Part A - U.S. Role in the Middle East - The Contours Of A 'Marshal Plan'.

US strategists of the post-Sept. 11 era, mainly neo-conservative ideologues close to the Bush administration, tend to keep comparing the attacks against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour which forced the American entry into World War II. They argue that, in scope and surprise, the airplane attacks were perhaps even more of a shock to the American system than the Japanese strike, which was at least carried out by conventional forces which took responsibility for the attack. By contrast no group has directly claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The strategists' response to these attacks, therefore, tends to parallel the American response in World War II, i.e. inflict a crushing defeat on the enemy, to be followed by a reconstruction and revival of the defeated society. The examples of Germany and Japan are frequently played up in the US media as the successes of this approach. The implications for the Middle East are clear, at least to those rulers who have hitherto relied on cold war equations to govern their relationship with the US.

Arab rulers, are gradually becoming aware that the US under the administration of George W. Bush is in some ways already dealing with them as a defeated people. This is not only implying Arab defeat in the conflict with Israel but also indicating Arab defeat in the conflict against terrorism. The fear among self-appointed rulers is that, when the US stages a regime change in Iraq (see following pages) and if it succeeds in implementing a "Marshall Plan" for the country, then Washington would turn on other regimes with the same objectives.

The majority of Arabs would accept a Marshall Plan to fund a renaissance based on democracy and economic freedom. But a spirit of capitulation resulting from the way the Americans will behave could overwhelm the region and entrap the US in a situation that could be worse than Vietnam (see the risks in Part C).

That the Arab World is ripe for drastic change is indicated clearly in the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2002, sponsored by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development (AFESD), and released on July 2 in Cairo. The report warns that the Arab World has fallen off the globe due to a "poverty of capabilities and a poverty of opportunities", despite its wealth of natural resources. It predicts that, without the drastic changes, the population of the 22 Arab states will grow from 280 million to 410-459 million by 2020. What the report did not say is that, without drastic changes now, the Arabs by 2020 would have a bigger majority of angry and impoverished people as well as swarms of Bin Ladins breeding out of entrenched dictatorships.

The US is aware of this demographic bomb, and its strategists believe a Marshall Plan for the region would be the only way to defuse it. Indeed, a Marshall Plan may be more effective in combating Bin Ladenism than a war against terror, because smart bombs cannot tackle the Arab demographic bomb. But such a plan for the Arab World would require changes more comprehensive than the ones imposed on Germany and Japan after the defeat of World War II. Economic aid alone will not be sufficient to bring about the drastic changes that would be needed to reverse the situation in the Arab World; the infusion of aid since the 1960s has not helped to create dynamic societies in any of the recipient countries.

The oil-rich Arab countries which did not need aid, and which have per capita incomes matching and sometimes exceeding those of the developed world, are not better off in terms of capabilities. And since the Sept. 11 attacks, reports in the Western media accuse these countries or their citizens of being among the major financiers of Al Qaida.

On the contrary, a Marshall Plan for the Arab World, will need to focus on changing the entire mindset of a region. For the US, this will be the main challenge because there will be strong resistance to such a plan from the entrenched leaderships in the region. None of these regimes will want to make the changes needed to make such a plan work, because it will effectively mean giving up power.

If the resistance to diplomatic pressure is too strong, and if the US is determined not to acquiesce in the status quo (something which is by no means guaranteed in view of domestic political compulsions), then Washington may have to take the war against terror to its logical conclusion - i.e. the complete defeat of those facilitating terror, if not sponsoring it.

Whether or not this agenda can be implemented, depends on the ability of the US to sustain its objectives and to not get sidetracked by established relationships and preferences related to existing regimes in the Middle East. The debate on this issue within the US over the past year is an historic one, as arguments have shifted from being in favour of some form of "neo-isolationism" - which many had expected from the Republicans in early 2001 - to what critics in the Middle East as well as some countries in Europe are calling "neo-colonialism".

It is quite possible that the neo-colonial approach will be applied in the region, with the degree of intervention being directly proportional to the extent to which the regime is prepared to reform itself to the satisfaction of the US. The experts believe that that a system of reward and punishment will gradually be introduced to underpin the neo-colonial approach, with the worst punishment being military intervention aimed at "regime change" and the best reward being recognition as a member of the community of democracies with maximum trade, aid and strategic benefits.

This does not mean, however, that democracy by itself will be sufficient to persuade the US that a country no longer poses any threat to its interests. There will be direct but selective intervention aimed at altering the economic, educational, legal and information systems in the region. This would be even more sensitive, in some respects, than the question of democracy for the people of the region. This is because it will touch the core of the "civilisational" issue that conservatives in the US believe lie at the root of the attacks of September 2001.

To change educational and legal systems, for instance, would require a change of mindset and a different approach to living. In the Middle East, the vast majority of the population consists of Muslims whose guidelines for life are written in the Koran and in subsequent interpretations in minute detail. Whether the US can introduce change at this level remains to be seen, and if it cannot it is unclear whether introducing "regime change" and "democracy" - i.e. a Marshall Plan - would have any meaning in terms of American security.

Iraq Will Be The Test Case: Be that as it may, the Bush administration appears determined to make a laboratory for the Middle East version of the Marshal Plan in Iraq. Although there has been no official declaration of intent as yet, with the main focus at the moment being on the ouster of Saddam, there have been enough signals indicating that American forces will stay on in Iraq for long enough to stabilise the situation in the country. How long that will take remains to be seen.

The Afghan example is instructive in this regard. The Taliban regime was ousted by end-November 2001. American troops and other personnel are still in the country, guarding the interim President Hamid Karzai, and carrying out other tasks. They will not leave for the foreseeable future.

The New York Times on Oct. 11reported that the White House was developing a detailed post-war occupation plan for Iraq, modelled on the experience in Japan after World War II. The plan, according to the paper, calls for war crimes trials of Iraqi leaders and a transition to an elected civilian government that may take months or years. It says that initially Iraq would be governed by a U.S. military commander - perhaps Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf - who would fill a role similar to the one Gen. Douglas MacArthur had after Japan's surrender in 1945.

APS had said in July 2002 (see Diplomat's News Service No. 7) that there would be a sustained US military presence in Iraq after Saddam is ousted and that the purpose would be to help establish a federal democracy to become a model for changes which Washington wants to see copied in other parts of the Arab/Muslim world. It was envisaged that a US general would be installed as a provisional administrator of the country, to establish law and order and prevent a dismemberment of the country and that the transition towards a federal democracy may take many months, or years, after the war has come to an end.

The NYT also reported that by considering a long occupation, the underlying implication is that the US government is going to minimise the role Iraqi opposition groups would be expected to play in a post-Saddam environment. The thinking behind this is that the government wants to avoid the problems faced in Afghanistan, namely the chaos and infighting that has followed the ouster of the Taliban. In addition, there is the question of weapons of mass destruction stored in the country; the US wants a free hand as well as complete control when it carries out its mission to discover and destroy these weapons.

Who Could Be Next? Which would be the next country to come in the crosshairs of the US after the Iraqi regime is a question that is worrying may leaders in the Middle East. Since the WTC/Pentagon attacks, countries that were hitherto close allies of the US - including for example, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - have come for tough criticism in the US media.

Think tanks have repeatedly alleged that these countries and their citizens have either turned a blind eye towards terror networks, or supported them discreetly in some cases. The latest allegation came on Oct. 17, as the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations in a report said that Al Qaida had got significant funding from Saudi Arabia and criticised the US for not taking a tough line on the issue.

What such media criticism has done and continues to do is to limit the room for manoeuvre the Bush administration or its successor would have in its policies towards these countries. This means countries that are considered allies of the US could face the threat of "regime change" at some point in the future.

In the short-term, this is unlikely, so long as Washington has challenges such as Iraq and others labelled as "rogue states" on the agenda. These include states more vulnerable to US military and diplomatic pressure, such as Iran, Syria, Libya and Sudan. But there will be political pressure for reform on America's allies as well, and these pressures will increase or decrease according to the success the US achieves in its regime change efforts elsewhere in the region.