Source: Carnegie

For Immediate Release: October 8, 2002
Contact: Scott Nathanson, 202-939-2211, snathanson@ceip.org

"Horse Without Cart" Strategy Threatens U.S. Mideast Policy
Expert Testifies Before House Joint Committee on Arab Public Opinion

Carnegie Endowment visiting scholar Daniel Brumberg testified today in a House joint committee hearing regarding the growing Arab antipathy toward the United States. His presentation assessed the varied interests within the Arab public, and cautioned against efforts to promote regime change in Iraq-or political and economic reform in the wider Arab world-absent a concerted effort to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

Brumberg traced three concentric circles of Arab political demography: Islamists and Arab nationalists, students and professionals, and the Arab working poor. Of central concern is the dispersal of an ideology of resentment beyond radical elements of Arab society. "In the short and medium term there is not much the U.S. can do about the inner core of Islamist and Arab nationalist ideologues who preach anti-Americanism," he noted. Yet "the overall domestic and regional context that helps Islamist ideologues sell their resentment to the wider population is not static: contextual factors must be addressed to reduce the leverage of anti-American activists."

How can that leverage be best reduced? "Substantial progress towards resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is essential," Brumberg said. Well before the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process, "the Palestine issue had become the number one issue for millions of Arabs, especially literate, middle or lower middle class Arabs living in the urban arenas of Cairo, Rabat, Amman, Damascus and Kuwait City."

This did not mean that we should ignore the other contextual factors that feed Arab resentment. But while economic, political and educational reforms must be promoted, Brumberg argues that such measures can also have short-term costs. "Economic reforms often deepen unemployment and social inequity while democratization (at least during its early stages) tends to mobilize illiberal Islamists rather than secularists or liberal Islamists."

The American-led effort to topple Saddam Hussein will not provide quick solutions to such dilemmas. Indeed, "unless the Bush Administration demonstrates in word and especially in deed that it is fully committed to peace, democracy and self-determination in Palestine and Israel as it is in Iraq, the U.S. may win the battle but lose the war" for Arab public opinion.

Brumberg's testimony will be available at www.ceip.org upon conclusion of the hearing.

# # #