WASHINGTON, 7 March 2004 — The collapse of the Arab League Summit in Tunis has dealt a serious blow to the Bush administration’s goal of launching a credible “greater Middle East plan” for reform at the G-8 Summit in June.

Certainly, cancellation of the summit reflected poorly on the Arab world at a time when leadership and creativity are absolutely essential.

One Arab senior official told me that the Tunisians “panicked” at the lack of consensus among the foreign ministers on key agenda items. Reasons for the cancellation varied, from the reluctance to tackle reform (because the US was championing it) to the assassination of Sheikh Yassin.

Whatever the cause, the Al-Hayat leak on Feb. 19 exposed the Bush administration’s “plan” and further politicized the issue of reform in the region.

The administration has been on the defensive and in dire need of Arab support since the initiative was published in Al-Hayat.

When the plan emerged from the shadows, the reaction from European allies and potential Arab partners was largely negative. Secretary of State Colin Powell, among other senior US officials, made clear that the administration was not looking to impose any plan on the region.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman was dispatched to calm Arab capitals and, rather belatedly, discuss Washington’s strategy.

Though it is dubbed a “plan”, that is actually a misnomer. The document published in Al-Hayat was intended for internal distribution only, a “sherpa” paper for designated senior officials of the G-8 to review and discuss amongst themselves. Taken at face value, the paper is rather earnest, a collection of ideas and programs that would usher in a new era in the region.

The content is recycled from programs already incorporated in the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Like MEPI, three areas form the core of the sherpa document, albeit on a grander scale: Promoting democracy and good governance, building a knowledge society, and expanding economic opportunities.

The sherpa document, like MEPI, was formulated in Washington with little or no consultation with embassies in the region. One US diplomat said that she along with many of her colleagues first saw the document in Al-Hayat, and only after it was leaked did the State Department send a cable informing relevant missions of the details. Ostensibly, the document’s inspiration was the UN Arab Human Development Reports of 2002 and 2003.

The preamble is a long list of statistics contained in those reports, all of which point to a “freedom deficit”, a phrase President Bush made the cornerstone of his November 2003 speech on the imperative for the US to champion the political, economic and social transformation of the region. The speech is widely considered to be the genesis of the sherpa paper.

Bush launched his grand scheme for reform before the neoconservative stronghold, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), ideological “ground zero” for those who sought to oust Saddam Hussein during the Clinton administration.

Twenty AEI alumni now have positions in the Bush administration, including Richard Perle (Defense Policy Board), Douglas Feith (undersecretary of defense), and David Wurmser (Vice President Cheney’s adviser). In a city like Washington, where appearance or “optics” often counts more than substance, the location only reinforced the president’s connection between the war in Iraq and the effort to democratize the region. The link was rather self-serving given the failure to find any WMD in Iraq, the original rationale for launching the attack.

Bush’s critics greeted the speech with considerable skepticism. Further complicating the administration’s effort to build momentum for the president’s call for reform, many Arab officials — many of whom the administration was counting on for support — consider AEI hostile territory. Public response to the speech did not bode well for the rollout strategy, which officials close to the National Security Council discussions described as almost farcical. Prior to the Al-Hayat leak, the White House planned to ask friendly Arab countries to “muse aloud” about the need for reform.

Then, miraculously, the G-8 would respond with the “greater Middle East Initiative”. The US-EU and NATO summits would build a chorus of financial support and other measures that would back those Arab countries willing, or chosen, to embrace change.

President Bush got into the reform game a bit late. For the past two years, there were quiet efforts already under way in a number of European countries to facilitate dialogue on reform with all countries in the region. In the months prior to Bush’s speech at AEI, a longstanding Canadian-Danish plan was steadily gaining ground.

In “track two” or nonpolitical but closely monitored discussions with representatives from the entire region, Europe and the US, diplomats and academics from Ottawa and Copenhagen were working on a Helsinki model of regional dialogue involving multiple baskets of issues, including human rights and security.

Helsinki discussions in the 1970s between countries of Western Europe and those in the Soviet bloc led to the establishment of the CSCE, the predecessor to the OSCE. They are also credited with significantly contributing to the demise of the Soviet Union.

According to a European diplomat, the NSC was alarmed at the prospect of a multilateral framework that included “bad guys”. The same source indicates that the administration “thinks our ideas are too far-reaching right now.” Neoconservatives, who long opposed the original Helsinki, also adamantly oppose the same formulation for the greater Middle East. Applying the same model to the Arab world and beyond crosses too many red lines for many senior officials. As early as May 2003, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick had said that the United States would only enter into new trade agreements with countries that offered “cooperation or better on foreign policy and security issues.” In other words, dialogue with Syria and Iran is off-limits.

Unable to come to terms with its own ideological rigidity, the White House needed an alternative to the Canadian-Danish approach. With the road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace stalled, a major initiative was required to showcase the president’s diplomatic prowess on the eve of his re-election bid. American voters, who rarely focus on foreign policy issues, need uncomplicated themes.

The G-8 summit, which President Bush hosts in Sea Island, Georgia, made a picture-perfect venue for an administration that is widely perceived to prefer photo-ops to carefully formulated policy. With the election just over six months away, President Bush’s campaign ads already drape him in the red, white and blue of American political values. Though the greater Middle East has traditionally identified with core democratic principles, Bush may find it hard to deliver even these once-palatable options at a time when he is perceived negatively by an overwhelming percentage of his target audience.

Washington’s closest allies such as Jordan’s Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher have stated plainly that they hope the plan “never sees the light of day” at the G-8. Without a clear Arab call for reform at the next summit, he may get his wish - and the Bush administration will be dealt yet another setback in its long struggle to transform the region.

Here’s some unsolicited advice: Bush should stop talking and start listening, not to Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz but to voices in the Arab world - from leaders to businesspeople to activists.

He’ll find that the Middle East is a complicated place, not easily summed up in a two-page memo or five-minute conversation.

But by showing some respect for a proud people and a rich culture he might find that he has allies even among those who are seemingly against him now.

— Maggie Mitchel Salem is a public affairs and media consultant in Washington D.C. ([email protected])