U.S. Chooses Stability Over Quick Reform

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s just-completed trip to the Middle East has provided the best indication yet that the Bush administration is emphasizing stability over an aggressive pursuit of reform as it translates the president’s vision of spreading democracy in the region.

During stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both authoritarian states allied with the U.S., Rice engaged in gentle nudging, reassuring their leaders that the administration was not seeking to impose democracy but merely to encourage Western democratic values. Each nation, she stressed, could move at its own pace.

In Jordan, another ally, Rice had nothing but praise for King Abdullah II’s government, calling it “a strategic partner in a shared vision of reform in this region,” even though there is no hint the monarch might be willing to give up his absolute power.

Rice’s trip, and her message, were watched closely in the Middle East. She was the first senior American official to carry details of President Bush’s democratic agenda directly into the region since he declared the spread of democracy “the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time” five months ago in his second inaugural address.

That speech represented a shift from six decades of U.S. foreign policy in the region that gave priority to stability, sometimes over human and political rights. And Rice, during stops in Jerusalem, Amman, Cairo and Riyadh, both laid the groundwork and set the tone for the new agenda.

The changing approach is based on the belief that years of political oppression tacitly backed by the U.S. fueled, at least in part, the anger that eventually boiled over into terrorism and generated much of the anti-U.S. sentiment that grips the Arab world.

Critics have called Bush’s vision utopian and dangerously simplistic, and Rice’s trip provided little indication that the administration planned in practice to push for wholesale democracy in the Middle East. Instead, the application so far has been a selective exercise. It has underscored the reality that stability remains an essential factor as the U.S. pushes for liberalization in countries where it has significant interests.

In her public statements, Rice talked of how democratic values could be applied differently to each culture. But inconsistencies were obvious. For example:

* Just four months after canceling a visit to Egypt to protest the arrest of opposition leader Ayman Nour, Rice selected Cairo to deliver the trip’s main speech on democratic reform -- even though more than 300 members of the country’s largest opposition group, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, remained in jail.

* Although the Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence nearly a generation ago, Rice declared in Cairo that “we have not engaged the Muslim Brotherhood ... and we won’t,” despite administration urgings that democratic reforms should be inclusive. The reason, she explained, was the need to respect the ban on religious parties in Egypt, a country of one-party rule that has been under martial law for more than two decades.

Yet at a March 15 Oval Office appearance with Jordan’s Abdullah, Bush seemed to leave the door ajar for the Syrian-backed Hezbollah to play a role in Lebanese politics, though the militant group has not renounced violence or its declared aim to destroy Israel.

“I like the idea of people running for office,” Bush said. “There’s a positive effect when you run for office.”

* Then, while explaining in Cairo the need to work within Egyptian law, Rice openly challenged a Saudi law that had led to the imprisonment of three activists because they had petitioned for political change. “That should not be a crime in any country,” she said. Several hours later, standing next to Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal at a news conference in Riyadh, she repeated the statement.

* Throughout the trip, the message for U.S. adversaries such as Iran and Syria was unyielding, and far more blunt. “It is not only the Lebanese people who desire freedom from Syria’s police state,” Rice told the audience of Westernized elites during the Cairo address Monday. “The Syrian people themselves share that aspiration.”

Officials traveling with Rice admit the policy is inconsistent, but note there has been both a conscious decision to treat nations differently and a need to protect American interests.

A senior State Department official, who declined to be identified, explained the contradictory handling of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood: “The Lebanese have a political process that is moving forward free of outside influence. It’s up to the Lebanese to decide how to deal with Hezbollah, not us. The Muslim Brotherhood is banned by Egyptian law, so it would be difficult to deal with them even if we wanted.”

Stability considerations apparently influenced Rice’s decision not to exert pressure on Egypt to lift its ban on religious parties as she did on the Saudis to scrap its law on political petitions. Opening the Saudi government to public petition carried little danger of political instability, while legitimizing Egypt’s strong religious parties could destabilize President Hosni Mubarak, a key ally, U.S. officials said.

Outside experts tend to agree.

“The religious parties would quickly overwhelm the secular opposition groups,” said Gary Samore, a White House advisor during the Clinton administration who works at the International Institute of Strategic Studies here. “They just don’t have the numbers.”

Samore and others noted that the administration’s efforts to support reform in the Middle East differed considerably from earlier U.S. experiences in Asia and Latin America. In those instances, experts note, it was America’s decision to side with already functioning opposition political forces that led to the collapse of authoritarianism.

In many cases, sizable and organized political groups advocating democracy don’t yet exist in the Middle East.

Three days after Rice delivered her speech at Cairo University, declaring that America’s aim was “to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom and make their own way,” many of the country’s intellectual elite remained both skeptical and cynical. It didn’t help, they said, that three of those selected to attend her meeting with political opponents had links to the government.

Still, there were signs the government had at least listened. In Cairo, anti-government protesters Wednesday marched through a heavily populated northern neighborhood with no police presence and no harassment. According to those present, the experience was so unusual that participants initially feared a trap.

“The Condi effect!” one protester shouted to a reporter before another cut in to declare, “This is Mubarak losing control.”

Rice argues that the shift in American policy has already created change in the Arab world. “I think it’s given open space to ideas that were not thought possible just a year ago,” Rice said.

Still, few expect any quick breakthroughs. In his inaugural address, Bush called it “the concentrated work of generations.”

“Bush has started a process,” Samore said. “But it won’t produce much results for generations. The forces of liberalization are just too weak.”