How To Save The Arab World

These are all important steps, but they are temporary ones, attempts to pour water on a fiery culture. The more lasting path to reform will be economic. Over the last three decades there has been a remarkable pattern in the progress of political freedom around the world. Those countries that have made the transition from dictatorship to democracy with greatest success--Spain, Portugal, Chile, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico--all traveled along a similar road. The regimes first liberalized the economy, not out of any desire to expand freedom but rather because they wanted to get rich. But this expansion of economic liberty had steady spillover effects. Economic reform meant the beginnings of a genuine rule of law--capitalism needs contracts--openness to the world, access to information and, perhaps most important, the development of a business class.

Karl Marx was wrong about most things. But he was right when he argued that an independent class of business people is the key to liberal democracy. (Of course, he did not mean this as a compliment.) Business people have a stake in openness, in rules and in stability. They want their societies to modernize and move forward rather than stay trapped in factionalism and war. Instead of the romance of ideology, they seek the reality of material progress. In the Middle East today there are too many people consumed by political dreams and too few interested in practical plans. There is a dominant business class there, but it is one that owes its position to oil or connections to the ruling families. It is the wealth of feudalism, not capitalism, and its political effects remain feudal as well. A genuine entrepreneurial business class would be the single most important force for change in the Middle East, pulling along all others in its wake. (The Palestinians, tragically, have long been the region's best merchants and would probably respond fastest to new economic opportunities if they could put the intifada behind them.) Ultimately, this battle is one Middle Easterners will have to fight, which is why there needs to be some group within these societies that advocates and benefits from economic and political reform.

This is not as fantastic an idea as it might sound. There are already stirrings of genuine economic activity in parts of the Middle East. Jordan has become a member of the WTO, signed a free-trade pact with the United States, privatized key industries and even encouraged cross-border business ventures with Israel. Egypt has made some small progress on the road to reform. Among the oil-rich countries, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are trying to wean themselves of their dependence on oil. Dubai, part of the U.A.E., has already gotten oil down to merely 8 percent of its GDP and publicly announces its intention to become the "Singapore of the Middle East." (It would do well to emulate Singapore's tolerance of its ethnic and religious minorities.) Even Saudi Arabia recognizes that its oil economy can provide only one job for every three of its young men coming into the work force. In Algeria, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika desperately wants foreign investment to repair his tattered economy. We should welcome this interest. Economic necessity can be the mother of reform. But Washington ought to insist on genuine reform--new legal codes, new regulations, privatization--before giving any encouragement to the IMF or the private sector to venture into these countries. Better to have two countries that are genuine reformers than 20 fraudulent programs.

If we could choose one place to press hardest to reform, it should be Egypt. Jordan has a more progressive ruler; Saudi Arabia is more critical because of its oil. But Egypt is the intellectual soul of the Arab world. If it were to progress economically and politically, it would demonstrate more powerfully than any essay or speech that Islam is compatible with modernity, and that Arabs can thrive in today's world. In East Asia, Japan's economic success proved to be a powerful example that others in the region looked to and followed. The Middle East needs one such homegrown success story. (To its credit, the Clinton administration did try a high-level economic initiative toward Egypt along these lines, but the Egyptian regime was able to stymie it.)

When we sit down to talk with these regimes, inevitably we will return to FOTA, Fear of the Alternative. The regimes will remind us that they cannot do all that we ask because otherwise the fundamentalists will come to power. We should not believe them. The rulers of the Middle East are not democratic politicians with finely tuned senses of what their publics want. They are dictators. After all, if Mubarak were so close to his people, why would he need to arrest, torture and murder hundreds to stay in power? These men fear a public that they barely know.

The greatest potency Islamic fundamentalism holds is that it is an alternative-- a mystical, utopian alternative--to the wretched reality that most people live under in the Middle East. Accommodating these forces--as long as they are nonviolent--has the effect of taming them, bringing them into the system. No one is talking about moving to democracy overnight. In Egypt, for example, the Parliament is utterly powerless. Yet Muslim fundamentalists cannot openly stand for elections to it. This has made them only more extreme and heightened their stature as persecuted heroes. The few regimes that are beginning to allow some dissent within the system--Jordan and Morocco--are faring much better.