Asia comes to the Middle East in due course

 Just so no one thinks I'm picking on Foreign Policy, here's a great piece from Geoffrey Kemp (also via WPR's Media Roundup, that should have placed it topside) that elaborates on a point I've made for years:  Asia is coming militarily to the Middle East, just like we did before, and for all the same logical reasons.  Our choice is how we channel their interest, not how we block it or contain it or hedge against it.

Kemp's opening:

The United States has become accustomed to its hegemonic military presence in the greater Middle East. The U.S.-led international coalition against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 led to a massive increase in America's direct military presence in the Gulf. Its military presence accelerated after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, U.S. forces are deployed all the way from the Sinai desert through the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, as well as Afghanistan. While the U.S. has come to take its unchallenged military primacy in the Middle East for granted, key Asian countries -- especially India, China, Japan and South Korea -- have also increased their Middle East presence. The U.S. shouldn't view this as a threat but rather an opportunity for greater cooperation on a wide spectrum of growing security concerns.

Even better:

In many ways an increased growing Asian presence in the Middle East will bring a breath of fresh air to a region left with the bitter historic legacies of European dominance and characterized by contemporary antagonism toward the hegemonic role of the United States. The major Asian players in the Middle East have not been colonizers or occupiers and they have far less of an emotional stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the one hand, that means that they approach political issues and unresolved conflicts with what some would argue is a cynical, laissez-faire attitude, perhaps exemplified by China's initial indifference to human rights abuses in Sudan. However, the upside is that the Asians do not interfere directly in Middle East politics and therefore enjoy good relations with most states. How long they can sustain their hands-off approach is questionable if, by virtue of their economic dominance and their own strategic stakes in the region, they get drawn into the messiness of Middle East politics at a time when the United States becomes disillusioned by the burdens of hegemony.

In the meantime, it is very much in the interests of both the U.S. and the Asian countries to reach common agreements on the importance of preventing further conflict in the region and jointly assuring the security of the increased maritime traffic across the Indian Ocean. Cooperation on meeting the piracy challenge off the coast of Somalia is an early test of this new strategic reality.

Kemp's Nixonian/Kissingerian tones are well earned.  He's "the Director of Regional Strategic Programs at the Nixon Center."  The article summarizes his new book on the subject.

The reason why there won't be "another Iraq" is that there never should be a situation where the US thinks it needs to hog all the control like it did in Iraq, given this larger emerging reality.

The phony war posturing continues

Pair of WSJ stories on the further posturing of Iran and Turkey.

Iran gives Syria radar that will do little to prevent Israeli strikes against Iran’s ally but will give Iran that much more warning time WRT Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities.  It could also improve the aiming of Hezbollah’s rockets. 

Meanwhile, Turkey says it has closed its airspace to Israel—a total non-surprise since Turkey already canceled three scheduled mil exercises with Israel after the flotilla fiasco.

This “war” will remain phony until Israel decides to strike, and then we’ll see some heating up across the board, but nothing on the scale of ’73, because nobody really wants to own anything—just restructure the regional arms balance in the short-term.

Turkey the only state in the region really pursuing a strategy worth noting, and it’s mostly economic.

The Turkey-Iran rivalry comes to the fore

FT story noting that Turkey’s moves as of late have nothing to do with Islamic ideology and everything to do with expanding the nation’s influence in the Middle East vis-à-vis competitor Iran.

Yeah, Turkey said no to the US on invasion plans WRT Iraq, but as soon as Saddam fell, Iraq was crawling with Turkish contractors.  So the big refusal was a case of having one’s cake and devouring it too.

I made the same argument on the Esquire blog recently regarding Turkey’s reorientation WRT Israel, the tipping point being the Gaza flotilla show.

The whole package can’t be viewed as some fit of pique regarding the EU, nor a turn east, says the FT, and I agree wholeheartedly. 

That is the behaviour of a regional power with a long-term view of its strategic interests, not of a country veering towards Islamist activism.

The author Gardner then makes the argument that Turkey, Iran and Israel and locked in a three-way fight to dominate the region.  I agree with Turkey v Iran and certainly see Saudi Arabia v Iran, but tossing Israel into that dynamic is mistaken.  Tellingly, after Gardner makes the statement, he spends the rest of the piece focusing on Iranian and Turkish moves to that effect, except to note that Israel might strike Iran over its nukes in coming months.  Gardner believes this would leave Turkey’s strategic approach in tatters, but I think that overstates the notion by a ways.

If Israel strikes, then Turkey will demonize it further—for its purposes.  Turkey will also be able to portray Iran as a nutcase that creates regional instability, whereas it represents growth and development and stability and solid relations both East and West.

Frankly, I don’t see how Turkey can lose in any kinetics between Iran and Israel.  Both sides will be weakened and Turkey will simply be that much stronger as a result.  Also, Saudi Arabia will look weak for having the “Jews” do its dirty work.

Got a protest in Egypt? ElBaradei is on the scene!

graphic here

WSJ story on late June protests in Alexandria Egypt over the beating death of a man by police who claimed he died trying to swallow drugs as officers came upon him.

Like so many other things in Egypt today, it becomes “an unexpected rallying cry for many Egyptian opposition supporters.”

And, as is the norm now, Mohamed ElBaradei showed up at one such protest and spoke.  ElBaradei is now saying that he would run for president against Mubarek if the necessary electoral changes were made to allow him to do so—something I speculated would be true here in the blog months ago.

I’ve got to tell you, an Egypt presided over by ElBaradei would be a revolution in the region.  It would be the scariest thing to happen to the region’s autocrats since we took down Saddam.

Turkey don't need no stinkin' badges!

The National by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The gist:

Turkey has embarked on the road to a “Middle Eastern Union” as an alternative to the European Union, according to some observers, after Ankara unveiled its vision for a giant free-trade zone spanning from the Bosphorus to Sudan and Morocco.

The country has taken the first step towards forming the bloc by signing an agreement with three southern neighbours – a move being viewed in some quarters as further evidence that Ankara is losing interest in joining the EU.

“Turkey’s new aspiration: Middle Eastern Union,” the Milliyet daily newspaper trumpeted on its front page after the signing of a free-trade agreement between Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan during a Turkish-Arab forum in Istanbul last week. According to the agreement, the four countries will drop all trade and visa restrictions between them.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said this was only the beginning. His country was in favour of strengthening co-operation within a region spanning from Turkey to equatorial Africa, he said. “We want to turn this region into a security region, into a region of economic integration.”

Mr Davutoglu did not present any concrete proposals to make that giant new trade zone a reality, and there was no sign that his statement had been coordinated in advance with any of the two dozen countries that would make up a bloc reaching from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Guinea. Neither did Mr Davutoglu address the question of how realistic the chances are to create a regional pact that would bring together sworn enemies like Iran and Israel.

This should be our foreign policy, quite frankly, because it serves our strategic interests to no end.

But since we seem incapable of such strategic imagination anymore, why the hell not support Turkey in such ambition--no matter what china gets broken in the process?

Even with the recent shenanigans over the Gaza flotilla, I say it's a proud time to be a Turk.  They are talking and they are walking, while we merely keep balls in the air, occasionally patting ourselves on the back between tosses.

Saudis success rate at militant rehabilitation? About 90% normally, dropping to 80% with the toughest cases.

Reuters by way of Michael Smith, who I know wants me to focus on the 20% versus the 80%:

Around 25 former detainees from Guantanamo Bay camp returned to militancy after going through a rehabilitation program for al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi security official said on Saturday.

The United States have sent back around 120 Saudis from the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, set up after the U.S. launched a "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks by mostly Saudi suicide hijackers sent by al Qaeda.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has put the returned prisoners along with other al Qaeda suspects through a rehabilitation program which includes religious re-education by clerics and financial help to start a new life.

The scheme, which some 300 extremists have attended, is part of anti-terrorism efforts after al Qaeda staged attacks inside the kingdom from 2003-06. These were halted after scores of suspects were arrested with the help of foreign experts.

Around 11 Saudis from Guantanamo have gone to Yemen, an operating base for al Qaeda, while others have been jailed again or killed after attending the program, said Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq, Director General of the General Administration for Intellectual Security overseeing the rehabilitation.

He pinpointed strong personal ties among former prisoners but also tough U.S. tactics as the reason why some 20 percent of the returned Saudis relapsed into militancy compared to 9.5 percent of other participants in the rehabilitation program.

But honestly, I read the piece and I have to agree with the Saudis calling the program "a success," a claim pretty much mocked throughout the US press.  We're talking probably the most committed (the ones we went after) and the ones with the biggest resulting gripes (time in Guantanamo) and the Saudis still got 4 out of every 5 to walk away from the cause?  To me, that's a pretty amazing success rate.  Good God, I'd take that for the average American convict (more like half go right back to crime once out of prison), so I guess I don't see where we get off pointing fingers on this one.

I think we're awfully unrealistic on this score (indeed, one version of this story in NY state proclaimed that "scores" of Saudi terrorists were back at work, because apparently 25 equals "scores").  Any program that sidelines 90% of a population (only those returned by America scored a mere 80%, as the Saudi standard is 9 out of 10 successfully rehabilitated) has to be deemed a serious success.  I doubt we get that share in most of our efforts in Af-Pak right now, so retract the finger!

Jordan--the next nuclear power

WSJ story about Jordan's ambition to become a uranium-enriching, nuclear-power-using pillar in the region:

Jordan is among a slew of Arab countries, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, that are seeking to become among the first Mideast countries to develop a civilian nuclear-power industry. Israel is the lone country in the region believed to possess atomic weapons, but it hasn't moved to build nuclear power plants.

Jordan's nuclear ambitions are driven by economics. Wedged between Israel and oil giants Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the kingdom is 95% dependent on imported oil and has among the world's smallest reserves of potable water.

But the discovery of at least 65,000 tons of uranium ore in the deserts outside Amman in 2007 has led King Abdullah to order a drastic reshaping of his nation's economic strategy.

America wants to put Jordan on the same leash as Iran:  no producing its own enriched uranium but only ordering it from more trustworthy sources.

Jordan is balking at this, saying it's an NPT signatory and enjoys that right--and needs that economic payoff--the goal being to become a regional nuclear fuel source.

I have to go with Jordan on this one.  If you want lesser powers to act responsibly, you have to grant them responsibilities.

Saudis likewise prep strike capacity vis-a-vis Iran

Media Line story via WPR's Media Roundup.

Gist:

As it denies cooperating with preparations for a potential Israeli attack on Iran, Saudi Arabia prepares for strike of its own. 

Saudi Arabia’s air force has signed a deal to upgrade its fleet of 150 strike aircraft and procure advanced weaponry to respond to an Iranian military threat while simultaneously denying reports that the country is coordinating with Israel over a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear sites.
    
“The Saudis are very worried about the growing power of Iran,” Arie Egozi, an aviation expert for the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, told The Media Line. “They want to protect their oil resources and other things. They have a very large air force and are upgrading their capabilities by installing new systems into their aircraft, mainly the Boeing F15s.”

Perfectly sensible stuff, and perfectly fine for US defense industry to be involved.

Practicing the mutually-assured-destructing dialogue

Chart here

The Times (London) has a story that's popping up everywhere now.  I got it via Michael Smith.

The supposition has always been there: the Saudis turn a blind eye toward Israel flying over its airspace (and perhaps even refueling on the ground at some makeshift landing site) in order to attack Iran's nuclear sites.

So now The Times reports:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

No matter how Israel goes about it, we'll be complicit, and that's okay.  While it will not get us the outcome we seek, beyond temporary delay, it signals our seriousness and our ability/willingness to strike. Ditto for the Saudis.

I'm against the US mounting a big-time effort, but I don't have any problem with Israel getting their limited-strike stuff off their chest.  Israel wants the sensation of acting, and it dreams of a new president in the US come 2013 who would approach the problem differently, so this is a time-buying exercise like all the rest. Again, it won't accomplish much, but it does start the signaling process to come, when Iran does get its nukes.

Since I see that path as inevitable, I don't mind the early practice.

Alterman on the underlying challenge posed by globalization's embrace of the Middle East

Great Jon Alterman piece in World Politics Review.

It is not surprising that discussions with government officials from member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council often dwell heavily on security threats. Terrorism remains a persistent concern of theirs even if some of the urgency they feel has passed. A conventionally armed Iran is a constant source of worry. And the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is an unending nightmare.

Yet, among the most-senior leadership, there is also some perspective. The terrorism threat no longer feels existential, as a combination of effective security initiatives, internal cooptation and international cooperation have made their mark. On Iran, there is a sense of fatalism: The Gulf has relied on external guarantors to keep the Iranians at bay since the days of the Portuguese empire, and the Iranians have sufficiently agitated the world to ensure that external guarantors, in some form or another, will remain.

But in private conversations with senior GCC royals last month, it was clear that one security concern does indeed loom large. It is one not of physical security, but of human security. Their nations can almost certainly survive the other threats they face. But unless they can create dynamic, hard-working and creative populations over the long term, these countries will fail.

For the last half-century, the GCC's human security story has been a positive one. After World War II, today's gleaming Gulf capitals were impoverished collections of reed huts. Schooling was uncommon, and fresh water was scarce. Traffic-clogged roads did not exist, because traffic did not exist. Radios were a rarity, in contrast to the ubiquity of the satellite dishes that now deliver more than 500 channels in Arabic. Life expectancies doubled in the 20th century. Malnutrition and the endemic diseases of the 1950s have disappeared, and the diseases of the 2010s -- heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes -- are all diseases, not of poverty, but of plenty. For Gulf Arabs who came of age in the 1960s, the contrast between their youth and their adulthood could not be starker.

What will the future look like for today's youth? It is hard to imagine that they can enjoy a jump in living conditions similar to the one their parents and grandparents experienced, especially as oil and gas markets seem unlikely to expand as much over the next half-century as they did over the last. Much of it comes down to a basic problem of mathematics: Per capita income increased a hundredfold, from $500 in 1960 to $50,000 in 2010; it cannot increase another hundredfold, to $5 million, in the 50 years to come. 

Even more importantly, what might drive future growth? There is a growing recognition that oil has wrought about all that it can.

The GCCs are the natural lead geese on this evolution of thinking, so every step they consider or take is worth watching. Because when the world moves beyond oil, all the Middle East is left with are the people as a resource.  Nothing that's happened in the past decade has altered that reality; indeed, most of what's happened has accelerated it.

Excellent article.

The Gaza blockade mostly empowers Hamas

Some tough-love advice from The Economist to Israel:  the Gaza blockade makes you weaker and strengthens Hamas's ability to keep a firm grip on power in Gaza.

As usual, a strategy of disconnecting your enemy from the outside world empowers those ruling elements who prefer a firm grip over the masses to their individual empowerment.

More prosaically, the blockade has failed in all of its goals:  the Israeli solder taken hostage is still a hostage, weapons galore still make their way into Gaza via tunnels, Israel is becoming more isolated diplomatically while Hamas is winning sympathy and still overshadowing the far more quiet and more competent West Bank Palestinian leadership.  In short, all trends are heading south.

Obama is under fire here for "ruining" the relationship, but it's hard to see how he's guilty of anything more than simply realizing Netanyahu is no friend of the US and has no intention to pursue peace.  So Obama cuts his losses and the relationship suffers.  To me, that's a sensible choice given all he has on his plate regionally. And if that logic pushes Israel to bomb Iran, then so be it, because that'll just be another regional dynamic that he cannot control--especially when the Saudis collude to make it possible.

All of this is presented as tragedy, because Israel is the best thing about the Middle East in just about every other way.  It is a connectivity hub in all relevant forms. It is, putting aside the Palestinian questions, the most admirable nation-state in the region--by far.

Where to go? Obama is encouraged to get Hamas back to the negotiating table. I see that as a useless proposition.

Given the losing hand it holds right now, I can foresee Israel making the logical leap to pounding Iran. Not much to lose and better dynamics to trigger. And I say this believing quite deeply that most of Israel's leadership knows they are heading--unavoidably--to a nuclear standoff with Iran that will soon be joined by others.

Given the situation Israel finds itself in now, I would say that migrating events down that path and establishing its tough profile on that subject would make a lot of sense.

While Gaza gets all the attention, the West Bank actually starts to work

Nice Friedman argument that we're missing the actual advances in Palestinian governance in the West Bank.

Key second half:

You see, there are two models of Arab governance. The old Nasserite model, which Hamas still practices, where leaders say: “Judge me by how I resist Israel or America.” And: “First we get a state, then we build the institutions.” The new model, pioneered in the West Bank by Abbas and Fayyad is: “Judge me by how I perform — how I generate investment and employment, deliver services and pick up the garbage. First we build transparent and effective political and security institutions. Then we declare a state. That is what the Zionists did, and it sure worked for them.”

The most important thing going on in this conflict today is that since 2007 the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and the U.S. have partnered to train a whole new West Bank Palestinian security force in policing, administration and even human rights. The program is advised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton — one of the unsung good guys. The Israeli Army has become impressed enough by the performance of the new Palestinian National Security Force, or N.S.F., under Abbas and Fayyad that those forces are now largely responsible for law and order in all the major West Bank towns, triggering an explosion of Palestinian building, investment and commerce in those areas.

Here are highlights: the Jordanians have trained and the Palestinian Authority deployed and equipped five N.S.F. battalions and one Presidential Guard unit, some 3,100 men. Plus, 65 Palestinian first-responders have been trained and are being equipped with emergency gear. A Palestinian National Training Center, with classrooms and dorms, is nearing completion in Jericho so the Palestinians themselves can take over the training. The Palestinian Authority is building a 750-man N.S.F. camp to garrison the new N.S.F. troops — including barracks, gym and parade ground — near Jenin. At the same time, the Palestinian security headquarters are all being rebuilt in every major Palestinian town, starting in Hebron. An eight-week senior leadership training course in Jericho — bringing together the Palestinian police, the N.S.F. and Presidential Guards — has graduated 280 people, including 20 women.

A course for captains and below in how to handle everything from crowd control to elections has also begun. The reinvigorated Palestinian Ministry of Interior is leading the Palestinian security sector transformation, and the Canadians are helping to set up Joint Operations Centers across the West Bank so all Palestinian security services can coordinate via video conferencing. The Canadians are also helping the Palestinians to build a logistics center. Parallel with all this, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has reduced Israel’s manned checkpoints in the West Bank from 42 to 12.

This won’t be politically sustainable for Abbas and Fayyad, though, unless Israel begins to turn full authority over to the Palestinians for their major cities — so-called area A — in the West Bank. Palestinians have to see their new security services as building their state, not cushioning Israel’s occupation. There could be a moment of truth here for Israel soon, but at least it will be based on something real.

In sum, this dynamic — Palestinians building real institutions from the ground up and getting Israel to cede to them real authority — is the ballgame. Make it work across the West Bank and find a way to transfer it to Gaza (how about reopening the Israel-Gaza border and letting the new Palestinian N.S.F. control the passages to Israel?) and a two-state solution is possible. Let it fail, and we’ll have endless conflict. Everything else is just a sideshow.

A nice refocusing of strategic attention.

Is it enough of an argument to prevent Israel from taking its swipe against Iran over the nuke program? Only way we get definitive evidence is when the bombs start falling.

But a great argument from Friedman.

Education follows the flag

Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile of John Sexton, president of NY University, who, with the help of Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Al Nahyan, is trying to franchise his institution in the Persian Gulf.

Sexton's dream:  a circulating experience for students that connects them to six world-class universities spread around the world, with NYU as the anchor.

Sexton's use of foreign money to fuel global expansion is considered a model.  NYU has only a $2.2B endowment, or $50k a student.  Harvard's numbers are more like $26B and $1.3m per student.

My takeaway:  A lot of US universities going into countries that are friendly with us militarily.  It's a huge investment for both sides, so you want to go with people whom you have long and strong relationships, and with whom you're pushing connectivity.

Forget that offending billboard in Cairo. Take it online, kids!

Photo here.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek article pointing out how online advertizing is beginning to take off in the Middle East, thanks to more Arabs going online and getting mobiles.  Broadband penetration remains low (12% compared to 64% in North America and we’re no great shakes either).  Another trick:  5% of web users/consumers are Arab, but only 1% of the content is Arabic.

Still, there is a leap-frog quality to this development: maybe traditional advertising never makes it in the region like it has in the West, but maybe the online version fills the gap and obviates the old models, which, for a lot of reasons, are trickier to navigate in that part of the world.

Chart of the day: The Gaza blockade

From The Economist.

If the notion is, give the guy a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and he eats everyday, then I detect a distinct desire on Israel's part to make sure Gazans learn how to do nothing for themselves.

Hard not to argue that these are essentially prison conditions, designed to punish more than allow economic rehabilitation.

Convince me otherwise.

Gaza's tunnel economy

image here

Naturally, the Israeli graphic focuses on weaponry, but the larger truth is this is how most of the economy works--sad to say.  It's like one giant "Shawshank Redemption" (or a gritty "Hogan's Heroes," depending on your ideological take).  

Either way, it's an imprisoned society doing what people do when they face such circumstances:  they adapt and work around the best they can--and the middlemen profiteer nicely.

Key point from FT story:

For close to three years [the length of the blockade], the tunnels below Rafah have offered a unique lifeline to Gazans, who are otherwise deprived of all but the most basic humanitarian supplies.  They have also allowed Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the strip, to replenish its coffers and rebuild its military arsenal, making the tunnels a target for Israel.

The 200-300 surviving tunnels (there are air strikes) have become so efficient that "shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods."

But the local businessmen say this is no answer.  They insist that the smugglers "are creating a false sense of economic improvement while damaging the territory's battered private sector."  In other words, the tunnels bring in the same goods that could be produced locally, providing formal sector jobs--if the blockade was lifted.

One entrepenuer:

We are just replacing legitimate businessmen with illegitimate businessmen.

This is what gets you aid flotillas.

Esquire's The Politics Blog: The Real Israeli Raid Fallout: Turkey with a Bomb?

If you look beyond the international shouting match that began on Monday after Israel botched its handling of a Turkey-sponsored aid flotilla bound for Gaza, well, things look pretty shocking. Just because at least nine people are dead — Western casualties included — doesn't mean the boat raid itself is what "has the makings of a huge international fracas." And just because the Turkish foreign minister says "this attack is like 9/11" — which it isn't — doesn't mean Tel Aviv will take its eyes off what the Israelis actually perceive to be the larger threat: Iran's nuclear weapons.

Read the full post at Esquire.com's The Politics Blog.

Qatar as a Singapore-like, progressive model for the region?

Hopeful trend described in WSJ piece.

Basics: 

A seven-year school revamp spearheaded by this gas-rich emirate's first lady is emerging as test case for radical education overhauls in the Mideast.

The United Nations and World Bank have long blamed low educational standards for contributing to economic stagnation and instability across the region, which faces the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world and the threat of growing religious extremism.

Schoolteachers across the region have been bound by entrenched programs that emphasize religion and rote learning, often from outdated textbooks. Qatar, with a tiny population and outsize natural-gas export revenue, launched a new system in 2004 that stresses problem-solving, math, science, computer skills and foreign-language study. The final slate of new schools in the program was approved last month, giving Qataris over 160 new schools to choose from when the next school year begins in September.

"The old system churned out obedient but passive citizens. What good is that for a global economy?" says first lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned.

The daughter of a renowned Qatari democracy activist and the mother of seven children, including the crown prince, Sheikha Mozah cites personal and national reasons for the overhaul of the education system. "We don't want passive citizens. I didn't want passive children either," she says.

By the end of this year, officials say all Qatari children will be taught at new schools under the new system, and the nation's teachers will have been re-trained or forced to retire.

The transition hasn't always been smooth. Like its neighbor Saudi Arabia, Qatar lists the conservative Salafi school of Islam as its official religion, and radio talk shows and imams here have held fiery discussions about whether the schools are "un-Islamic" for teaching some subjects in English, not Arabic, and for providing music classes.

Yet rising test scores among Qatari children enrolled in the new schools suggest a potential model for other Arab education officials struggling to raise standards to those comparable to the U.S., Europe and Asia. According to a recent, two-year study funded by Qatar and conducted by the Rand Corp., children enrolled in the fourth through sixth grades in the new schools outperformed peers who attended the old Education Ministry-run schools in mathematics and science and language skills.

"Qataris value education … [but] we are a society that respects tradition," says Sheikha Mozah. "We've had to find the right pace to accomplish our goals."

The passive theme is huge:  that's how you keep women down and men stupid, with religion filling the gaps.

Rest of the piece focuses on the replicability of Qatar's experiment across the rest of the region.  The usual "uniqueness" argument is cited, along with the fact that Qatar is such a stunningly globalized little space (1m outsiders and 300m actual citizens) and so damn rich (per capita at $121k!).

Still, the whole deal with Singapore was the demonstration effect--not to be underestimated.

The Middle East after Iraq

Very nice World Politics Review piece by Gregg Carlstrom.

The premise:

In dozens of statements, interviews and news conferences since taking office, Obama has been adamant about sticking to the withdrawal timetable, which calls for removing all U.S. combat troops by August 2010 and a complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011 . . . 

And Obama is by no means bucking domestic public opinion in holding so steadfastly to that promise now. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released in January found that 62 percent of Americans support his timeline for withdrawal . . . Domestic politics, in other words, argue strongly against delaying the withdrawal. 

And yet, the prospect of doing just that continues to be a hot topic in Washington. Tom Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, published a paper in February urging the Obama administration to scrap the timeline. Conservative commentators and analysts -- Max Boot, for example -- think the U.S. should maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq. Lawmakers routinely ask civilian and military officials whether the deadlines are flexible. 

At times, the Pentagon has also seemed far more circumspect than the White House about the timetable.

Publicly, the Iraqis take great pride whenever US troops pull back or out of a city or region, but privately, Iraqi officials are more circumspect, says Carlstrom.

Internally, the future is rather bright:

"What's left of the insurgency is pretty quiet these days," said Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation. "And there's never going to be a time when they have a greater motivation to attack than now."

Why now at the end?  Insurgencies always ramp up violence when the occupier is leaving, in order to claim "victory!" So expect some additional effort.

The real concerns are "external":  e.g., the internal border with the KRG (Kurds) and the real one with Iran and Syria (but more so Iran).

I certainly agree with Carlstom here about the look of an inevitable post-2011 presence:

But most analysts say that any American presence will look much different after 2011 than it does today: A few thousand troops, mostly serving in an advisory and training role, or performing functions that Iraqi forces can't yet handle. The Iraqi military is also executing an ambitious procurement plan, with the air force, for example, planning to purchase more than 400 new planes over the next decade. U.S. troops will certainly help train the military on its new hardware. 

Regionally speaking, it is as I've long argued, a question of competing Shia-Sunni poles potentially using Iraq as a proxy-war site.  But Carlstrom reassures here:

Iran's role in Iraq does continue to grow, as evidenced by the parade of Iraqi officials visiting Tehran before and after the parliamentary election. Saudi Arabia represents the other pole, a Sunni Arab counterweight to the Persian Shiites in Iran. But both countries are mistrusted by a plurality of Iraqis -- and not always for sectarian reasons. For instance, the Shiite Sadrist movement, with its staunchly nationalist views, often holds Iran at arm's length. Against that backdrop, some analysts say, the U.S. could carve out a durable diplomatic role in Iraq. 

What may temper Obama on all this:  Bob Gates fears a final-scene-of-Charlie-Wilson's-war outcome, as in, penny wise and pound foolish.

I agree and don't see how Obama can stick with his zero troops notion, unless it naturally incorporates several thousands of non-combat personnel--essentially pure SysAdmin.

He's a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land

I pretty much tune Fouad Ajami out when he talks anything having to do with Obama, because on that score, he's about as reliable as Karl Rove in his one-sidedness.

But when he writes directly about what's wrong with the Middle East and Arab culture, he's often quite powerful in his observations--to wit, the subtitle of this WSJ op-ed:  "Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject."

That is a microcosm of the Arab world in general:  globalization has embraced it--thinly, and it is both amazed and repulsed by the possibility/inevitability of deeper integration.

But it is an especially good capture of expats who never quite connect in their adopted Western countries--hence the susceptibility to the chimera of dropping out and tuning in to jihad. It is the perfect, Calgon-take-me-away Deus ex machina. You hit the rough patch and booyah! You've got this noble out that suddenly makes your life historic and genuine and not such a failure. We're talking the ultimate Plan B--a concept most of us known well after the last tough year and a half.

More:

The maxim that Pakistan is governed by a trinity—Allah, army, America—gives away this confusion: The young man who would do his best to secure an American education before succumbing to the call of the jihad is a man in the grip of a deep schizophrenia. The overcrowded cities of Islam—from Karachi and Casablanca to Cairo—and those cities in Europe and North America where the Islamic diaspora is now present in force have untold multitudes of men like Faisal Shahzad.

This is a long twilight war, the struggle against radical Islamism. We can't wish it away. No strategy of winning "hearts and minds," no great outreach, will bring this struggle to an end. America can't conciliate these furies. These men of nowhere—Faisal Shahzad, Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born renegade cleric Anwar Awlaki now holed up in Yemen and their likes—are a deadly breed of combatants in this new kind of war. Modernity both attracts and unsettles them. America is at once the object of their dreams and the scapegoat onto which they project their deepest malignancies.

We can succumb to the tempting notion that it's all about "empire," hence it's always we who are the ultimate target, followed by the Brits in a residual sense. But that's our version of escapism. The globalization we began has escaped our grasp. This dynamic won't end by our quitting the contest.

We will be killing the un-redeemables and the irrationals until they stop being born.  Globalization, in the form of that massive (as in, now close to 60% of the world's population) global middle class, will simply keep paying somebody to make them go away. Might be us, for as long as we want it to be, but it will definitely be somebody with a gun.