampen the prospects for democratic reform in the region. Before examining the political repercussions of the Iraq war within Middle Eastern states, however, it is necessary to focus on three probable developments on the U.S. side.
First, in the wake of the Iraq debacle, Washington is likely to succumb, at least temporarily, to democracy-promotion fatigue. The sting of failure will presumably dampen for a time serious interest in supporting democratic reforms in the region. Grandiose talk will continue, of course. But less money will be spent, and less experienced personnel will be assigned to a project that now appears much less realistic than before.
Second, America's aggressive counterterrorism efforts have already interfered significantly with its attempts at democracy promotion. To battle terrorism, the U.S. has been lending support to the secretive and coercive apparatuses of states that are, at best, incompletely democratic. This trend will continue and, under these conditions, democratization efforts will no doubt be funded quite feebly and will be cosmetic at best.
Third, it seems to be dawning on the administration that democratization elsewhere in the world might not have the same happily pro-American consequences as democratization had in Eastern Europe. Polish democracy is pro-American because the majority of Poles have strong historical reasons for identifying with America. The same cannot be said for a majority of Iraqis. As a result, Iraqi democracy, even if we had been able to create it, probably would have been virulently anti-American and most certainly anti-Israeli. As the example of Turkey reveals, democratically elected Muslim regimes can persuasively invoke and even rally public opinion when saying "no" to urgent American pleas for cooperation. Appreciation for this dynamic will also presumably moderate Washington's appetite for democracy promotion in the Middle East.
Given a decreasing commitment to democracy promotion, then, how will the Iraq war and anti-Americanism in general affect democratic reform efforts in the region? The authoritarian Arab regimes, it seems, were genuinely nervous after 9/11. Washington was furious at the relaxed attitude shown toward anti-American rhetoric and even terrorist plotting by so-called friendly autocrats. Today, American fury may still smolder, but the anxiety of Arab autocrats has mostly abated. Authoritarian rulers in the region are more willing than before to repress domestic opposition, and thus to thwart democratic reform, in the name of counterterrorism. Correspondingly, democratic reformers feel less confident; they are less certain than before that the U.S. will follow through on its verbal commitments, that it will, in a crunch, deliver help to reformers who are brave enough to stick their necks out. But, after the Iraq debacle, they also worry about associating too closely with the U.S. -- and may even refuse modest U.S. help however desperately they need it.
