What the World is Reading

Tony Blair finally steps down as Prime Minister of Britain this week, and speculation is afoot that he will coordinate efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. That task got that much more difficult this month with Hamas-Fatah hostilities in Gaza. In the main leader in its June 21 issue, The Economist (“Martyrs or traitors: the Arab predicament”) takes stock of the challenge: “In one brutal week Hamas’s swift destruction of Arafat’s Fatah movement in Gaza summed up a change that is spreading across a broad swathe of the Middle East. Secular nationalism of the sort Fatah stood for is coming to look like the weak force and radical Islam like the strong force. This poses a huge danger to a region already beset by violent conflicts. What is worse, Western policy is in danger of strengthening the wrong side by making the Islamists look like martyrs and the secularists like traitors.” America’s plan “is to keep Hamas penned up in its Gaza enclave and to shower love, money and weapons on Palestine’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah-dominated security forces are still more or less in control of the larger and more populous West Bank. The hope is that if Gaza fails under Hamas while the West Bank prospers under Fatah, Palestinian opinion will eventually swing back behind the moderates.” The problem is, “Any Arab leader who wins the label ‘moderate’ and is showered as a result of this with American love and money is in danger of being called a traitor.” As a countervailing show of sincerity, the US must be seen to be delivering on the demand for statehood.

The United States’ leverage in Iran and Pakistan too is uncertain. Michael Hirsh travels through Iran for Newsweek (‘Dispatch from Iran’, July 2-9) and finds that George W. Bush’s $75 million programme to promote democracy in the country has an effect quite the opposite to what was intended: “Even though it’s made little headway in promoting discontent with the regime, the mullahs have used it to intimidate reformers by tainting them as US collaborators.” He finds: “Such is the paradox of Iran today. After years of turmoil, including mass street protests against the regime in the 1990s, the revolution has adapted. Among the public, political apathy now reigns. Active political opposition to Islamic rule is all but gone. And the current government, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is adopting a rather savvy tactic of letting ordinary people enjoy themselves a bit and, above all, taste the fruits of prosperity. He can afford to do so, sitting on $70 billion to $80 billion in oil revenue a year, which he uses to subsidise Iran’s isolated economy. The mullah state doesn’t ruthlessly crush dissent. Instead, the government tries to nitpick and hound offenders out of the political arena. The success of this oppressive but subtly effective system should give the regime-change advocates in Washington some pause.”

In the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey argues that stirring regime change in Pakistan too would not be in Washington’s interests: “The choice between supporting Pakistan’s army and promoting democracy has always been a false one. Both are necessary. Only by helping to empower civilians and earning the trust of the army at the same time will the United States successfully prosecute the long war against extremism and militancy.”

Meanwhile: Foreign Policy (July/August) updates its failed state index (Sudan 1, Iraq 2). Time (July 2) reassesses the legacy of John F. Kennedy. National Geographic (July) studies the malaria threat.