Kenneth Pollack, director of research at the Brookings Institution and the author of books like The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002) and The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America (2004), here tries his hand at a “grand strategy” for U.S. policy in the Middle East. This is, to say the least, an ambitious task. The priorities that drive American policy—promoting stability versus supporting democratization, for example—are often contradictory, and hence constantly in flux. Meanwhile, the sheer number of important relationships maintained by the U.S. in the region complicates any effort to forge diplomatic, financial, and military instruments into a comprehensive statecraft.
It is perhaps no wonder, then, that Pollack has composed a winding and often repetitive book that touches on virtually every major issue, but never in sufficient detail; that effectively delineates America’s core regional interests, but fails to acknowledge where they collide; and that promises a new set of principles, but ultimately falls back on well-established ideas that have been implemented inconsistently or ineffectually.
This is not to say that A Path Out of the Desert is lacking in virtues. To begin with, Pollack brings to bear an encyclopedic knowledge of American policy in the region, leaving no key political figure, historical event, or diplomatic priority unmentioned. He also makes skillful use of the statistical data that frame his discussion of the Middle East’s demographic, social, and economic realities. Finally, reaching deep into the literature on his subject, he cites sources from across the political spectrum to support an analysis that, while argumentative, generally steers clear of blatant ideological bias.
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Most impressively, Pollack proposes a single framework within which to understand the many challenges confronting U.S. policy. Where Arabs and Muslims are concerned, the story of the modern Middle East, he writes, is a story of failed states. The failure is multiple. Middle Eastern governments have neglected to provide economic opportunities for their rapidly growing populations, which as a consequence suffer the highest unemployment rates in the world (12 percent overall, according to conservative estimates, rising to a whopping 26 percent among fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds). Arab and Muslim states also lag significantly in global trade, attract minimal foreign investment, and maintain outdated educational systems that stress obedience and memorization over critical thinking. Meanwhile, dissent is stifled, laws are interpreted and enforced arbitrarily, and corruption abounds.
The result, Pollack writes, is “a populace that is deeply disillusioned, receptive to calls for rebellion, and willing to turn a blind eye to actions they mostly consider immoral.” This frustration has catalyzed the regional move toward Islamism, since many Islamist parties provide not only key social services but an escapist outlet for those seeking a return to a “glorious, mythic past.” The same frustration has fomented severe domestic instability, ranging from labor unrest among Southeast Asian workers in the United Arab Emirates to ghastly civil wars in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria. Finally, writes Pollack, the failure to redress socioeconomic grievances encourages the rise of terrorist groups that recruit from among the region’s most disenfranchised and poorly educated groups.
For Pollack, the solution to these failures, and to the threats they pose, is structural. The central thrust of his “grand strategy” is therefore to promote political, social, and economic reform, and his list of desiderata encompasses everything from political transparency, equitable legal systems, far-reaching educational improvements, liberalized fiscal policies, to—in the long run—democratic rule. In encouraging reform, he writes, the U.S. should act multilaterally, gradually, and flexibly. Most importantly, since Washington lacks either the legitimacy or the capability to impose its will on the Muslim Middle East, reform should be instituted principally through indigenous efforts.
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None of this is terribly original. After all, the push for political democratization, economic liberalization, and social improvement has been a major focus of U.S. policy in the Middle East for well over a decade. Sections of Pollack’s program, he acknowledges, make up what he calls the “Washington Consensus.” Still, he is right that these goals have never been pursued consistently.
The Bush administration, for example, retreated rapidly from promoting democracy in Egypt when, following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, a strong relationship with the Mubarak regime became crucial to isolating the radicals in neighboring Gaza. As a consequence of this about-face, the prospects of indigenous political reform dimmed significantly.
In light of this and other such defects of implementation, Pollack articulates a guiding principle that he would impose on Middle East policy-making. Since, he writes, diplomacy is largely a matter of trade-offs, our “default position should be to make trade-offs in favor of reform unless there is a compelling reason to make a trade-off against it.” This is clearly aimed against realists who argue that, to the contrary, trade-offs should always favor stability over reform.
Unfortunately, Pollack gives few specific directions as to how Washington should manage these trade-offs, and his call for using economic aid to encourage reform is neither new nor convincingly defended. More damagingly still, his structural focus misses something fundamental: namely, the role of ideology in fueling the many threats the U.S. faces in the Middle East. Misidentifying religiously or culturally informed movements as mere responses to socioeconomic grievance, Pollack fails to consider the extent to which radicalism is often embraced on principle.
This scanting of ideology also degrades his discussion of “Islamist groups on the more moderate end of the spectrum,” among which he includes Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, he argues that the U.S. should restrict itself to dealing with only those Islamist groups that, among other criteria, accept secular public education and sources of law other than shari’a—criteria that, unfortunately, happen to be anathema to the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups on his wish list.
Nor does Pollack weigh the degree to which dealing with “moderate” Islamists would undermine a number of America’s primary interests in the Middle East, among them the friendship of Arab regimes that, with Washington’s support, have battled Islamist opposition groups for decades. The fact that, like their radical counterparts, “moderate” Islamist groups have exhibited no flexibility whatsoever on the issue of Israel—another top U.S. interest in the Middle East, as Pollack stipulates—is still another and very large complication that seems to escape his notice.
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The most that can be said for Pollack’s desire to engage “moderate” Islamists is that it is a rare instance of his taking a stance on any specific issue. For the most part he hews to a confounding ambivalence, carefully outlining the debate on a given question while declining to articulate a position of his own. He weighs the costs of staying in Iraq, or leaving Iraq; sees the potential for a limited engagement with Iran, but perhaps not at the moment; believes the U.S. should be active in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but cautions against pushing the parties against their will. And so forth.
As for the “path out of the desert,” it would appear to lead straight to Washington, where lofty notions of promoting peace, reform, and democracy in the Middle East are bandied about with gusto, only to be cast aside in favor of more familiar impulses whenever America’s main long-term priorities—including Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the care and feeding of oil-rich autocracies—assert themselves. In this book Pollack himself does the exact same thing, thus mirroring the policy dilemmas he has set out to resolve.
