![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ArabSpring.jpg\" "\\"ArabSpring\\"")
<\/p>\nWritten by David Rosenberg
\nPublished Sunday, December 11, 2011<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So say observers, even as they warn the influence will be limited<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Countries outside the Arab Spring and looking in have a lot to contribute to the region\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n That was the message of four speakers addressing the issue \u201cThe New Middle East: A Dream or a Nightmare?\u201d at the Globes Business conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday. <\/span><\/p>\n 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. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe West has a moral and strategic role to play, but so does Israel,\u201d 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. <\/span><\/p>\n Calls for freedom and democracy have captured the world\u2019s 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\u2019s experience. \u201cThe Arab world sees how Israel has used technology to develop its economy,\u201d Nuseiba said.<\/span><\/p>\n 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 \u2013 even those who had been reliable allies of the West \u2013 is in America\u2019s best interest.<\/span><\/p>\n The region\u2019s dictators had justified their rule as a choice between the stability they imposed and progress. \u201cToday the real choice is between reform and unrest,\u201d Shapiro said. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is that change in the Middle East and North Africa contain within it both risks and opportunities,\u201d he said. \u201cIf these changes lead to true democracy\u2026 they can very much be in America\u2019s national interest. But political transitions can be unstable and volatile \u2013 and they can be hijacked.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It is encouraging international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to help, too, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n Shapiro said turned Nuseiba\u2019s formula around, contending that democratic rule would not only create governments more favorable to the West and to Israel but foster economic development. \u201cDemocracies make for strong and stable partners, they trade more and they innovate more,\u201d he said. \u201cThey channel people\u2019s energy away from extremism and toward political and civic engagement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Shapiro reiterated Washington\u2019s view that Islamic parties cannot be kept out of the democratic process, but they have to respect certain values \u2013 rejecting violence, respecting the rule of law, freedom of speech and the rights of women and minorities. \u201cWe will judge the political actors in these countries not by what they say but what they do,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe must try to seize the opportunities, but we must undertake this with humility \u2026 the Arab future will be decided by the Arabs,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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 \u201cmentality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, the Arab world remembers Turkish rule from the Ottoman period \u201cnegatively\u201d and is wary of any sign that Ankara is trying to wield too much influence. \u201cArab countries do not like interference from others in Arab affairs and Turkish interference is [regarded as] more sensitive than from other non-Arab countries,\u201d Yakis said.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf elections in the Arab Spring comply with the minimum standards of modern democracy, it would not be fair to ignore the results,\u201d he said. \u201cIgnoring them would harm the leverage of the international community over these countries.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Israel Elad-Altman, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Israel\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMany people say the Arab countries should follow the Turkish example,\u201d he said. \u201cBut their leading party isn\u2019t really Islamist \u2026Turkey has been secularizing for the last 80 years. Islam remains strong in the countryside, but secularism is strong, too. That hasn\u2019t been the case in the Arab countries.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an open question which of these approaches will prevail, but I doubt we\u2019ll see major ideological concessions,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n 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. <\/span><\/p>\n Another positive outcome is the weakening of Iran\u2019s 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\u2019s Syria and Hizbullah-dominated Lebanon and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.<\/span><\/p>\n 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. \u201cThe Arab Spring has deal a major blow to the axis of resistance,\u201d Elad-Altman said.<\/span><\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by David Rosenberg Published Sunday, December 11, 2011 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\u2019s progress to democracy, but they should be aware of the limits of their ability to predict how it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":47655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,2938,34],"tags":[5983],"class_list":["post-47654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-middle-east-middle-east-regions","category-usa","tag-arab-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}