Middle East leaders had good reason to be alarmed. The policy broke with long standing mainstays of Washington Middle East diplomacy. The first was the infamous "He's an SOB, but he's our SOB" policy that allowed Washington to support and nurture dictators and repressive regimes around the world, as long as those regimes supported the US. Fuglencio Battista, Manuel Noriega, the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein are among the SOBs that the US was proud to call "ours" at one time. This policy was never meant to be morally justifiable, and with the end of the cold war, it is not even expedient.

The second holy cow that appeared to be on the way to the slaughter house was the mantra that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to solving all the problems of the Middle East. This was possibly first enunciated by US Assistant Secretary of State Harold H. Saunders in 1975 and eventually became a cornerstone of US policy in the Middle East. As one astute commentator has pointed out recently, this doctrine may have a much longer history, and it is well worth re-examination.

When a draft of George Bush's initiative was first leaked to Al Hayat in February, it sent shockwaves throughout the Middle East, causing a postponement of the Arab summit and inspiring hopeful (or spine-chilling, depending on your point of view) calls for reform. Saudi rulers mutst've had nightmare visions of women drivers, male voters and even, heaven forfend, women voters in meaningful elections. Egypt and Syria might have been seriously considering how they could retrain the minions of people who routinely carry out the same tortures that horrified the world in Abu-Ghraib. Publicly, rulers did not say "no" outright to reform. The then-unpublished initiative was criticized by Egyptian and Saudi rulers because, it was said, reform could not be imposed from outside, and because, as they claimed there could be no reform in the Middle East without first solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nobody has every explained why Saudi Arabia can't hold free elections or give women driver's licences until Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, but the idea that Middle East reform is connected to the Israeli-Palestinian problem has since been repeated many times. Arab countries invited to the G-8 summit (except for Iraq) pointedly refused to attend.

By a strange coincidence, OPEC announced that it was cutting oil production quotas, though prices were already high. Partly as a result of that cut, prices went soaring over the $40 dollar a barrel mark, and the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indices headed south.

The panic of the Middle Eastern rulers may have been for naught. Even before it was announced, an astute observer noted somewhat euphemistically:

The new American draft responds to European concerns about the project and, in a bow to Arab criticisms, is rooted in indigenous Arab calls for reform.

The initiative is now called "Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Region of the Broader Middle East and North Africa." The length of the name may be in inverse proportion to the significance of the initiative. The major changes in the plan are incorporation of language about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a major retreat regarding reform. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the document states:

The resolution of long-lasting, often bitter, disputes, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is an important element of progress in the region.

That might be a harmless truism. It implicitly contains the Saunders formula, since there is no mention of the larger Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Muslim conflict. The hidden assumption is that once the Palestinians and Israelis make peace, the various "refusal fronts" will quickly crumble. Does anyone really believe that, for example, Iran will give up its enmity to Israel and to "the Great Satan" if the Palestinians and Israelis conclude a peace treaty? Also, of course, it is not really related to the question of democratic reform.

The key provision however, is probably this one:

Each country is unique and their diversity should be respected. Our engagement must respond to local conditions and be based on local ownership.
Each society will reach its own conclusions about the pace and scope of change.

Yet distinctiveness, important as it is, must not be exploited to prevent reform.

But in a nod to Arab and Muslim fears that it is merely a tool to impose western values on their traditional societies, the initiative repeatedly points out that no reforms are actually required [emphasis addied].

Coincidentally, just about the time that the new draft of the initiative was released, OPEC announced a big boost in petroleum production, reducing oil prices below $40 a barrel again.

Of course, those who want to believe that the G8 initiative can still produce reform are free to believe. Anything is possible, right?

Ami Isseroff