HANG TOUGH IN MIDEAST

Last updated: 5:27 am
January 16, 2009
Posted: 12:00 am
January 16, 2009

IN THE Mideast these days, everyone is waiting for Barack Obama. Some are waiting with hope, some with fear. The new US president will have a brief moment in which to present his agenda and seize the initiative. If that moment is lost, as was the case in the Carter presidency, America will find itself forced to react to events rather than lead them.

The new administration's starting point must be a common analysis of the situation accepted by Obama and his key foreign-policy aides. No such common analysis can be detected now: Judging by their past words and deeds, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Robert Gates and James Jones have very different views on the region. Thus, Obama's first task is to forge a common hymn sheet.

Next, the new administration must realize and acknowledge that America is at war with a variety of forces dedicated to challenging its global leadership in the hope of ultimately achieving its destruction.

Wherever possible, every effort ought to be made to placate at least some of those forces through diplomacy. Ultimately, however, the message must go out that America won't run away, that it will stand and fight when and where necessary. More than anywhere else in the world, in the Middle East weakness always invites aggression.

No longer the geopolitical prize it was during the Cold War, the region's importance in terms of the global energy market is also likely to peak in the coming years. Nonetheless, it is assuming a new importance as the principal breeding ground of terrorism and the next scene of a dangerous arms race that would include nuclear weapons.

The core of the war Islamic radicalism is waging against the United States in the Middle East is ideological. On the one side, there is the Western ideology of human rights, democracy and secularism. On the other, there is religious obscurantism symbolized by the late Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden.

For the first time since the 19th-century constitutional revolutions in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, democracy is emerging as a live option in much of the greater Middle East. A small but growing democratic constituency is emerging in virtually every country in the region.

Allied with other moderate, conservative, traditionalist but nonviolent segments of society, this constituency could challenge and ultimately defeat Islamism in the political battlefield. The United States should throw its support behind such forces wherever they exist.

The showdown between these forces and Islamism will come this year as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories hold presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. The Islamists have mobilized their forces and brought in massive resources to win those elections. The perception that America has abandoned its democratic and moderate allies could persuade the fence-sitters to side with the Islamists. The new administration could find itself with a new bloc of enemies stretching from Central Asia to the Mediterranean.

The new administration should leave no doubt as to America's commitment to democratic forces in all the countries concerned. Supporting democratization in the Middle East is no luxury; it's an absolute national-security must.

Although of symbolic importance, the Israel-Palestine issue must be seen as one of the region's many problems and not "the most important issue in the world." By offering a two-state formula, the United States already has a strong position on that issue. It must be clear, however, that America can't impose such a formula against the wishes of the two parties.

As always, the unforeseeable may end up dominating any preset agenda. One issue that has remained under the radar so far is the looming economic meltdown threatening the region from Morocco to Pakistan.

Preoccupied with the financial crisis at home, the major Western powers have paid little attention to the devastating effect of the crisis on such countries as Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan - not to mention Afghanistan, Iran and even the once fabulously rich Dubai.

In Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, an average of 10,000 people a day are losing their jobs. Mass unemployment accompanied by growing poverty and runaway inflation provides a breeding ground for fascism (in this case, in its Islamic version).

This weekend, an Arab Economic Summit in Kuwait will try to come up with an analysis of the situation. Without a major US-led international effort, however, few countries in the region are likely to develop a credible strategy for coping with the deadly brew of mass misery and religious fanaticism taking shape.

What about a grand Obama plan for the region's economic survival, if not revival?

Amir Taheri's latest book is "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution."