Reforming Arab-American Relations in the Age of Obama

Barack Obama will not change the world by himself. He certainly won’t change the Arab region for the better as long as Arabs don’t have an active and effective role in reformulating Arab-American relations in entirety. The past seven years have been lean ones for these relations, and their austerity has caused much damage in the Arab region and on our relations with the United States; it has even damaged our trust in ourselves and in our ability to influence events.

But we are not as weak as some think, even if we don’t always speak with the same voice. The Arabs are a key world power, at least by virtue of our being a key party to most world problems: The situation in Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict and its associations in Syria and Lebanon, the Islamist jihadist organizations and the situation in Afghanistan, the nuclear program and Iran’s role in the security of the Gulf.

Our being a key part of these problems means we are a part of the solution, or at the very least a solution to these problems cannot be found without us. That in itself gives us the power to negotiate forming a solution to all of these issues-of course, as long as we haven’t resigned ourselves to negativism as a way of life, and that is not a rational choice.

It is not a choice for us to sit and wait for Obama to formulate a policy, and then crystallize our reaction to it. We must do the opposite. We must act before Obama and propose our own ideas for dealing with all of these problems and push the American administration to deal with our proposals and act on them. It is not acceptable for us to wait for the American policy to crystallize and restrict our role to either accepting it or refusing it, rather, we must have a role in the process of formulating this policy. Between acceptance and refusal is a better role, and that is participating in the formulation. That is not impossible if we work with clear-sightedness and arm ourselves with a working agenda and present ourselves to the Americans showing participation, and not just requests.

This showing of participation can include the five main axes of our region’s crises: The situation in Iraq, the Arab-Israeli peace process, Syria and Lebanon, the Iranian problems, Afghanistan and dealing with the “problems” of terrorism.

In reference to the situation in Iraq, the new American administration needs a strategy that allows it to exit the state of military, political, and economic attrition that it faces there, and as quickly as possible. This must be done without its exit leading to the worsening of the security situation there or Iraq’s falling completely into Iran’s grasp. Such a solution would match Arab interests. Even though the American side will work towards this with or without help from the Arab countries, this kind of help could be decisive, especially if it was extended to the field of security.

As for Syria, many in Washington are calling for a thaw in American-Syrian relations, which is certainly a welcome development to support stability in the shaky region. But the new administration will find it difficult to open up to Syria to the desired degree as long as there is no Saudi-Egyptian-Lebanese agreement on that. Therefore the outstanding problems between these parties must be resolved in a manner that allows the American-Syrian relations to move in a direction that supports stability and not rivalry.

In other words, we should place the new administration in a position where it must choose between angering Cairo, Riyadh, and Beirut, or leaving Syria exposed to pressures that push it to adopt extreme positions, among those the situation in Lebanon. No one, except for the Arab side, can solve this dilemma.

Firmly tied to this are opportunities to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Whatever Obama’s willingness is to get work on resolving this conflict, he won’t be able to make any progress as long as the current Palestinian divide continues to lead to deterioration, or if Hamas and Islamic] Jihad return to using violence, or we return to rivalry between the Syrian and Palestinian trajectories, or some of the Arab parties paralyzed the Arab Initiative and refrained from using it as a framework to push efforts to resolve the conflict(in addition to the obstacles that Israel will set forth).

Therefore, the ability of the Arab nations to cooperate (amongst themselves and also with the United States) will be decisive for the new administration to be able to make progress in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Despite the fact that the Iranian nuclear problem is primarily between Iran, the West, and Israel, nevertheless its regional implications are clear. There is a possibility that Iran will reach a deal that gives it, in return for stopping the controversial elements of its nuclear program, regional influence which is at odds with Arab interests. There is also a possibility that it will be struck militarily, with disastrous repercussions for all. Consequently, here is a definite Arab interest in intervening and preventing either of those scenarios from taking place. To the extent that Arab countries are prepared to bear responsibility in this regard, they will have the ability to affect what happens.

Al Qaeda itself has held its ground in situation in Afghanistan and the “war on terror”. Certainly, we have all suffered from the savage way that Bush tried to deal with the violence by the jihadist groups, and we have an interest in the United States rethinking its policy in this domain, but we must have present something to which the new administration will listen.

Saudi Arabia has actually begun to intervene in this file through its support of a dialogue between the Afghan government and the Taliban, but what is needed is to widen the effort so that it becomes a multifaceted Arab intervention aimed at returning a measure of stability to Afghanistan and reducing the military bottleneck there as the first stage in rational dealing with the jihadist organizations.

There needs to be a Arab effort to participate with the United State. That doesn’t at all that we surrender to the United States, but the opposite: That we push Arab-American cooperation in a practical manner in order to protect Arab interests through action and initiative instead of latency, negative opposition, and the policy of frustration.

We must move from the column of frustrating the plans of others to the column of active and contemporary participation by means of our participating in forming these plans in a way that protects our interests. We should remember that cooperation leads to more cooperation. It forms thick ties of inclusion and strengthens our role.