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Foreign Affairs
Back to the Bazaar
By Martin Indyk
Martin Indyk is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and South Asia on the staff of the National Security Council in 1993-95, as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs in 1997-2000, and as U.S. Ambassador to Israel in 1995-97 and 2000-2001.
The Post-Gulf War Bargain
A decade ago, the United States faced a defining moment in the Middle East. It had just deployed overwhelming force to liberate Kuwait and destroy Iraq's offensive capabilities. The outcome of the Gulf War, combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, had left the United States in an unprecedented position of dominance in the region. Washington was debating what to do with this newfound and unchallenged influence. With the rapid collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States finds itself again at a crucial point of decision in the Middle East. But this time it has had little opportunity to ponder what to do. As Washington scrambles to define a policy for "phase two" of the campaign against terror, policymakers should look back to how the United States fared the last time it had such an opening.
Until the World Trade Center towers were reduced to rubble and the Pentagon was slashed open, most Americans, along with their government, were clearly in denial about their exposure to a terrorist attack on their own soil. Oceans to the east and west and friendly continental neighbors to the north and south had always offered a healthy measure of protection. And Americans have generally disapproved of extensive efforts at domestic security. They were willing to staff and bankroll the defense and intelligence communities to contain the Soviet Union and to deal with conflicts "over there," but the quid pro quo was supposed to allow civilians at home to enjoy the full extent of their accustomed freedoms.
At the end of the Gulf War, some idealists argued that it was time to spread democracy to a part of the world that knew little of it. They suggested starting with Iraq, using U.S. military might to topple Saddam Hussein and install a democratic regime, as had been done in Germany and Japan after World War II. And they questioned the wisdom of reinstalling the emir in liberated Kuwait, advocating instead that the United States should bring democracy to the sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf.
These ideas got short shrift at the time. President George H.W. Bush strongly preferred the regional status quo, and America's Arab allies, determined to return to business as usual, were quick to reinforce his instinct. The Saudi rulers, for example, had come to understand how dangerous talk of democracy was for their own grip on power when Saudi women spontaneously expressed their desire for greater freedom by doing the hitherto unthinkable: driving themselves up and down the streets of Riyadh.
Even while the Iraq crisis was raging, these Arab allies had anticipated the idealistic U.S. impulses and had found a way to deflect them. They extracted from the president and his secretary of state, James Baker, a promise that after the war the United States would focus on solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sure enough, Washington obliged, leaving them alone to reestablish the old order in their troubled societies.
In October 1991, the Bush administration successfully used America's newfound regional dominance to convene the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, which — for the first time in history — launched direct peace negotiations between Israel and all its Arab neighbors. And in June 1992, sensing the change in the local environment, Israelis went to the polls and delivered a mandate to Yitzhak Rabin to pursue peace. Thus, when President Bill Clinton assumed office in January 1993, he inherited an ongoing peace process, one that held out the promise of agreements on all fronts in short order.
Nevertheless, the new Democratic administration had come to Washington eager to promote democracy abroad. So the officials responsible for the task — particularly Morton Halperin on the staff of the National Security . . .