A Must Read for Obama

This week’s event calendar is light, primarily related to housing. We will also see Jan Durable orders on Thur. Durables is a key release but it’s so volatile recently that we can’t assign a risk to the number.

There is however something far more profound by the way of potential impact to US interests and prosperity than any number of key releases might ever be. That would be the eruption in the Mid East, the surging demand for consensual government.

We reprint in its entirety our sketch from May/06. Yes, we jumped the gun a tad. And yes, this administration has so far done nothing to foster democracy in this area. Nevertheless, we are witnessing the beginning of the end for a few, and the beginning of the beginning for many.

Obama needs only to let the four paragraphs below become his guide, and to sculpt US policy accordingly.



May/03/06:


Over the next 12 to 18 months we will witness a conflagration of sorts: Democracy will spread throughout the Middle East as a pace very few can now appreciate; with the encouragement of the US, dissidents will upset primitive, brutal, autocratic and theocratic regimes and replace these with a new beginning - the foundations for a responsive government.

Realists have maintained that the Mid East is the least hospitable place in the world for a democracy. They are mistaken. Arab countries have aped western ideas but sought to implement these through state power - failed capitalist dictatorships. The inevitable decay and failure, the brutality of rule have together bred a growing sub-surface counterculture of resistance. It is this reservoir of energy, before constrained or crushed by ruling thugs, that now will be married to an enlightened US policy, ultimately transforming the region. And so now we are witnessing the beginning of the end for the old order.

The Administration’s formula is a simple one. It begins with the truth that all men and women will chose self determination over a directed and compulsory existence. Next is the fact that the spread of consensual government is in the direct interest of the US. A free society is not a threat to its neighbors. Trade and enhancement of wealth are only furthered.

Finally, the US will promote democracy in nondemocratic regimes by linking our foreign policy, our money, expertise and markets to internal reform - how these societies treat their own. All the countries in the Mid East are dependent on the West. We have the leverage. Given the base of internal dissent a regime need only give a little, say in the election process in exchange for US trade preference, and the fissure provided will quickly open to unleash a torrent.

Robert Craven