Even change needs a little time
Published in Gulf News, 3 June 2009
By Gordon Robison, Special to Gulf News
Tomorrow, US President Barack Obama is scheduled to be in Cairo to deliver what is billed as a major address to the Muslim World. What can, or should, he say? And how might it be received?
In the United States, the speech is generating surprisingly little advance notice. There have been a few articles in major newspapers (notably the New York Times), but relatively little discussion of the event in the broader media.
What coverage there has been (again, the Times is a case in point) has emphasised the degree to which people in the region are thought to be ambivalent at best, and hostile at worst, to the message Obama plans to take to Egypt.
In this, as in so much else, the US President has much to overcome. Where the Middle East is concerned, however, the idea of a lingering bad taste is about much more than George W. Bush.
Obama's predecessor may have earned the enmity of many in the region but, as most Gulf News readers will be well aware, Middle Eastern displeasure with the United states has a pedigree that goes much further back than the Bush administration.
I was in the region last week and it was impossible to miss the desire for change on America's part - a feeling as deep and, in its own way, as pent up as any to be found in the country.
When he speaks in Cairo tomorrow Obama will find it easy to capture that strain of hope. However, he will only succeed in helping move the region forward if he can marry hope to a substantive agenda - one that charts a way forward for both Palestinians and Israelis, signals a determination to exit Iraq while leaving that country intact, and indicates a plan for navigating the increasingly maze-like world of conflict that is Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But success requires more than American action alone. If Obama's Middle Eastern audience sits on its hands and waits for American solutions to these and other ills, it will be complicit in the latest round of Washington-led failure.
Above all, when Obama speaks tomorrow, observers and critics in the Middle East must avoid the temptation to confuse real substance with immediate results.
Even if tomorrow's speech proves to be a watershed moment in the history of the region, things on Friday morning are probably going to look pretty much like they do today.
In practical terms that means no one should expect Obama to push the Israelis too hard in public, let alone to turn on them.
Do not assume, however, that a failure to pressure Israel this week means that pressure will not be applied, in private, over the coming months.
One might even argue that, in the nuanced world of diplomacy, visiting Riyadh and delivering a major speech in Cairo without also dropping by Tel Aviv is, itself, a message of sorts - especially for a relatively new president who is making his second trip to the region.
Ultimately, improving relations between America and the Arab World is going to be a two-way street. It will not be enough for an Obama-led America to act differently from its predecessors. The Arab World, too, needs to be receptive.
We may all want to see change in some form or the other, but let us not dismiss change that fails to take exactly the form we want to see or which happens on a timetable we might not have chosen. In the world of international affairs change tends to be an incremental process, not an immediate one.
This is what President Obama means when he talks of the need for mutual respect. Both sides need to remember that listening and acting are not the same thing. If I choose not to take the advice you offer that does not mean I did not listen, or that I am oblivious to your concerns.
People who have met Obama say that one of his great gifts is the ability to make people feel they have been heard, even when the final decision fails to go their way.
The Middle East is likely to test this skill in ways America's banks, car companies and healthcare industry can scarcely imagine.
Gordon Robison is a writer and commentator based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades. His blog can be found at: www.mideastanalysis.com
Tomorrow, US President Barack Obama is scheduled to be in Cairo to deliver what is billed as a major address to the Muslim World. What can, or should, he say? And how might it be received?
In the United States, the speech is generating surprisingly little advance notice. There have been a few articles in major newspapers (notably the New York Times), but relatively little discussion of the event in the broader media.
What coverage there has been (again, the Times is a case in point) has emphasised the degree to which people in the region are thought to be ambivalent at best, and hostile at worst, to the message Obama plans to take to Egypt.
In this, as in so much else, the US President has much to overcome. Where the Middle East is concerned, however, the idea of a lingering bad taste is about much more than George W. Bush.
Obama's predecessor may have earned the enmity of many in the region but, as most Gulf News readers will be well aware, Middle Eastern displeasure with the United states has a pedigree that goes much further back than the Bush administration.
I was in the region last week and it was impossible to miss the desire for change on America's part - a feeling as deep and, in its own way, as pent up as any to be found in the country.
When he speaks in Cairo tomorrow Obama will find it easy to capture that strain of hope. However, he will only succeed in helping move the region forward if he can marry hope to a substantive agenda - one that charts a way forward for both Palestinians and Israelis, signals a determination to exit Iraq while leaving that country intact, and indicates a plan for navigating the increasingly maze-like world of conflict that is Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But success requires more than American action alone. If Obama's Middle Eastern audience sits on its hands and waits for American solutions to these and other ills, it will be complicit in the latest round of Washington-led failure.
Above all, when Obama speaks tomorrow, observers and critics in the Middle East must avoid the temptation to confuse real substance with immediate results.
Even if tomorrow's speech proves to be a watershed moment in the history of the region, things on Friday morning are probably going to look pretty much like they do today.
In practical terms that means no one should expect Obama to push the Israelis too hard in public, let alone to turn on them.
Do not assume, however, that a failure to pressure Israel this week means that pressure will not be applied, in private, over the coming months.
One might even argue that, in the nuanced world of diplomacy, visiting Riyadh and delivering a major speech in Cairo without also dropping by Tel Aviv is, itself, a message of sorts - especially for a relatively new president who is making his second trip to the region.
Ultimately, improving relations between America and the Arab World is going to be a two-way street. It will not be enough for an Obama-led America to act differently from its predecessors. The Arab World, too, needs to be receptive.
We may all want to see change in some form or the other, but let us not dismiss change that fails to take exactly the form we want to see or which happens on a timetable we might not have chosen. In the world of international affairs change tends to be an incremental process, not an immediate one.
This is what President Obama means when he talks of the need for mutual respect. Both sides need to remember that listening and acting are not the same thing. If I choose not to take the advice you offer that does not mean I did not listen, or that I am oblivious to your concerns.
People who have met Obama say that one of his great gifts is the ability to make people feel they have been heard, even when the final decision fails to go their way.
The Middle East is likely to test this skill in ways America's banks, car companies and healthcare industry can scarcely imagine.
Gordon Robison is a writer and commentator based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades. His blog can be found at: www.mideastanalysis.com
