Editor's Note:

Every September for the past 14 years decision makers and thought leaders have gathered at the Arab-US Policymakers Conference series to discuss the pressing issues of the day effecting the relationship between America and the Arab world. Doctor Anthony Cordesman, holder of the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has been a regular contributor to those conferences with his insightful analyses and thoughtful recommendations.��

SUSRIS is pleased to bring you his presentation to this year's AUSPC [September 11-12, 2005] in which he addressed the dilemmas facing policymakers across the spectrum of developments in the region.

[Slides accompanying Doctor Cordesman's presentation can be found via the thumbnail links at bottom.]�

For more information on the AUSPC series visit the National Council on US-Arab Relations Web Site.

Strategic Realism in the Middle East and US and Arab Relations
Anthony H. Cordesman

This is a difficult time to talk about strategic developments in the Middle East. Almost regardless of where we turn, we see as enduring problems and there are at least as many real-world difficulties as opportunities. There is no area where we cannot round up long lists of faults, mistakes, and missed opportunities on the part of both the US and Arab world.

In addition to the �usual suspects� like the Arab-Israel conflict, Iraq, and Iran, have the increasingly tired mix of mutual recriminations over the �war on terrorism.� We also must try to breathe new life into the long-standing strategic problems in energy, reform, and the US and Arab military posture in the Middle East.

In fact, this very familiarity is a key part of the problems we face. Fighting over past mistakes should have beens, and different views of history and international law has resolved nothing and perpetuated much. The Middle East has become a region where there is no more certain way to repeat the past than to remember it.

I make no claim to dramatic new solutions to any of the major strategic problems in the Middle East, but I have spent more than 40 years learning what fails. In this region, the �blame game� is not the cure, it is the disease.

What I would like to do today is to focus on the future, and on the "art of the possible" as it affects four of the key strategic issues that do most to divide us. Let me also make it clear that I know all too well that saying what I am about to say will be unpopular with most of the Arab members of this audience, with the Bush Administration as well as its more vehement opponents, and with anyone who may have simply wandered in by mistake.

This, however, is not a time for popularity contests or political correctness. We face a strategic environment in which none of the practical options are good options in the sense that they can please all sides. If we are to make real progress in any critical area, it can only come from unpleasant compromises and acknowledging unpopular realities and problems.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Let me begin with the most divisive strategic issue in the region, and that one that does most to polarize the strategic situation: The Arab-Israeli conflict.

If we are to move forward, I believe that the time has come to face the fact that no amount of negotiation, and past or future UN resolutions, will ever give us a peace based on the 1967 boundaries -- much less what might have been in 1948. We are not going to have what might have been achieved at Camp David or Tabah.

Short of another war, any peace settlement is going to mean continued Israeli control over most of the Greater Jerusalem, a long period of physical separation of Israeli and Arab by security barriers and walls, and a two-state solution in which �Palestine� will evolve slowly towards full sovereignty and will indefinitely be dependent on outside aid.

This means facing the painful reality that any real world solution lies in accepting something very close to the status quo. Lost wars are not going to be won at the conference table.

At the same time, the issue of territory is far less important than much of the debate over peace settlements generally recognizes. Shaping the future is not a matter of past boundaries, territory, water, or an agricultural past. It is how to create an urbanized Palestinian state that can function with viable infrastructure and lines of communication. It is how to finance and execute economic development and the creation of jobs. It is how to give an exceptionally young and largely urbanized population real opportunity, security, and citizenship in a real state.

The future lies in creating a different kind of Road Map: One that focuses on how to give Palestinians a real economic future, and not how to continue to argue over the past. It lies in going from a vague, exhortative "consensus" to a meaningful international effort that presses both sides to accept has real lines on the map with real details of what a �final settlement� should mean.

For either side to win, both sides must lose. In the case of Israel, any meaningful strategic solution means rejecting the Israeli desire for delay. In the case of the Palestinians, it means acknowledging that Palestinian sovereignty cannot wait on the perfect or even a desirable Palestinian government and security structure.

We do not need unfocused arguments over what will not happen. We do need the courage to put pressure on Israel to accomplish what can happen. The issue is not 1967, it is 2005. It is rolling back enough of the occupation to make a functioning Palestinian state possible, it is removing marginal settlements and excessive security zones, and it is trading economic viability, infrastructure, and new routes of communication for territory that will not be given up. It is providing balanced US aid to the Palestinians, US help in creating effective Palestinian security forces, and pressure on Israel to accept something far less than perfect security.

To be more specific, a meaningful approach to peace requires a US-led effort that pressures Israel to roll back far more marginal settlements than any Israel politician now wants; and to find some political and religious compromise on Jerusalem that many Israelis will strongly resist.

The world is not going back to 1967, and the core realities of Greater Jerusalem will not change. The issue is not 1967, UNSCR 242, or Green Lines. However, the expansion of E1, Male Edomim (Adumim), and the more extended parts of Givat Ze�ev and Pisqat Ze�ev around Jerusalem is a different story. So is the effort to preserve Aerial, and the other deep �outliers� that lead to impossibly large Israeli security areas, �walls,� and levels of separation.

The Bush Administration and the US Congress can only support an effective peace initiative if they can develop the courage to make it clear to Israel that the US cannot and will not support the open-ended expansion of security zones around Jerusalem, and the preservation of Israeli settlements, security roads, and long-term security elements deep in the West Bank. Israel�s domestic politics, and particular the politics of its more marginal �settlers,� do not serve the cause of peace, American strategic interests, or even the strategic interests of Israel. They are a pointless strategic irritant and should be treated as such.

Israel, and its supporters, need to develop a concept of strategy that looks beyond today�s crises and the next election. Israel needs to accept the fact that security is one thing, but that much of its current presence on the West Bank does nothing more than provoke Palestinian and Arab anger and make peace impossible. Separation may be necessary, but it cannot work unless it is tied to a clear vision of a Palestine that can actually function as a state, to Israeli actions and incentives that support such a state, and to Israeli efforts to reach out to all moderate Arab and Islamic regimes � just as it has already done to Egypt and Jordan. There is no real hope for a pragmatic and meaningful peace settlement as long as Israel only looks towards security, and lacks grand strategic vision.

Yet, a meaningful approach to peace requires a matching Arab and European recognition that the issue is not the boundaries of the past; it is the people of the future. Most of today�s facts on the ground will be facts for the future. Wasting generation after generation of Palestinians has accomplished nothing and will accomplish nothing. It is economics, demographics, and sovereignty.

The Arab world has found it all too convenient to ignore the developing facts on the ground and the cost of Arab rhetoric to both the Palestinians and to Arab peoples. Far too many Arab regimes have used the Arab-Israeli conflict as a lightning rod to excuse their own failures and a pointless level of militarism. Talking about the 1967 Green Lines is a valid negotiating position. Acting as if they could be real is not. Moreover, most Arab nations need to understand that they longer are the ones exploiting the issue. Islamist extremists are capitalizing on the Arab lack of grand strategic vision, not Arab regimes.

Palestinians need a vision of their own, and one based on intelligent self-interest and not empty historical rhetoric. It is far from clear that the Palestinian Authority can survive its own mistakes, corruption, and incompetence. It is possible that younger and more honest secular Palestinians may supplement or replace the failed leaders of the past. It is at least equally possible, that they may lose to movements like Hamas and the PIJ. One thing is certain; they will lose without realism and effective self-reform.

Finally, the Palestinians themselves must come to grips with the issue of creating a single, effective security force, rejecting violence, and showing they can use aid effectively. The Palestinian Authority now receives close to $1 billion in aid a year and another $1 billion in revenue. Something like 75% of that money goes to salaries and pensions � often for people who do not work or exist.

Regardless of how well the Palestinian Authority uses its funds, however, demographics and economics will enforce another strategic reality on the future of Palestine. The Palestinian right of return will never take more than token form in Israel. Equally important, every Palestinian who returns to Gaza and the West Bank who is not a source of major skills and capital will be a serious liability to a Palestine that faces a decade long demographic nightmare.

According to the UN, Gaza and the West Bank had a population of a little over one million in 1950 (1,005,000). It was only about 1.2 million when the 1967 war began. It is now some 3.7 million, and the UN estimates it will be 5.7 million by 2020 and 10.1 million by 2050.

The strategic future of Palestinian refugees � if they are to have a real future � lies either in full citizenship in the countries they now inhabit, or in relocating them to areas that can absorb them far better than Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, the time in which the Arab world, or some Arab host states, could mistreat them or use them as political pawns, to be manipulated with empty promises is long over.

The US, the Quartet, Arab states, Israel, and the Palestinians all need to recognize that this kind of peace will not emerge simply with time and patience. There will never be a point where final settlement negotiations are politically easy, and where good will solves key problems. The Bush Administration, the EU, and Arab League should not try to enforce a piece plan, but they should formulate concrete, details, plans and put pressure on the Palestinians, Israel, and each other. Negotiations must be pushed forward painfully -- and sometimes divisively -- or even good intentions will wait forever.

Finally, the Golan has become a Syrian problem that the rest of the world has little reason to care about. Syria may have a first rate people, but it is now a third rate military power with a fifth rate government. Hafez Asad, even more than Arafat, showed brilliant skill in turning strategic opportunity into strategic failure. He first wasted the opportunity offered by President Sadat, and then the opportunity by Prime Minister Barak and President Clinton. He and his son have done far more to cripple the welfare of the Syrian people through their failures in governance and economic reform than the Arab-Israel conflicts.

If the Syrian government can change, fine! But until it does, the return of the Golan is not high on that list of regional strategic priorities. Lebanon is no longer occupied by Israel or Syria, and should not be proxy for either state. The future of the Palestinians is infinitely more important than the future of a handful of putative Syrian Golani. In fact, it is hard to think of a major strategic issue in the Arab world that does not have more human importance and impact.

The Future of Iraq

Having now alienated every Arab and Arab-American in the audience, let me proceed to do the same with every supporter of the Bush Administration and every American opposed to the Iraq War that is calling for a sudden American exit from Iraq.

At this point in time, it does not matter who broke Iraq or why they broke it. Historians can and should argue how much of the responsibility should go to the Bush Administration, Saddam Hussein, past Iraqi military juntas, the British, and the Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and real-world politicians cannot afford this luxury. Issues like past US intelligence failures are now moot, as is the past lack of realism in the neoconservative view of Iraq and of what an American invasion would accomplish. What counts is that the past must not be the prelude to the future.

We are where we are, and we have a moral and ethical obligation to do what we can to achieve the best possible outcome for Iraq and for all of the Iraqi people. And when I say �we,� I do not simply mean the US. The Arab world largely tolerated Saddam, even after fighting his invasion of Kuwait. His legacy, and Arab attitudes, at least partly shaped today�s Shi�ite and Kurdish anger and pressures for federalism and separatism.

More importantly, the Arab world simply cannot afford the strategic cost of sitting back saying �I told you so,� and Europe cannot afford to seize the high moral ground and sit there in safety.

There do have to be practical limits to the US involvement in Iraq, and much depends on the wisdom, inclusiveness, and leadership quality of Iraqi politics. Iraqis are now responsible for the most critical element of Iraq's success. The US cannot rescue Iraq�s political process if it degenerates into civil war. It has no excuse to stay if an elected Iraqi government asks the US to leave.

Failure is always an option in the real world, and US strategy cannot be based on constant global success without becoming a fantasy. This should be a warning to Iraqi politicians, Iraqis, the Arab world, and the region. An Iraq that muddles through the next 5-10 years has always the real-world option for success. An Iraq that is torn apart, in turmoil, divided, or placed under another strong man is all too real a possibility. An Iraq that helps divide the region and Islamic into Sunni and Shi�ite sections � with neo-Salafi extremists on one side and Shi�ite conservative theocrats on the other, does not merit American dollars or American lives.

Success or failure is now an Iraqi, not an American responsibility. The Arab world has come a master of avoiding responsibility, and waiting for others or blaming them for Arab problems. Far too many Iraqis are not exceptions to this pattern, and no one from the outside can save them from themselves.

Only Iraqi politicians can resolve ethnic and sectarian differences. Only Iraqis can create an effective pattern of governance, and manage Iraq�s economic development, budget, and use of aid. Only Iraqis can deploy the mix of military, security, and police forces that can provide both security and legitimacy. Only Iraq can create the image of a nation that can unit its factions.

Nevertheless, for Iraqi politics to have the chance to muddle through, the US must continue to do what it can to create effective Iraqi military and security forces; and to shift US aid to providing the funds Iraqis need to manage a start towards economic development. The US continues to make every effort to help Iraq develop politically � even if the end result is a far cry from the original ideal of either neoconservatives or neoliberals. To put it in cruder terms, the US must be prepared to pay another 500 to 1,000 American lives, another $60 billion in military expenditures, and another $20 billion in aid money.

Iraqi success, however, requires more than Iraqi leadership and American persistence. It requires aid and engagement by Europe, Arab states, Turkey, and possibly Iran � not on American terms or to help the US -- but on Iraqi terms and to meet the interests of both Iraq and the other nations engaged. One thing is certain. Success is not going to be achieved by vague references to the UN, the �international community,� or the �Arab world.� Help will come one nation at a time.

The Future of Iran

I am going be to be equally unpopular in talking about the strategic posture of Iran. I have never believed that Iran was on the road to being either part of the axis of evil or was on the road to moderate reform. I also do not believe that the US now has a good rationale for military options, or that it could much to encourage regime change. At the same time, I have always questioned whether reaching some form of US-Iranian rapprochement through options like engagement, dialogue, and "grand strategic bargains" has been more than wishful thinking on the part of well-intentioned Americans, Iranians, and others.

As the recent Iranian election has made all too clear, we are almost certainly talking about containment while Iranian politics play out their course -- driven by Iran�s internal dynamics on largely internal terms. Good, bad, or indifferent, exile groups and outside players will be largely marginal players dreaming ambitious dreams.

Iran will have to play out these politics by wandering through its own theocratic fantasies, and do so in terms of its own social structure, internal economics, and regional ambitions. Until its own internal political dynamics change for internal political reasons whose timing and nature we cannot now predict, Iran will continue to play games in Lebanon and Israel, creep towards nuclear weapons, develop long-range missiles, and enhance its capabilities for asymmetric war.

Under these conditions, �dual containment� must take on a new meaning. The US cannot engage Iran at present. The Gulf states, however, have already shown that they can deal with Iran in positive ways and have a positive influence. The same has been true of Europe when it has established clear lines, and has only provided inducements when Iran�s conduct has justified them. Iran cannot be dealt with by broad embargoes and isolation, or by military containment and threats. It must be clear that strong incentives exist for the right kind of Iranian behavior, and that Iran is not threatened unless it becomes a threat.

The US will need to play the �bad cop� in this game. Iran needs to understand that it faces overwhelming military power if it attempts military pressure, threats, or adventures. This means forward deployed US air and sea power, and possibly missile defenses. It means de facto guarantees to Iran�s neighbors. It means the US should continue to try to block or delay Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and Iranian adventures outside Iran.

It is also important that all the players understand certain realities here:

• The Gulf Cooperation Council will remain weak and ineffective, and talk of new Gulf security concepts is well-meaning nonsense. So is talk about NATO or Europe providing more than cover for American power projection. The region will not act and Iran will not be a credible partner.

• Lebanon needs to come to grips with Amal, the Hezbollah, and Iran � not just Syria. No one can stop Iran from opposing Israel, but Lebanese security and peace negotiations do mean that Lebanon should not be a sanctuary for Iranian asymmetric adventures.

• The US can win by deterring, but will lose if it provokes or go to war. The US is even less able to control the future aftermath of any major conflict with Iran than it was able to control the aftermath of such a conflict with Iraq. This does not mean Iran will not lose far more than the US, but it does mean the US cannot win in the sense of shaping the peace.

• Iran, Iraq, and the Arab world all need to look beyond narrow security issues to the strategic threat posed by divisions between Sunni and Shi�ite. If nothing else, the post-Reformation military barbarism of the Christian world should be a warning. Neo-Salafi hatred of Shi�ism, and the risk of clash within a faith and a civilization, is a far more real and dangerous risk than a clash between Islam and the West.

More broadly, the Arab Gulf states and the rest of the Arab world need to focus on internal security and internal stability, and not on conventional military forces and arms imports. The MENA region (including Iran and Israel) is still spending some $55 billion a year on conventional military forces, some 6% of its gross domestic product. It still has some 2.8 million active military, 2.5 million reservists, and some 940,000 reservists. It signs some $10-15 billion of new arms agreements a year, and much of this total is not included in the formal total of $55 billion for defense budgets.

These levels of conventional military effort are not needed in a region where Iraq no longer poses a conventional threat and Iran is so weak; where no real Arab-Israel arms race or prospect for conventional war exists, and where North African states face no real military threat other than their own populations. There may well be a need for more spending on internal security and anti-terrorism.

There may be a need for different kinds of spending to deal with the threat of asymmetric warfare and counterproliferation. In virtually every case, however, the need is for internal national defense reform and not for regional security or dealing with external threats.

The Struggle for Reform and the War on Terrorism

Finally, we need to reshape our efforts to address the problem of terrorism and Islamic extremist, and the divisions between the US and Arab world, and the West and Islam. It is true that we are dealing with a small minority of violent extremists. It is true that they do not speak for the Arab world and Islam. It is also true that the US has often overreacted to the events of 9/11, and done so clumsily and sometimes out of ignorance. The same is true of much of the West.

We sometimes confuse legitimate differences with hatred and terrorism. The Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, and issues like Iran compound the divisions between the US and the region. They do not breed "hatred" but they do breed anger. They interact with a host of lesser issues, conspiracy theories, and mutual misunderstanding. Instant satellite communications and news, the Internet, and extraordinary levels of social mobility interact to drive the resulting fears and passions.

At the same time, the Arab and Islamic worlds have been slow to react, and have often tried to avoid confronting the problems that have led to extremism. There is real clash taking place within the Arab world and Islamic civilization. There is a real struggle over what Islam should be and over the role it should play in society and politics.

Neo-Salafi groups and practices have an influence that goes far beyond Bin Laden and will almost certainly long survive him. Other religious extremists, including many of the theocratic leaders of Iran, argue for less violent and hate-driven interpretations, but they also argue for practices that block essential social and economic reform, and beliefs that are too intolerant to preserve a modern social order.

Like many other forces of religious extremism and violence in human history, this religious and ideological struggle interacts with many other forces. There is no simple or direct correlation between terrorism and economic failings, population pressure, hyperurbanization and radical social change. Each nation in the Arab and Islamic world also faces a different mix of such problems.

The fact remains, however, that far too much of the Arab and Islamic world do lag behind in economic development. Population pressure is acute and growing and has created a youth explosion that is creating massive employment problems and a wave of emigration. Rural and agricultural development has largely collapsed, traditional tribal and social structures have been forced to radically mutate or collapse, and urbanization has strained infrastructure, social services, and education -- often to a near breaking point.

Most Arab and Middle Eastern populations have real per capita incomes at the lowest levels of development. The handful of oil rich states that do not are absorbing a transfer of over $1 trillion dollars in largely unearned income, but do not distribute that income equitably, and often do not use it to create effective programs for economic and social development. Far too much is still spent on arms when the real problem is internal security and stability, on failed forms of state industry and socialism, and on corruption and narrow oligarchies. Authoritarian, overcentralized, and repressive regimes often compound the problem.

In brief, most MENA states face some or all of the following problems:

• Much of the region cannot afford to provide more water for agriculture at market prices, and in the face of human demand; much has become a �permanent� food importer.

• Employment and education are critical challenges to national stability.

• Hyperurbanization and a half-century decline in agricultural and traditional trades impose high levels of stress on traditional social safety nets and extended families.

• Broad problems in integrating women effectively and productively into the work force.

• The region has had limited or no real growth in per capita income, and growing inequity in the distribution of that income, for more than two decades.

• Overall economic growth is too low.

• The Middle East is not competitive with the leading developing regions.

• The region is not competitive in trade.

• Radical economic changes are affecting traditional regional societies.

• �Oil wealth� has always been relative, and can no longer sustain any country in the region.

• In spite of decades of reform plans and foreign aid, there are no globally competitive economies in any of the MENA states.

• Far too many countries have a sustained debt and budget crisis.

The US and Bush Administration have made many mistakes, but they have almost certainly been correct in stating that the Arab world and Middle East can only achieve stability through reform. It is true that terrorism and extremism can only be defeated at the ideological, political, economic, and social level. Without such action, military and internal security efforts will fail -- sometimes quickly as in the case of Iraq and sometimes slowly as in the case of today's more successful "one man" regimes.

Where the US and Bush Administration have gone wrong is in assuming that reform can come from the outside, that the same largely American or Western solution can work in all Arab and Islamic states, and that "democracy" is somehow a magic word that transforms entire societies.

The fact is that meaningful religious reform can only come from within. The US and the West cannot fight Islam's battle for the soul of Islam. This is a struggle that can only be fought and won within the region. If it is left to outside or deal with through denial, it is a struggle that will go on indefinitely and sometimes be lost. It is a struggle that every Middle Eastern intellectual, and every government, needs to face.

The most outsiders can do is point out the obvious: This struggle is the most important single strategic priority for virtually every Middle Eastern and Islamic state. It is necessary and unavoidable, and interacts with the broader struggle for a tolerant global society based on mutual respect and human rights.

More broadly, the US and the Bush Administration are also wrong in focusing on "democracy" as if a simple political fix could be encouraged or imposed on every nation from the outside and at the nearly the same time.

At a minimum, workable "democracy" actually means taking the time to create government with strong checks and balances. It means priority for human rights and the rule of law over the simple act of voting. It means creating functional political parties capable of both serving the nation and looking beyond one man, one vote, one time. Pure democracy has never worked in any state. Sufficiently crude democracy is little better.

Both development, and regional strategic stability, will occur one nation at a time, and at different rates and in different ways. They will be driven either by local reformers and by political evolution, or will often collapse into forms of revolution that may be worse than the status quo.

The real world priority for reform also has to give equal balance to economic reform, employment, education, social services, and reducing population growth rates. It means finding solutions to ethnic and religious divisions, and social change. It means giving at least as much priority to the economic role of women as the political role; creating a broad and globally competitive labor force.

This kind of evolutionary reform can only occur at a different pace and in a different way in each state in the region. Like religious reform, it can only come from within and must be driven by local reformers. It cannot be driven by US public diplomacy, or by seeking to makeover every state in something approaching the form of the US or Europe. We are not talking about a few years; we are talking a decade and sometimes decades.

The Middle East and Arab world cannot deal with these needs for reform through denial, through complaining about outside states and forces, complaining about US and other external calls for reform, or waiting for the solutions to the region's other strategic problems. The US cannot deal with them through its traditional initial solution to every problem: "simple, quick, and wrong."

The Middle East and Arab world will succeed, if and when, it starts to solve its problems one nation at a time, honestly, and without waiting for outside aid or solutions to all the region's ills. It is also important to note that it now has a unique window of opportunity. The current projections of the EIA indicates that MENA oil export revenues will rise from a recent low of around $100 billion in 1998 in constant 2004 dollars to over $500 billion in 2005 � reaching or exceeding the former peak of some $500 billion reached in 1980. According to Merrill Lynch, the capital controlled by wealthy individuals in the Middle East already rose by 29% during 2003-2004, to a level of approximately $1 trillion dollars. This estimate projects a further 9% annual rise from 2004 to 2009.

The question is whether MENA governments will act upon this window of opportunity, whether the wealthier states will look beyond their own needs, and whether the poorer states will actually move towards effective development and reform. No nation has developed since World War II that did not develop itself, and solve virtually all of its own problems. If Asian states like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or other Asian states had waited for peace or regional solutions, Asia would be another Middle East.

The US and Europe, however, need patience, a balanced approach to reform, strong country missions capable of encouraging local governments and reformers, and the understanding that different societies and cultures will often take a different path. In practice, this means a very different strategy based on persuasion, partnership, and cooption rather than pressure and conversion:

• Implement a broadly-based reform strategy: Social, economic, and political reforms should be supported, but in an evolutionary sense. The US and Western states, however, cannot be seen as pushing these reforms in ways that discredit local officials and reformers. Outside pressure for change will be resisted even if the reforms are necessary, and too much overt pressure is counterproductive.

• One size does not fit all. The Arab and Islamic worlds are not monolithic. Each country requires different sets of reforms and needs. Some need help in reforming their political process, others need economic aid, and others need special attention to their demographic dynamics and population control. The West, therefore, must avoid any generalized strategy of dealing with the Arab-Islamic world as one entity.

• Work on a country-by-country approach and rely on strong country teams, not regional approaches: Regional polices, meetings and slogans will not deal with real world needs or provide the kind of dialogue with local officials and reformers, tailored pressure and aid, and country plans and policies that are needed. Strong country teams both in Washington and in US Embassies are the keys to success.

• Recognize that the pace of reform will be relatively slow if it is to be stable and evolutionary, and dependent on partnership and cooption. Artificial deadlines and false crises can only lead to failed tactics and strategies. Outside support for reform must move at the base countries can actually absorb, and shift priorities to reflect the options that are actually available. History takes time and does not conform to the tenure of any given set of policymakers.

• Carefully support moderate voices: �Moderates� in the region do need the support of the West, but obvious outside backing can hurt internal reform efforts. Moreover, �moderate� must be defined in broad terms. It does not mean �secularist� and it does not necessarily mean �pro-American.� It also, however, does not mean supporting voices that claim to support freedom and democracy, but are actually the voice of extremism.

• Democratization is only part of reform and depends on creating a rule of law, checks and balances and a separation of powers, protection for minorities and human rights, and effective political parties. Trying to force or "rush" democracy on Middle Eastern countries is impractical and counterproductive. The goal should be to help MENA countries develop more pluralistic and representative governments that respect the rights of minorities.

• Recognize that the key to effective action is local political action, dialogue, education, efforts to use the media, and public diplomacy: The West and the US cannot hope to win a struggle for Islam and reform from the outside. It is the efforts of local governments, reformers, educators, and media that will be critical. Encouraging and aiding such efforts is far more important than advancing the image of the US or Western states or trying to shape local and regional attitudes through Western public diplomacy.

• Avoid generalizing about Muslims: generalizing Islam as a source of violence and discriminating against Muslims in the west can alienate �uncommitted� Muslims.

• Demonizing any part of Islam will aid extremists: The problem of terrorism is not the problem of �puritan� or �Wahabi� Islam, but the attitude of violence and intolerance of politically motivated groups that exploit religious teaching to gain legitimacy in the eyes of their recruits and followers. To defeat these groups, their motivations need to be understood and fought at their roots. E.g. Al-Qaida�s goal of ruling the �Arabian Peninsula.�

• Avoid supporting �secularism� against �traditionalism:� The region has seen its share of failed governance systems. Most efforts to secularize have failed and the US should not be seen as a driving force behind what may be assured failure. Moreover, the word �secularism� translate into �elmaniyah� is often intermingled with �atheism.�

• Don�t try to divide and conquer: The West should stay clear of issues like Sunni-Shiite frictions, and taking sides with ethic and sectarian groups. It does not serve anyone when they are played against each other. The Iran-Iraq War was a perfect example of how interfering can backfire. The US should avoid playing any role that could encourage such divisions, particularly given the current environment in Iraq.

• Liberalism vs. counter-terrorism: The liberty democratic societies afford people is sometimes the same tool extremists use to spread their hateful ideology. The west must be careful in advocating immediate liberalization and freedom of speech of the Middle East.

• Apply a single set of standards to Western and regional counterterrorism: Do what you preach and preach what you do. The West and specifically the US should void being seen as supporting violation of human rights and abusive security measures in counter-terrorism, which advocating human freedom. Violence by states against civilians be it Russia, Egypt, or Israel should be equally condemned.

In short, any effective strategy to deal with terrorism and extremism means addressing two key strategic issues that go far beyond the so-called war on terrorism. One is whether the Arab world can recognize the need for reform and achieve it. The second is whether the West, and particularly the US, can learn to work quietly with nations for effective reform, rather than seek to impose it noisily, and sometimes violently, on an entire region.

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A Burke Chair in Strategy at the CSIS. He and Nawaf Obaid have written Saudi Security: Military and Internal Security Developments, which will be published by the CSIS and Praeger this fall.�

Anthony H. Cordesman is also author Saudi Arabia Enters the 21st Century: The Military Dimension, Westport, Praeger/Greenwood, June 2003, and Saudi Arabia Enters the 21st Century: Energy Politics, Economics, and Security in the Middle East, Westport, Praeger/Greenwood, June 2003