U.S.-Euro support for Arab reform

There is a growing suspicion among human rights advocates and neo-conservatives that a Barack Obama admnistration might downplay or even downgrade human rights diplomacy. In multiple columns and conferences these two circles (that tend to merge on some issues and diverge on others) try to put pressure on the White House and the State Department in order to re-emphasize the need for a strong commitment to “democracy promotion”.No one doubts Obama’s preference for human rights and democracy but the pressure of the economic crisis and the bad taste left bu Bush’s democracy promotion by force have brought back the discourse of the realist and even of Henry Kissinger in Washington. And these two groups fear a return to a form of realpolitk that would not allow “human rights to interfere with economic or security interests”.

On March 10, this shared concern led to the publication in Washington of an open letter to the President that calls for a change in the U.S. traditional policies of supporting authoritarian regimes in the Arab-Muslim world. “U.S. support for Arab autocrats was supposed to serve U.S. national interests and regional stability, write the authors. In reality it produced a region increasingly tormented by rampant corruption, extremism and instability”.

The signers of this letter, although critical of the illiberal positions of Islamism, advocate for a recognition of the right of the non-violent islamist parties to take part in the democratic process. But in order to prevent the scenario of a political scene limited to the clash between Islamists and authoritarian regimes the U.S. should support liberal and secular parties and give them the chance “to establish themselves and communicated their ideas to the populace after decades of repression that left them weak and marginalized”.

Other pundits think that this support of Arab and Muslim democrats should be done at the Atlantic level, blending, as stated by Tamara Wittes (Saban Center at the Brookings Institution) and Richard Youngs (of the Madrid-based international think tank FRIDE), “the reach and credibility of European diplomacy and the punch of American capacity”.
These two authors have published a plan for a Euro-US new partnership on behalf of Arab reform that calls in particular on coordination of policies and the adoption of common criteria on how to reward democratic reform or engage with islamists.
www.brokings.edu/papers
http://www.fride.org/
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