Whatever Saudis Want…
A deafening silence.
By Joseph Shattan, author of Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War.
October 26, 2001 8:30 a.m.
A remarkable experiment is currently underway in the Persian Gulf. To defuse the Islamist threat, the emirate of Bahrain is gingerly moving towards democracy. Although the island-nation still has a considerable way to go, the promise by Bahrain's new emir to hold parliamentary elections in 2003 appears to have seriously blunted the anti-American rage that is currently sweeping through the rest of the Arab world.
What is perhaps most notable about the emir's democratic turn is that he acted entirely out of domestic considerations. American pressure in favor of democracy had nothing to do with it. In fact, Bahraini democrats reportedly feel "betrayed" that despite our "false promises," Americans did nothing to promote democracy in the Gulf.
Of course, we had the perfect opportunity to speak out in favor of democracy and human rights in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. That was when our prestige in the Gulf was at its peak, and when a formal American endorsement of democracy would have carried tremendous weight. And, in fact, former Vice President Dan Quayle had intended to deliver exactly such a speech — drafted, as it happens, by me. How that speech was derailed by our foreign-policy bureaucracy is a story not without relevance to today's events.
Shortly after the conclusion of Desert Storm, Quayle's chief of staff, Bill Kristol, asked me to draft a speech on the importance of democracy to the Middle East. I responded that the state department — which, along with the national-security council, had to "clear" the vice president's foreign-policy speeches — would never permit such a speech to be delivered. Kristol told me to go ahead anyway.
The speech I drafted had a distinctly moderate and sober tone. There were no stirring paeans to democracy, no quotes from Jefferson or Lincoln, no calls for a popular rising against military dictators and medieval potentates. Instead, it simply noted that the lack of democratic accountability enabled tyrants like Saddam Hussein to bring war and ruin to the region. A greater respect for democratic norms would promote peace and progress throughout the Middle East.
After completing the speech, I faxed a copy to Professor Bernard Lewis, the eminent Princeton authority on the Middle East, and requested his comments. If memory serves, Lewis liked it.
Unfortunately, not many people in the Bush administration agreed with Lewis. Shortly after we began circulating the speech, the vice president's national-security adviser received a call from one of the national-security council's Middle East specialists, David Welch. Mr. Welch (currently our ambassador to Egypt) reportedly said that under no circumstances could the vice president deliver the speech. "The Saudis will go ballistic," he predicted, if the vice president of the United States actually endorsed democracy for the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Welch's boss, Richard Haas (then the top NSC official for Middle Eastern affairs, now head of the state department's policy-planning staff) wrote a memo to Brent Scowcroft (then the president's national-security adviser, now the head of the president's foreign-intelligence advisory board) strongly objecting to the proposed speech. Haas argued that while the United States was certainly in favor of democracy and human rights in the Arab world, saying so at this particular moment would only complicate an already fraught situation.
The NSC was not alone in its opposition to the speech. Dennis Ross, who headed Secretary of State Baker's policy-planning staff, and who received a draft of the speech when he was with the secretary in Saudi Arabia, was also upset by it. Just how deep his hostility went became evident when, sometime later, I ran into Ross's associate, Aaron Miller, in a State Department corridor. "Written any new speeches lately?" Miller hissed at me.
In the face of such intense and concerted hostility to his proposed speech, Quayle decided against delivering it. The democratic elements in the Gulf, and throughout the Arab world, who looked to the U.S. for some sign that we supported their efforts, looked in vain. Even today, when it is clear that much of the Arab "street's" enthusiasm for Islamist groups stems from decades of American support for the corrupt and authoritarian governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, there is still no call by the United States for greater openness in the Arab world. Though support for democracy and human rights reflect our deepest values, such a call would seriously annoy the royal House of Saud — and we can't allow that. Far better to endorse a Palestinian state and try to resuscitate a hopelessly moribund "peace process." The Saudis like such initiatives — and what the Saudis like, the Saudis get. |
