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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Book Fair Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Thinking straight
By Salama Ahmed Salama
The Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies recently issued its annual report, which, like a compass, usually indicates directions for safe navigation, establishes links between various seemingly unrelated events and reveals the policies underlying every action and detail. To the common citizen, anxious about the state of the nation, the report offers methodology for objective perception, an essential tool for those who are asking new questions and seeking answers to old ones. Objectivity opens channels for dialogue with oneself and with others; it makes collective action possible.
The report, entering its 14th year of publication, has attained a new level of maturity and gained considerable insight into current realities, laying down the facts without hesitation. Its authors have followed their scientific reasoning to its logical conclusions. Their only motive is to state facts and to ensure the well-being of their country. They have made the most of the large margin of freedom available, which many Egyptian and Arab writers and thinkers refrain from using, or within which they manoeuvre cautiously, resorting to ambiguity, distortions or misrepresentation. This self-censorship has crippled news reporting, misguided the public and distracted it from the real objectives which the country should pursue.
The report, which is impossible to summarise in this column, provides a well-documented analysis of the international situation today, and the role of American strategy in the world order. America is trying to impose its hegemony and views through the use of military force, and attempting to direct international events in its own favour. The report highlights the errors in the strategic thinking of this superpower's policy-makers, their lack of insight and failure to comprehend clearly the role they play. The report reviews the failure of US sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yugoslavia, as well as the failure of its policy to address the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan.
Fluctuations in US policy are also held responsible for the crisis Russia is facing, and the authors of the report have also detected the confusion this ambiguous policy has bred worldwide. Does the US seek to weaken Russia and eradicate vestiges of its past as a superpower, or to maintain an enfeebled and incapacitated paper rival? US policy in Afghanistan has been equally inconsistent; for while it recognised the Taliban, the American administration has bombed Taliban positions accused of sheltering Bin Laden.
Nowhere has US strategic policy been more inconsistent than on the Arab-Israeli peace process. Despite reaching a memorandum of understanding regarding the second redeployment in the West Bank, the US has failed to get Israel -- by now a strategic burden -- to make good on its commitments. As for Iraq, the report detects the shift in US position from almost peaceful containment to military containment with the ultimate aim of the regime's overthrow. The report concludes that Arab belief in a shift toward a multipolar world order is unfounded.
To improve its deteriorating performance at the international level, the report emphasises, the Arab world must initiate a process of political renewal. Comprehensive political reform is indispensable to the creation of a new Arab order capable of addressing US political inconsistency and dealing with the root causes of its own passivity and ineffectiveness, as reflected in the impossibility to convene an Arab summit.
Renewal, however, is feasible only when there is awareness of the link between social strength and political democracy. This is precisely the reason for which a strategic dialogue between Arabs and Americans is far more fruitful than a dialogue conducted by Egyptian and American diplomats could ever be.
The frankness and clarity of the conclusions drawn by the report are its most prominent features. It concludes that Egypt must play a leading role in the reform of the Arab order, especially as Mubarak, the president who has opened up wider horizons for the country, contemplates a fourth term in office at the threshold of the third millennium. The report has won deserved recognition and was highly commended at the award ceremony held on the occasion of the Book Fair.
