US arms for Arab authoritarians -
again By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Just 25 months after
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denounced 60
years of US support for authoritarian governments
in Arab world, she and Pentagon chief Robert Gates
are on their way to the Middle East bearing arms
and an uncannily familiar strategic vision to the
same regimes.
Under the late president
Ronald Reagan, it was called "strategic consensus"
- the notion that you could coax the so-called
"moderate" Arab states into a de facto coalition
with Israel against
the
region's perceived Soviet clients and a
revolutionary Iran by plying them with
sophisticated weaponry and renewed
Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Under
President George W Bush, the strategic vision has
still not been given a specific name but, apart
from the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the
basic elements appear to be eerily similar, if not
identical.
Heralding her trip and the
proposed transfer of some US$43 billion in new
weaponry for Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia
and Arab states on the Persian Gulf, Rice asserted
on Monday, "This effort will bolster forces of
moderation and support a broader strategy to
counter the negative influences of al-Qaeda,
Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
"Further
modernizing the Egyptian and Saudi Arabia armed
forces and increasing interoperability will
bolster our partners' resolve in confronting the
threat of radicalism and cement their respective
roles as regional leaders in the quest for Middle
East peace and in ensuring Lebanon's freedom and
independence," she said.
The trip follows
last week's announcement by Bush that Rice will
chair a regional conference some time this autumn
as part of a new diplomatic push for an eventual
"two-state solution" of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It will take both Gates and Rice to
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the latter a particularly
critical destination given the growing
estrangement between Washington and Riyadh with
respect to both Iraq and US efforts to break up a
Palestinian unity government forged by King
Abdullah.
Later, Rice will travel to
Jerusalem and Ramallah to "continue discussions on
the development of a political horizon with
Israeli and Palestinian officials", while Gates
heads for the smaller Gulf states, with which he
reportedly intends to seek new access rights to
military bases and extend older ones, as well as
pursue new arms-sales agreements.
Under
the arms-for-allies plan, the US would provide $13
billion in aid over 10 years - roughly the same
amount that it has been getting for most of the
past decade. While precise figures have not been
released, State Department officials said Saudi
Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation
Council will be encouraged to buy some $20 billion
in new arms, including satellite-guided bombs,
missile defenses, and upgrades for their US-made
fighter jets over the same period.
To
dampen concerns by Israel and its supporters in
Washington, the Bush administration is also
proposing a 10-year, $30 billion package to
preserve the Jewish state's military superiority -
or "qualitative edge" - over its Arab neighbors.
That would amount to a 25% increase in US military
assistance to Israel over current levels.
While several lawmakers close to the
so-called "Israel lobby" said this weekend they
will try to block the proposed sale to Saudi
Arabia, or at least condition it on a number of
changes in Saudi policy, Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert signaled his approval, noting in
particular the importance of an Arab-Israeli
coalition against Tehran.
"We understand
the need of the United States to support the Arab
moderates, and there is a need for a united front
between the US and us regarding Iran," he said.
The proposed arms sales and aid to the
"moderate" Arab states mark yet another step
toward a renewed embrace of the Sunni Arab
authoritarian regimes that the Bush administration
and its neo-conservative backers had tried to
distance themselves from in the aftermath of the
attacks of September 11, 2001, and particularly
after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"For 60
years, my country - the United States - pursued
stability at the expense of democracy in this
region, here in the Middle East," Rice declared in
June 2005 at the American University in Cairo, in
a widely noted speech that encouraged democracy
activists across the region. "And we achieved
neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We
are supporting the democratic aspirations of all
people."
But since the election victory of
Hamas in parliamentary elections in the
Palestinian territories seven months later, and
particularly since last year's Israel-Hezbollah
war, which the US administration saw as evidence
of Iran's expanding power, Washington has all but
abandoned its democracy-promotion rhetoric - at
least insofar as it applied to its regional allies
- in essence returning to its 60-year-old
preference for stability over democracy.
That it should now return to using large
arms transfers as major means of ensuring
stability highlights the degree to which the
administration has abandoned its pro-democracy
stance, according to critics.
"These
exorbitant arms sales should be read as a
last-ditch effort by the Bush administration to
keep matters stable for the tyrannies of the
region and to reward those who stood with him in
his unending wars," said As'ad Abukhalil, an
expert on Saudi Arabia based at California State
University at Stanislaus.
What the
administration wants from its Sunni allies, in
exchange for these deals, according to Chris
Toensing, editor of the Middle East Report, "is to
build an anti-Iranian alliance [resembling] the
early Reagan administration's attempt to find an
anti-Soviet 'strategic consensus' among US allied
Arab states and Israel. Then, as now, the Arab
states' price is some semblance of pressure on
Israel to make a comprehensive peace.
"The
Bush administration is betting that the Arab
states' fear of Iran is greater than their
sensitivities on the Palestine and Iraq questions
combined," he said. "Indeed, the Bush
administration, with all its talk of transforming
the Middle East, is reverting to usual US form: a
patchwork policy of constant crisis management,
all in the name of the 'stability' the
neo-conservatives professed to hate.
"The
major difference going ahead is that, thanks to
the Bush administration, there are now two
'intractable' Middle East conflicts to manage
instead of one," Toensing said.
Indeed,
that Washington is now trying to forge a new
strategic alliance against Iran in the face of
Tehran's emergence as a major regional threat to
US interests - largely because of the Bush
administration's own miscalculations in Iraq -
struck analyst Gary Sick as a "marvelous example
of political jiu jitsu".
"Having
inadvertently created a set of circumstances that
ensured an increase in Iranian strength and
bargaining power, that seriously frightened the
US's erstwhile Sunni allies in the region, and
that undermined US strength and credibility," said
Sick, a Columbia University professor who was
president Jimmy Carter's top Iran aide, "the US
now proposes a new and improved regional political
relationship to deal with the problem, and,
incidentally, to distract attention from America's
plight in Iraq while reviving America's position
as the ultimate power in the region."
The
major flaw in this strategy, according to Sick,
however, may be the government of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is supported by the
US but is seen by Iraq's Sunni neighbors,
particularly Saudi Arabia, as a pawn of Tehran.
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