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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (77862)	10/15/2004 3:54:50 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

The Big Bang is working and the G-8 is the executive driving the process Barnett "An Opening For Arab Democrats," op-ed by Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 11 October 2004, p. A23. Diehl is another favorite of mine. Comes off as very smart and not partisan on international security issues. Plus, he's the only one who seems to be tracking this reform process. Here's the key bit: Drowned out by the bombings in Iraq, and the debate over whether the staging of elections there is an achievable goal or a mirage, the Bush administration's democracy initiative for the rest of the Middle East creeps quietly forward. In neo-realist Washington, it is usually dismissed -- when it is remembered at all -- in much the same way that, say, national elections in Afghanistan were once laughed off. The unpopularity of the Bush administration and the predictable resistance from the dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are cited as proof that the region's hoped-for "transformation" is going nowhere. And yet, the process started at the Sea Island summit of Group of Eight countries in June is gaining some traction -- sometimes to the surprise of the administration's own skeptics. A foreign ministers' meeting in New York two weeks ago produced agreement that the first "Forum for the Future" among Middle Eastern and G-8 governments to discuss political and economic liberalization will take place in December. Morocco volunteered to host it, and a handful of other Arab governments, including Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen, have embraced pieces of the process. More intriguingly, independent human rights groups and pro-democracy movements around the region are continuing to sprout, gather and issue manifestos -- all in the name of supporting the intergovernmental discussions. An independent human rights group appeared in Syria this month; Saudi women organized a movement to demand the right to vote in upcoming municipal elections. On the same day that the Egyptian foreign minister belittled what is now called the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA) in an interview with The Post, an unprecedented alliance of opposition parties and citizens' groups issued a platform in Cairo calling for the lifting of emergency laws, freedom of the press and direct, multi-candidate elections for president. While there have been some arrests, most of the nascent democrats are surviving. Despite all the defiant rhetoric, Egyptian and Saudi police, it turns out, are hesitant to pummel people who say they are responding to the president of the United States. White House architects of BMENA are quietly pleased: This is exactly what they had hoped for. No one really expects most Arab governments -- or even most Europeans -- to take the cause of Middle Eastern democracy seriously in the near future. But just as the Cold War-era Helsinki process encouraged independent democracy and human rights groups to spring up under the cover of intergovernmental talks, the Forum for the Future has given Arab democrats a crucial opportunity. The comparison to the Helsinki process is a brilliant one, not to mention (thank God!) Diehl is someone who can actually see the long-term picture emerge. Why I like to cite the piece is primarily because it's that old G-8 (which should be the G-20 on something as big and important as this; the G-20 meet only at the Finance ministerial level for now) that's leading this process—not the UN. The G-20 will become, in my estimation, the natural Executive Function for the Core as a whole in guiding and steering the process of shrinking the Gap. Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett