U.S., Turkey, Even Israel, Have Role in Arab Spring

So say observers, even as they warn the influence will be limited

Countries outside the Arab Spring and looking in have a lot to contribute to the region’s progress to democracy, but they should be aware of the limits of their ability to predict how it will all end much less to steer events.

That was the message of four speakers addressing the issue “The New Middle East: A Dream or a Nightmare?” at the Globes Business conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

The turmoil that has swept through the region is driven principally by domestic forces and issues, but outside powers ranging from the West, to Israel and Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have a role to play in fostering democracy and economic development.

“The West has a moral and strategic role to play, but so does Israel,” said Ghanem Nuseiba, the founder and director of Cornerstone Global Associates, a London-based strategy and management consulting firm. He said the key for ensuring that the Arab Spring created democratic societies is by ensuring economic development.

Calls for freedom and democracy have captured the world’s attention, but the grievances that spurred rebellion in Egypt and elsewhere were rooted in poverty and unemployment. While the Arab world has a way to go to evolving high technology economies, it can learn from Israel’s experience. “The Arab world sees how Israel has used technology to develop its economy,” Nuseiba said.

The U.S. sees its mission in facing the challenges of the Arab Spring in both fostering economic growth and democracy, said Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, at the conference. He admitted that there was no certainty that the forces of democracy would prevail, but insisted that helping to bring down autocrats – even those who had been reliable allies of the West – is in America’s best interest.

The region’s dictators had justified their rule as a choice between the stability they imposed and progress. “Today the real choice is between reform and unrest,” Shapiro said.

“The bottom line is that change in the Middle East and North Africa contain within it both risks and opportunities,” he said. “If these changes lead to true democracy… they can very much be in America’s national interest. But political transitions can be unstable and volatile – and they can be hijacked.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. is undertaking direct economic assistance to Egypt and Tunisia, the two countries where regime transition is furthest along. The White House is working with Congress to create enterprise funds for new businesses and offer political risk insurance through the government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It is encouraging international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to help, too, he said.

Shapiro said turned Nuseiba’s formula around, contending that democratic rule would not only create governments more favorable to the West and to Israel but foster economic development. “Democracies make for strong and stable partners, they trade more and they innovate more,” he said. “They channel people’s energy away from extremism and toward political and civic engagement.”

Shapiro reiterated Washington’s view that Islamic parties cannot be kept out of the democratic process, but they have to respect certain values – rejecting violence, respecting the rule of law, freedom of speech and the rights of women and minorities. “We will judge the political actors in these countries not by what they say but what they do,” he said.

“We must try to seize the opportunities, but we must undertake this with humility … the Arab future will be decided by the Arabs,” he said.

Turkey was redirecting its trade and diplomacy toward the Middle East even before the Arab Spring erupted, but Yasar Yakis, a former Turkish foreign minister, warned that Ankara’s ability to influence events is constrained by its history. It stood aloof from the Middle East for some 80 years, so it does not have the expertise and experience that the West has in the region, even if Turks themselves better understand the Arab “mentality.”

Moreover, the Arab world remembers Turkish rule from the Ottoman period “negatively” and is wary of any sign that Ankara is trying to wield too much influence. “Arab countries do not like interference from others in Arab affairs and Turkish interference is [regarded as] more sensitive than from other non-Arab countries,” Yakis said.

He acknowledged that the West faces difficult dilemma of choosing between supporting old regimes that violate human rights and letting potentially hostile Islamist governments come to power through elections. But, Yakis said the West should come down on the side of change, agreeing with Shapiro that in the long run democracies are more likely to be stable, interfere less with their neighbors and, as open societies, become freer and more tolerant.

“If elections in the Arab Spring comply with the minimum standards of modern democracy, it would not be fair to ignore the results,” he said. “Ignoring them would harm the leverage of the international community over these countries.”

Israel Elad-Altman, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Israel’s Herzilya Interdisciplinary Center, discounted the influence Turkey has as a role model of a country that has remained democratic and become increasingly prosperous economically under the rule of the Islamist Justice and Development Party.

“Many people say the Arab countries should follow the Turkish example,” he said. “But their leading party isn’t really Islamist …Turkey has been secularizing for the last 80 years. Islam remains strong in the countryside, but secularism is strong, too. That hasn’t been the case in the Arab countries.”

Elad-Altman gave a more pessimistic outlook on the Arab Spring, saying that Islamist parties are unlikely to moderate their anti-Western and anti-Israel stances if they come to power. He said he foresees an ideological debate that pits those saying that the goals of decades of struggle should never be jettisoned against those who say the imperatives of consolidating rule and the economy demand compromises, such as encouraging Western tourism.

“It’s an open question which of these approaches will prevail, but I doubt we’ll see major ideological concessions,” he said.

On the positive side, he said, the Arab Spring has strengthened the GCC, which has shifted from a passive political role into taking an assertive stance that is counterbalancing the influence of Iran.

Another positive outcome is the weakening of Iran’s influence. The Shiite state had hoped to exploit the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq later this month to assert to its influence on its neighbor, creating a zone influence stretching across the region to President Bashar Al-Assad’s Syria and Hizbullah-dominated Lebanon and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

But the unrest in Syria, now in its ninth month and showing no signs of letting up, has forced Iran to moderate its ambitions as it tries to shore up its ally in Damascus. “The Arab Spring has deal a major blow to the axis of resistance,” Elad-Altman said.