Books Review by George Walden
Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election this November will require a rethink on the Middle East. Kenneth M. Pollack, a former National Security Council staffer and CIA analyst, claims to provide one in ``A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.''
His analysis? America does have legitimate interests in the region, notably in its oil. Yet many Mideast countries are in ``a pre-revolutionary situation,'' nuclearization of the region is a possibility, and the future looks grim.
His strategy? To encourage and enable the kind of gradual political, social and economic reform that grows from within, as opposed to the variety imposed from without. The U.S. could help with more aid, support for a World Bank micro-loan program for small business, pressure on governments that imprison human- rights and pro-democracy activists, and programs to train Mideast bureaucrats in the management of change.
All of this sounds sensible enough, even if I worry about where that new aid might end up. Yet Pollack's analysis is undermined by one flaw so fundamental that his ``grand strategy'' falls apart.
Imagine a book on the U.S. arguing that the Protestant religion had absolutely nothing to do with the nation's economic successes and failures, its mode of government or its attitude toward sex. That, in essence, is what Pollack writes about Islam and the Middle East. Islam, a religion that claims to infuse every part of human life, turns out to be responsible for nothing according to this book.
Disingenuous
``Islam is not the reason for the rise of Islamist movements,'' he writes. ``Lack of prosperity, not Islam, tends to explain the lower rates of democracy among predominantly Muslim countries,'' he asserts. And so on.
Pollack argues that Malaysia and Indonesia prove that Islam and democracy are compatible. This is disingenuous. We're talking about the Middle East, not Southeast Asia; the whole point is that the practice of Islam in its homeland is far more rigid and inhibits progress.
The author, a research director at the Brookings Institution in Washington, should know better. Yet his tremulousness about Islam makes nonsense of much of his book.
He deplores the rote-learning and uncritical acceptance of authority inculcated in Mideast schools, yet Islam -- the word means submission -- bears no blame. He laments the ``bizarre theocratic oligarchy ruling Iran,'' yet skirts the dangers of nuclear weapons falling into that regime's hands.
Brutish Patriarchy
Most culpably, he's evasive on the position of Muslim women in the Middle East. Never mind that the cycle of ignorance, poverty, brutish patriarchy and overpopulation begins with the subordination of half the population: We can't risk offending anyone by suggesting that religion could be involved, can we?
And terrorism? Well, that stems from the intrusion of the West into Muslim lives -- and from the economic, social and political problems that feed the festering despair of Middle Eastern peoples, Pollack writes.
Fair enough, but wait: Do these problems owe nothing at all to unreformed religion? To ask that question is not to imply that all Muslims are terrorists, for heaven's sake. It's merely to suggest, with all respect to different cultures, that the Middle East might be a little more tractable if the Muslim religion as frequently practiced there were better adapted to the times.
``What is needed,'' Salman Rushdie wrote in a newspaper piece three years ago, ``is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation.''
Misguided Multiculturalism
If sophisticated Muslims, whether practicing or lapsed, have called for religious modernization, why is Pollack silent on the subject? My guess is that he's suffering from a misguided multiculturalism, whereby all religions are not just equal but equally developed. He probably dreads being labeled ``Islamophobic.''
The U.S. is rightly keen to retain its liberties in the face of terrorism, yet ``A Path Out of the Desert'' presents a lesson in how intellectual freedom gets eroded. There can be no adult discussion of the Mideast without an honest debate on Islam.
The book carries an introduction by Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary at the State Department under U.S. President Bill Clinton, and is transparently aimed at a Barack Obama presidency. Let's hope the Illinois senator doesn't read it -- or employ either Talbott or Pollack if he wins.
``A Path Out of the Desert'' is from Random House (538 pages, $30).
(George Walden, a former U.K. diplomat and Member of Parliament, is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this review: George Walden at GWASHCH@aol.com.
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