Category Archives: MENA News

Intervention in Syria: Chemical Weapons are the Wrong “Red Line”

SyriaCongressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has publicly concluded that the Assad regime has deployed chemical weapons and crossed a “red line” for U.S. intervention. While Rep. Rogers certainly has access to classified information as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, nearly all other assessments make it clear that what actually happened in Aleppo last week (and which weapons were used) remains unclear. The United Nations has launched a probe into the events and the White House has repeatedly assured the press that they are investigating all available information and that Assad’s forces would suffer “consequences” if they were found to have used chemical weapons on their own people. Focusing on whether these weapons were used, however, obscures the reality that chemical weapons use is simply the wrong red-line for Syria. American decisions about whether and how to intervene in this conflict must be driven by their likelihood to achieve strategic goals, not by a reactionary desire to simply do something. Facilitating the development and support of the key infrastructure of post-Assad Syria should be the focus for American policymakers.

If it turns out that chemical weapons were in fact used, that would certainly represent a tactical escalation, but it is difficult to see how it changes the fundamental dynamics on the ground. Dying from mustard gas in Aleppo is horrible, but so is being blasted apart by mortars outside Damascus. One of the many American interests in the conflict surely is to minimize the civilian death toll, but with 70,000 already slain — debating the weapons that are used is a conversation about tools, not lives. In the medium term, American interests center on constraining Iranian influence, ensuring that Syria does not become a breeding and training ground for terrorists, minimizing the spread of regional instability, and guarding against the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons. These are the yardsticks that must guide U.S. action, not arbitrary red-lines.

Securing Syria’s chemical weapons is not simply a matter of a few surgical air strikes. The regime still maintains a significant anti-air capability and the Pentagon concludes that an operation with any chance success would involve up to 75,000 American troops. Those forces would not be limited to the liberated areas in the North, they would have to push into the heart of regime-controlled territory to access major storage facilities in Damascus and Homs. Policymakers need to be realistic and ask themselves if they are prepared to make that kind of commitment and honestly evaluate whether that type of invasion would increase or decrease the likelihood of securing the full-range of U.S. interests.

Staggering military might, however, is not the only tool at the president’s disposal. Working with international partners to prepare for a post-regime future is an area where the U.S. can actually leverage a significant value-add and do so with a much smaller footprint. The Supreme Military Command needs to be further unified and its various groups need to practice operating under a cogent institutional framework. This is not only critical to achieving tactical successes against the Syrian Army, but also essential for building the habits and mechanics of trust that will be needed for a successful new government.

It is often said that there is not one revolution in Syria, but dozens. What is unifying the rebel groups at the moment is a common enemy, but once the regime falls, scores of groups with very different ideologies and very different visions of a free Syria will emerge in a country awash with weapons and devoid of civil and security infrastructure. The only hope for avoiding a series of multi-fronted civil wars is for the new government to quickly stand up credible institutions that can rein in the extremists and mediate these fundamental disputes in non-violent ways.

The U.S. can help encourage this process now by working with international partners like Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan to centralize the flow of military and non-military aid into the country. Currently the various rebel groups maintain largely proprietary support channels which fuels divisions and makes unifying command and control very difficult. Many components of the Free Syrian Army are already coordinating action in northern Syria, but that cooperation needs to be enhanced through formal structures that have a chance of outliving the present conflict. Resources are power and the international community needs to invest in developing an inclusive platform that can control and disseminate resources in non-political ways, engaging the Aid Coordination Unit of the Syrian Opposition Coalition as well as the Supreme Military Command, and local civilian councils. If there is a red-line in Syria, it should be related to attaining that goal.

This essay was originally published by PolicyMic

Sec. Kerry Ramps Up Economic Statecraft in Egypt

Kerry EgyptMany foreign policy strategists have, for years now, been propagating the notion that the Middle East is yesterday’s problem and that much more of our time and energy should be spent focusing on Europe and Asia. While a confluence of circumstances will surely shift American priorities in the medium to long term, the import of Secretary Kerry’s trip to the Middle East and North Africa highlights the fact that there remain many U.S. strategic interests to protect in that region and that the challenges and opportunities there will continue to command a very large share of the attention from national security policymakers in the years to come.

If there was a single theme that Secretary Kerry carried with him to Egypt over the weekend it was that inclusive economic growth is a top priority. The new Secretary of State announced a handful of new U.S. initiatives — $190 million in direct aid, expansion of the QIZ program, and $60 million in capital for Egyptian Enterprise Funds. In the run up to the trip, he was widely expected to push the Morsi government toward the reforms needed to secure a $4.8 billion loan under negotiation from the IMF, but these additional measures are positive indications that the State Department does genuinely believe that the “United States can and wants to do more.”

Stabilizing and restructuring the embattled Egyptian economy is incredibly important, but it is impossible to escape the fact that the political and the economic are inseparably intertwined. The economic reforms needed to secure the IMF loan — namely increasing tax revenue and cutting fuel subsidies — are incredibly unpopular, and can only be successfully implemented by a government that actually commands legitimacy from a majority of the population. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s crackdowns on alcohol and scantily clad women, to say nothing of mounting street violence, will continue to shut out billions of dollars in foreign currency that used to flow in from the tourism industry. As the FJP’s ongoing economic mismanagement pushes the unemployment rate of 15 to 30-year-olds over 70 percent, it is hard to ignore the relationship between lack of opportunity, poverty, frustration and the outbreaks of violence in places like Mansoura and Port Said. Incidents which, in turn, further drive away tourism, diminish credibility in the eyes of international financial institutions, and tear at the social fabric of Egyptian society.

Secretary Kerry correctly identifies the need for more capital, entrepreneurialism, and a vibrant civil society. It is wise for America to be more, rather than less, engaged in this process — but the United States is in a strong position to encourage the Morsi government to take the steps needed to develop an open and accountable political system and society. The specifics of private conversations between Kerry and Morsi are obviously unclear, but there was initially no announcement that the new aid package was tied to meeting meaningful democratic benchmarks. The European Union, in 2011, promoted a model of “more for more,” a plan that would provide additional assistance and investment to those countries making concrete progress toward democracy, human rights, social justice, good governance and the rule of law. Incentivizing real commitments in these areas is important not only for their own sake, but also because sustained growth must be supported by an ecosystem of policies and institutions.

The United States should continue to keep its eye on the longer, strategic view of transition in Egypt and throughout the region. As these nascent governments develop, the path will be rocky and setbacks should be expected. But America is wise to re-commit itself to helping shepherd these countries into the 21st century. In doing so, the Obama administration should not shy away from making it clear that genuine reform is needed and expected. Economic statecraft is one of the most potent tools to accomplish this goal and it is encouraging that Secretary Kerry appears to be comfortable promoting that strategy.

China’s Power Plays in the Middle East

Jerusalem PostThe Jerusalem Post published an in-depth piece this week analyzing the changing oil geopolitics of the Middle East. Political Editor Ilan Evyatar takes a look at the implications of demand for Middle East oil shifting dramatically over the next few decades from the West to the East. I argue that the US should remain engaged in the region based on a broader economic and strategic relationship in order to counter-balance rising Chinese influence, given Beijing’s track record in the rest of Africa. This entire dynamic is going to be extremely important to medium-term regional politics and there is not nearly enough discussion about this reality here in Washington. The article is excerpted below and I encourage you to read the full piece. 

WHILE THERE appears to be a consensus that China’s rapidly growing energy needs mean it will need to nurture a stable environment and adopt a more proactive foreign policy in the region, not everyone shares Biran’s far reaching vision of a Pax Sinica.

“Surging Chinese demand for energy resources over the next several decades will make their more prominent role in the Middle East inevitable. China is now second only to the United States in consumption and importation of oil, a trend that will only continue as the Chinese continue to urbanize their population and bring millions more cars on line. No country can afford to remain uninterested in a region that it will be so dependent upon,” says Bradley Bosserman, a foreign policy analyst and director of the Middle East program at the NDN New Policy Institute, a center-left Washington think tank.

Bosserman, however, cautions that there has been consistent divergence between the US and China on regional issues, from Iran to Syria and elsewhere. “While a peaceful and agreed-upon settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would contribute to regional stability, China has never shown much interest in investing diplomatic energy… in other parts of the world where it had economic interests.”

He points to the potential lessons to be learned from China’s engagement in Africa, and warns that while the optimists may believe that China’s growing energy interdependence with the Middle East will lead to Beijing becoming more interested in productive diplomatic engagement, its record in Africa gives “little indication that it will pursue that path.”

“For the past half-century,” says Bosserman, “China’s policy of non-interference has provided capital and investment to corrupt governments who have been more than happy to avoid the complicated work of economic and political reform that is often demanded by the United States and Europe. Throughout Africa, China has consistently valued preferential trading terms, lopsided leasing deals, and short-term profits over the kinds of lasting investments in good governance, political reconciliation, and poverty alleviation that lay the groundwork for real stability. It seems more likely that it is that model that they will try to export to the Middle East rather than some other idealized version.”

A Clintonian Foreign Policy in Obama’s Second Term

Obama and Bill ClintonDuring his fifth State of the Union, President Obama articulated a foreign policy vision that can pretty accurately be described as modest. On nearly all fronts he displayed a preference for restraint and moderation, rather than bold engagement abroad. There was one notable exception, however: Trade. The President outlined a second-term trade agenda that is as ambitious as anything we’ve seen since the 1990’s. Completing negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and launching a new round of US-EU FTA talks holds the potential to bring about the broadest and most robust expansion of economic liberalization, harmonization, and engagement since the Uraguay round. For a President who has spent four years trying to constrain the scale and scope of traditional hard power, he appears much more comfortable allowing economic statecraft to be the face of American leadership overseas. In that way, Obama’s second term foreign policy may end up looking very Clintonian, and no I don’t mean Hillary.

A Tragedy in Tunis

NDN’s MENA Initiative welcomes this latest essay from guest contributor Tristan Dreisbach. Tristan is a Middle East specialist who recently traded in his perch at a think tank in New York City in order to conduct field work in Tunis. He blogs at http://tristanintunis.blogspot.com and lives on Twitter as @theonlytristan. We will be running some of his writings periodically.

Photo by FETHI BELAID via Global Post

Photo by FETHI BELAID via Global Post

On the morning of Wednesday, February 6th, everything changed in Tunisia. Anti-Islamist opposition leader Shokry Belaid was gunned down outside his home in Tunis, introducing brutal political violence to an already tense environment. While much remains unclear, including identities and affiliations of the assassins, the dynamics of a new phase for post-revolutionary Tunisia seem to be taking shape.

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New Report: Recommendations on US Policy Toward the Middle East

POMED ReportThe Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) last week issued a new report full of recommendations on ways that President Obama could adjust his Middle East policy in his second term. In “Moving Beyond Rhetoric,” POMED collected the succinct and varied suggestions of 15 ideologically diverse MENA experts which, when taken together, offer a vision of a more bold, engaged, and robust approach to the region. POMED Executive Director Stephen McInerney summarized the report’s common conclusions as three central take-aways:

Take Bold Steps: Avoid the timidity, caution, and “tinkering around the margins” that have thus far characterized the U.S. response to dramatic and historic changes.  Take assertive steps to help influence the outcomes of transitions at this critical moment.

Engage More Broadly: Reverse the longstanding tendency of relying primarily on narrow, government-to-government relationships.  Strengthen relationships with a diverse set of actors across the region—not just the new faces in power.

Use Leverage and Incentives: Demonstrate a willingness to use leverage and offer concrete incentives to positively influence the actions of key actors in the region, including U.S. allies.  Don’t just declare a desire or an expectation that governments will take constructive steps—clearly identify rewards and consequences to encourage such actions.

The full report is available for download on their website, and it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the near-term future of US policy in the region.

Tunis After Two Years – A View From The Ground

NDN’s MENA Initiative welcomes the following essay from guest contributor Tristan Dreisbach. Tristan is a Middle East specialist who recently traded in his perch at a think tank in New York City in order to conduct field work in Tunis. He blogs at http://tristanintunis.blogspot.com and lives on Twitter as @theonlytristan. We will be printing some of his writings periodically.

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Tunis

Arriving in Tunisia almost exactly two years after the revolution, it’s hard to imagine that political speech here had been suppressed for decades. Every Tunisian I meet effuses political opinions and fascinating new perspectives on the state of affairs, and my understanding of the country’s post-revolutionary journey changes, often drastically, with each conversation. Where there had been a handful of media outlets walking in lock-step with the president, there is now a ballooning number of television stations, newspapers, and websites providing an immense public space for political discourse. To someone brought up with a thoroughly American sense of the hallowed role of free expression in a vibrant democratic republic, it would seem that things are on the right track.

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New Essay on Hagel’s Nomination

policymicI published an essay today analyzing the pockets of resistance to Chuck Hagel’s nomination to serve as Secretary of Defense. Later this week he will make his case to his former colleagues on the Hill while a handful of shadowy groups make big ad buys attempting to smear him. In this essay, which originally appeared at PolicyMic,  I tackle some of the context.

Long-time Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is set to testify before his former colleagues this week in order to secure their consent to serve as President Obama’s new secretary of defense. Despite Hagel’s long tenure as a respected voice on national security issues and his credentials as a decorated war hero, his nomination has not been without controversy. Shortly after his name was leaked, he was attacked for being insufficiently supportive of Israel, too soft on Iran, and too supportive of constraining the defense budget.

The Israel hawks on the Democratic side of the aisle are likely to fall in line after Senator Schumer offered his seal of approval and AIPAC decided to take a back seat. But some Republicans — both naked partisans and neoconservative ideologues — have decided to saddle up and go to war over Hagel’s nomination.

A shadowy but well heeled group called Americans for a Strong Defense has recently been formed and has declared their intention to make a major ad buy in at least five states indicting Hagel’s “out-of-the-mainstream” views and calling on the Senators in those states to reject his nomination. Hagel’s views, though, are eminently mainstream, as judged by the opinions of both the public and the foreign affairs establishment. What’s really happening is that opposition is coming largely from a small but vocal group of right-wing neoconservatives, whose rise and subsequent fall after the last Bush administration have left them terrified of becoming permanently marginalized.

Polling indicates that a plurality of Americans believe that the current level and nature of U.S. support for Israel is appropriate. Hagel’s reticence about pursuing an unnecessary military confrontation with Iran is a view shared by the American people in addition to the Israeli defense and intelligence community. And as for the defense budget? The public, the Joint Chiefs, and the majority of the foreign policy establishment all publicly share his and the president’s opinion that real and reasonable reductions in the growth of Pentagon spending can be achieved without compromising U.S. national security.

In many ways, the most bipartisan and popular foreign policy position in America today is support for Obama’s campaign to unwind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a patent rejection of the two enterprises which now stand as the most high-profile symbols of modern neoconservative adventurism. The attacks on Chuck Hagel are not coming from people who believe he is outside of the mainstream. They are coming from neocons who fear that his nomination lays bare the shortsightedness of their neoconservative ideology and threatens their monopoly on defining strong national security strategy. It is Americans for a Strong Defense who are now outside the mainstream, not Chuck Hagel. And they are absolutely terrified of obsolescence.

Bradley Bosserman is a foreign policy analyst at NDN and the New Policy Institute where he Directs the Middle East and North Africa Initiative. He lives on twitter as @BradEEB

The Egyptian Constitutional Referendum and The Impact of Voter Boycott

ballotsEgyptians returned to the ballot-box yesterday in the first of two rounds of voting to approve their controversial new constitution. Unofficial reports indicate that the referendum received 56.5 percent approval, with 43.5 percent of the voters choosing to reject the constitution. Tensions certainly ran high throughout the country, with many protests outside of polling places, but it appears that the street violence many feared was fortunately absent.

While some have claimed that voting irregularities call the results into question, the much larger threat to the validity of the referendum is the very process by which the constitution was drafted, and the the fact that much of the opposition actively called for boycotts. The Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm ran an article articulating the calls of these groups in the days before the election, arguing that “voting on this constitution is also invalid, and the last thing we want to do is give legitimacy to a process that is already void. We shall not be carried away by the illegitimate rules they [President Morsi and the Brotherhood] are imposing on Egyptians. This whole game is unacceptable and illegitimate.”

While the popular critiques of the referendum and constitutional process are certainly valid, it’s worth considering whether the strategy of boycotting the polls is the best way for the opposition to advance their cause. High profile opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei has called for cancellation of the referendum in order for the body drafting the constitution to engage in a dialogue with a broader group of Egyptians, allowing for alterations to the current charter. This is the immediate goal shared by most opposition groups, though ElBaradei’s National Salvation Front did, in the end, call for a “no” vote rather than a boycott. The early voter turn-out numbers, however, seem to indicate that many Egyptians simply chose to stay home.

Only 33 percent of eligible voters turned out on Saturday. A stark decrease in participation from the parliamentary elections that took place a year ago and garnered over 60 percent turn out. The Egyptian al-Arham suggests the numbers indicate that the “apathy many people showed towards the referendum cannot be ignored in the context of the ongoing battle between the ruling Islamists and the civil opposition.” But what will happen if the constitution passes without broad-support from the electorate? Will it discredit the entire process by denying a popular mandate and force Morsi and his FJP back to the bargaining? I’m skeptical.

The Muslim Brotherhood has asserted a robust governing mandate since Morsi’s election despite the fact that he won only narrowly, and that many of his supporters held their noses as they cast their ballots out of fear that Shafiq would win the presidency. If the relative “illegitimacy” of that mandate has had a demonstrable impact on the actions of the government, I haven’t seen it. On the other hand, empirical studies of large-scale election boycotts seem paint a slightly more optimistic picture, at least in the medium term. Emily Ann Beaulieu’s exhaustive study of the subject found that:

…international election monitors were more likely to be invited to subsequent elections following a major boycott.  It was once again highlighted that international actors might prove to be a receptive audience, particularly for Gandhian boycotters, and might be able to pressure incumbent regimes, either for political reform or for greater international involvement in the future.  Thus, international involvement is motivating the behavior of both incumbent rulers and their oppositions, leading rulers to hold elections and, in some cases, to make those elections more fair, and providing oppositions with an opportunity to engage in this particular form of protest.

It would be rational, then, to hope that broad-based boycotts of the referendum process may be able to leverage international and domestic support behind encouraging the ruling government to implement more democratic processes in the future, especially as they relate to electoral law and independent election monitoring. And as Brookings Fellow Shadi Hamid has pointed out, serious negotiations about election law need to take place in advance of the upcoming parliamentary elections, as the power to set those rules moves from President Morsi to the Brotherhood-dominated Shura Council. If phase-two of the referendum, scheduled for December 22, is characterized by a comparable level of voter apathy, it seems we’ll have another test-case for the value of electoral boycott. Though the outcome is still a mystery.

Start-Up Culture in MENA 2.0

A friend today emailed me an interesting article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review that describes the rapid growth of Al-Tibbi, a Jordanian start-up bringing Arabic-language health technology to the masses. The founders of Al-Tibbi have managed to find both a market niche and investment capital allowing them to to grow ”from 5 employees in 2010 to 23 in 2012, plus 10 freelancers.” While the particular future of global e-health is fascinating and filled with potential, I think the larger story here is the entrepreneurial opportunities that are being created all across the Middle East and North Africa, aided by expanded internet penetration. The article explains that:

This conversation now also includes e-commerce—in fact, business-to-customer online sales in the region could reach USD$15 billion by 2015 (MRG International—October 2011). In a recent report of 8 countries by the Dubai School of Government, 84 percent of 4,000 Internet users said that social media tools can assist in developing entrepreneurial skills, and 86 percent thought that social media was an important tool for startups. This suggests that Internet users are looking to the online space to shape civic and commercial participation, helping them to learn and enhance productivity.

The transition countries in North Africa are facing myriad complex challenges from the development of civil society, political reform, economic diversification,  and addressing staggering unemployment.  But these issues aren’t silos. There are tools that can help move the dial a many of these fronts simultaneously. Connecting foreign capital to educated wannabe entrepreneurs in Tunisia, for instance, would be great for the local economy, the investors, the composition of and stability of the national economy and tax base, in addition to creating tools and platforms that can be used to shape and enhance civic participation.

A long-term strategy for aiding the development of a more open, democratic, and prosperous Middle East will require action in many areas, but an important and under-discussed tool should be a huge push for creating and empowering entrepreneurs in the region and then connecting them with investors, capital markets, and partners. Once we stop thinking of the region as a series of fires to be put out, we can start to see it for what it is and can be: A growing consumer market of 300 million people that is brimming with potential based on internet penetration,  mobile adoption, relatively high levels of education, and a deep hunger to create better lives for themselves and their neighbors. That’s MENA 2.0.