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| Volume IX, December 2002, Number 4 |
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| EXCERPT: More than Targets or Markets: Recasting America's Relationships with its Arab Partners |
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| Rachel Bronson |
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Dr. Bronson is an Olin senior fellow and the director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Rachel Abramson and Sarah Saghir provided research assistance to this article.
Sandy Berger, President Clinton's
national security adviser, once
likened the problem of Iraq to
"whack-a-mole,"1 the carnival game where a mole pops up and a player knocks it down as another one pops up. The analogy is appropriate for more than Iraq policy. It well describes America's general approach to the Middle East. Over the last decade or so, successive administrations have careened from one problem to the next without any strategy or vision to guide them. The result has been devastating to American interests. Problems that existed in the early 1990s continue to fester today. Relations with key Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are deteriorating. The region's socioeconomic well-being is in freefall. Anti-Americanism is rampant. Few would argue that America has made much progress in this region over the last ten to fifteen years, regardless of how progress is defined.
A re-examination of American policy toward the Middle East is desperately needed, and has been for some time. America's Cold War goals -- ensuring the security of Israel, maintaining a free flow of oil at moderate prices, and deterring the Soviets from reaching the Persian Gulf -- no longer encompass the variety of concerns Washington has in this region. New issues such as terrorism and Islamic radicalism do not fit neatly into these categories. They require a new look at who our partners are and how to productively navigate difficult relationships. |
| 1 Tyler Marshall, "Security Advisor Berger Discusses Bosnia, Israel; Policy: New Appointee Says US Won't Use Troops to Catch War Crimes Suspects, Calls New Jewish Settlements ‘A Problem'," Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1996. He went on to describe it as "they bop up and you whack 'em down, and if they bop up again, you bop ‘em back down again."
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