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Address delivered on the occasion of the conference of Arab Ministers of Finance in Beirut, May 18, 2004.
What I have to say below reflects my own personal opinion, and not necessarily the perspective of a government I used to be a member of, nor of any international organization I currently work for or used to work for.
Our region is without a doubt passing through a state of uncertainty. The far reaching events, the simultaneous changes and the sole remaining super power’s shift in attitude – from backing stability to promoting change – in addition to open sores such as Gaza, Najaf and Darfour, are causes of concern as much as they call for critical analysis. These events, in fact, mark the transition from one status to another, hopefully better, one. However, there is reason to fear they will lead to yet a further deterioration of the present state of affairs. It seems as if we are no longer capable of taking the initiative, and are rather content to be on the receiving end. Once we would address others, now we are accused. Once we would negotiate, now all we do is scramble out of harm’s way. Once we attempted to influence others, now we restrict our modest efforts to minimizing the other’s influence on us.
Based on the above, the first challenge we face is to acquire a clear vision of where we stand. But this we cannot achieve as long as the frantic course of consecutive events continues to preoccupy our minds. Our vision cannot be clear unless we acknowledge the radical character of the changes that have occurred around us, rather than remaining occupied with only the most apparent, superficial symptoms of these changes. Our vision cannot be clear if we are driven by the other’s influence upon us, by his determination to hastily declare our incapability to have any influence, our inability to take any initiative or action.
On the contrary, clarity of vision means to discover what is happening to us – which I sense is the establishment of a system of protectorate, or custody, imposed on our states and societies. One single power has decided that we, after decades of independence, have proved incompetent to manage our own affairs in a manner that accommodates its expectations or interests, or to keep pace with the present changes taking place around the globe. This power decided to intervene directly to accelerate the desired changes that our governments failed to achieve – or procrastinated in achieving, after they admitted that this change was inevitable.
There is a common denominator between military intervention, the long-term stationing of troops, control over monetary transfers, diplomatic advice and political pressure. This denominator is the creation of a system of custody over a region accused not only of incompetence in coping with world developments but also of exporting violence to the streets of New York, Madrid and Bali, as well as of failing to resolve conflicts or change policies or leaders.
I believe that if our region was located in some isolated spot at the margins of this world, or if it were deprived and poor, no one would have made the effort to try to control us, or to put us under custody. Yet fate placed our region at the crossroads of three continents, and on a sensitive axis of interaction. Fate also endowed our region with natural resources – oil and gas – whose importance doesn’t need to be mentioned. And it chose our area as the birthplace of three great religions. As a result, a Jew in New York, a Christian in Rome or a Muslim in Kuala Lumpur all feel involved personally with what happens in our part of the world. They are much less concerned with other parts of the world not endowed with this symbolic power emanating from Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Mecca, Al Medina, Mashhad or Najaf.
This is the essence of our present ordeal: With all that we represent in religion, oil and strategic location, our importance to the world is much bigger than what we can actually afford. Thus the world will not leave us alone, but places us under scrutiny and under some sort of custody. Whoever possesses such immense physical or symbolic wealth and does not manage it according to the will of the powerful should expect the powerful to go ahead and do exactly what he had tried to convince the possessor to do.
First: What does this foreign power really want from us, and for us?
He wants us to accept a revision of the concept of national sovereignty – though not necessarily abandon it completely – as he believes that the concept of sovereignty changed with the end of the Cold War. Moreover, he postulates that Third World countries unduly exploited the competition between the two poles of the Cold War and invested the concept of national sovereignty with an absolute character in the political, economic and social fields. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, all the countries of the West moved toward a more relative concept of sovereignty, which no longer grants individual states the authority to deal with their populations and their resources as they please. In their union, the Europeans transcended the concept of sovereignty for industry, agriculture and currency. The Americans, on the other hand, have increased their emphasis on sovereignty and grant themselves the right to infringe upon the independence of other nations.
The fast expansion of information technology contributes to a large extent to the undermining of sovereignty, as well as to the concept of border control. Moreover the market system is gradually reducing governmental control over the economy and, therefore, society. The fast transfer of capital, ideas and information all have the same effect: rather than being defined as the rule over a specific territory, sovereignty, for many, has come to mean a seat at the table where international questions are negotiated.
In addition to these conceptual changes, there is a second change. Terrorism is no longer considered a means to a certain end – as it has been used by a large number of very different groups in the course of history – but rather as some kind of autonomous enemy, much in the way Communism used to be perceived. We are therefore asked to not only accept some kind of “sovereignty-lite” for our nations, but are also pushed to adopt a specific position on terrorism. Accordingly, anyone who is not unequivocally against terrorism is by necessity a collaborator or a supporter. No one among us, of course, supports terrorism, but we would like to find some consensus beforehand on the term itself. However, our potential to participate in finding a definition of what should be considered an act of terrorism is seriously compromised. This is mainly because the sole superpower assumes an exclusive right in defining terminologies and rewriting dictionaries, and moreover claims a monopoly on determining the suitable means to fight this war, and our role in it. It also claims the right to implement international law discriminatorily in the course of this all-out war. The Geneva Convention is not applicable in Abu Ghraib, and not even relevant in Guantanamo Bay. Prophylactic (and I’m not saying preemptive) war is now legitimate, despite its illegal nature.
The bottom line is that whoever calls for investigating the objective conditions that lead to violence is now indicted of justifying terrorism, and whoever criticizes Israel, in particular, stands accused of Anti-Semitism.
The third conceptual change is related to the means of force. If sovereignty is a relative concept, and if we are accused of being lenient on – or even in cahoots with – terrorism, then the West shall never allow us to possess advanced weapons. This interdiction applies either because we are rogue states and may hence abuse these weapons, or because we are weak states, who would therefore allow these weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists. Thus, redefining the concept of sovereignty leads to a redefining of our defense needs, so that they become complementary to the military efforts required for the establishment of a system of custody over the region.
Second: The Arab Dilemma
Amidst all these conceptual changes, we are advised to speed up the pace of reform in our region. Most Arabs feel uneasy about these constant appeals. Our regimes refuse to begin reforms that will supposedly risk their own survival. And the people – all people, loyalists and the various oppositions alike – do not applaud reforms that come from the outside, or which overlook their major national concerns, or which are related to an explicit campaign of extending NATO’s reach to create a framework for a system of custody. Nor do they support those reforms that seem to punish everyone for the acts of a few. This dilemma is not becomeing any easier by the West hiding behind the Arab Development Report, portraying it as an Arab diagnosis of our situation. Nor is it eased when pressure is placed on the Arab Summit to convene only if it will adopt a discourse of reform strategy. This becomes a discourse, then, geared to legitimize the projected system of custody by giving it a fake veneer of authenticity – as if foreign pressure were only a response to appeals from the region, appeals demanding that the powerful manage our reform process.
As a result, we find our real advocates of reform complaining about this unrelenting foreign pressure, rather than appreciating it or finding it helpful in their constant struggle for change. Many reformists have come to share the existing regimes’ suspicions of these calls for reform, not because of their content, but because of their dubious origin.
I believe the basic conflict concerns raising the allowed questions AND the prohibited ones. Following the events of September 11, the neo-conservatives in the United States embarked upon a campaign that rejected any profound inquiries into the origin and development of terrorism. These neo-conservatives seek causes for conflicts between the Arab World and the West that originate in culture, in the core of Islam and Arab history, all under one headline: “Why do they hate us?” This framing of the question obscures the reservations Arabs have about concrete American politics. Hatred of America is portrayed as something organically engrained in our culture, unrelated to behavior of the American government.
We know, of course, that this diagnosis is inaccurate. We know that our societies harbor a strong admiration of the West, its advancements and supremacy, and of the United States in particular. Our complaints about the West are for certain approaches and politics that the United States has adopted, and that we would like see changed. The conceptual struggle over the crucial question ‘What really happened on 9/11, and why?’ still remains open. And while some may join the Americans in their call for reform in our region, we sense a deepening conceptual disparity between America and Europe on how to deal with terrorism. We also notice a growing resistance by countries like China, India and Brazil to the undermining of national sovereignty. We have come to agree with many voices around the world saying that fundamentalism is different from Communism, and therefore, it is not capable of reuniting the Western Front around the American leadership like during the Cold War.
One of the important obstacles preventing us – regimes and peoples – from joining the exported reformist trend is the lack of moral authority on the side of the party selling it. For he who calls us to accelerate the transition to the rule of law and democracy and to respect human rights, should himself be as virtuous as Caesar’s wife, should be himself above all suspicion.
However, a great country advocating respect for human rights, while its troops behave as they do in the Abu Ghraib prison, lacks moral authority. A great country telling us to feel the breeze of freedom, while it vetoes enforcing the Geneva Convention in Guantanamo, is without any moral authority. A great country that asks us to respect international law, and at the same time allows itself to defy the rulings of the Security Council, can claim no moral authority; nor can a country that refuses to endorse the treaty for the creation of an international criminal court, or to sign the Kyoto Accords.
A superior state, which bans us from possessing advanced weaponry, and yet revokes its own signature on agreements for arms control, has no moral authority. A superior state that launches successive campaigns against some Arab countries, while colluding with their diplomatic representatives in Washington, has no moral authority. A superior power that lectures us on the freedom of expression, while blaming the Arab media for what happens in Gaza or Fallouja, has no moral authority. And finally, a superior state that believes that Israel has the right to assassinate Palestinian leaders one after the other, all the while giving Israel the right to build a wall that rips apart villages and farms in the West Bank, has no moral authority.
He who calls on others to reform ought to be himself above any doubt or suspicion. This is the bottom line. Let me assure you that American pressure for reform will not stop. However, it does contain serious instrumental defects. George Bush is neither like his predecessor Woodrow Wilson in 1919, nor like Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. And the majority of us, opposition and loyalists alike, believe Bush has quite a bit of improvement to achieve in his own administration before urging others to improve. However, I also believe this political, moral and cultural struggle will not end with the American presidential elections, regardless of the outcome. So, do we have to restrict ourselves to protests and confusion? Should we continue wavering between accepting a forced reform or rejecting it out of hand, or is there a third path to take?
Regardless of the foreign calls for reform, and wherever they may lead, we ourselves should step back and reconsider. After all, we are the heirs of Al-Kawakabi, who fought oppression more than a century ago; we are the heirs of Salamah Moussa, who called and worked for modernization and the liberation of women. We are also heirs to an ambitious movement of Arab renaissance, which led us to the threshold of national independence. Thus, although in the past decades we neglected the pressing need for reform, this should not mean that today the only reason we re-discover our need for reform is that a superior power advocates it.
We should derive our inspiration from the legacy of the Arab renaissance in the last century to develop an ambitious and comprehensive reform plan. I would call it “A New Social Contract” between state and society. A contract that neither forsakes the legacy of our renaissance, nor poses a threat to our identity, but which rather revives and reawakens us and leads us to this new century with unwavering steps. Instead of engaging in a void discourse of reform that does not change the existing stalemate, but only alleviates the weight of foreign pressure on our governments, let us sketch out objectively and courageously what a reform tailored to our needs would look like. This is what I will be examining in the following ten equations, which I hope may serve as a framework for a new Arab social contract emanating from our region – one that will strengthen our position in the world rather than constituting yet another form of subjugation.
Thirdly, the ten equations:
But first I want to thank all of you for offering me the opportunity to address this subject at a conference restricted to tackling the issues of tax reform. Taxes are at the core and heart of the social contract. It is the duty of the ordinary citizen to pay his dues, and the obligation of the state to properly manage them, and to redistribute the revenues fairly. Taxes are thus an essential element in the social contract, which I hope we can start to rebuild along the ten equations listed below:
The first equation stipulates that our governments find a way out of the stalemate trapping them between foreign pressures and the pressure of their own societies.
Every time our regimes are prompted to choose between giving in to outside pressure or obtaining strength from their own societies, the vast majority of these regimes would rather yield to the outside than make concessions to their own people. We have to cautiously turn this equation around, because countries no longer derive their strength from weapons, oil or their foreign alliances, but from the coherence of their own societies, and from the consensus between the state and society on the essential objectives of the nation. To be sure, the social contract constitutes obligations of society to the state, primarily where the protection of political, financial and cultural independence is concerned. However, the social contract also stipulates that the state has to treat society as a partner, with the right to question the choices and decisions of its government and, of course, the right to demand a change of leadership if it so wishes.
We have seen some states offering vast concessions to foreign powers in return for the protection of their political regimes. Lately, this phenomenon has become more common, and the concessions offered more and more extensive. Should we drag along like this? Or should we try to understand that the foreign powers receive these painful concessions without offering real guarantees to the regimes in question, and maybe without even intending to do so. Do we give up the essential elements of our sovereignty so lightly, only to avoid conceding to our societies any real participation? Has it become easier for us to cede to the demands of the one superpower, or even to the demands of Israel, than to adopt democracy and political participation and to respect the rights of our people?
This first equation, before anything else, requires a definite conceptual change. Confidence between society and the state has, by all available standards, fallen to an all-time low in the past decades. And yet it is this confidence that any tax reform has to build on to succeed. This confidence cannot be restored unless every citizen feels his government has ceased to beg for foreign support to maintain control over its own people, and has instead decided to draw its power from society and to resist, with it and through it, the strategies of intervention, hegemony and domination.
The second equation requires establishing an active and efficient common Arab institution that no state perceives of as a thread to its existence and independence.
There are huge differences between the process of European unification and the Arab plans for unity. We have to admit to our failure in establishing a real Arab League, maybe resulting from the magnitude of our ambitions. The Europeans followed two gradual approaches. On the one hand they applied a horizontal process, through gradual expansion from 6 to 9 to 12 to 15 up to 25 member states. On the other hand they used a vertical approach, i.e. proceeding sector by sector, starting from steel and iron to agriculture, to monetary exchange rates, to the unification of currency and up to the unification of visas. On our part, we expanded horizontally with the independence of each country, but we demanded too much too quickly, and achieved neither the unification that the pan-Arabists wanted, nor the reliable regional organization sought by nationalists in every country. Perhaps this occurred because our countries are still weak to the point where they cling to all elements of sovereignty. European countries, however, are solidly founded and have enjoyed their sovereignty to a point where it is taken for granted, and thus were ready to sacrifice some of the elements of that concept for the interest of a higher union.
This road is still open before us. And I add that today, as the international pressure is growing, we need to establish a joint Arab market and set up a reliable and resourceful Arab League. Now more than ever we need to realize that this would not constitute a threat to the independence of any of our countries, nor would it restrict the margin of action for any single country. In fact such interdependence has become an essential prerequisite for protecting our independence. I know that this is a conceptual adjustment most of our governments are still unable to accept. Nevertheless, the European, Asian and Latin American experiences are plain to see. These indicate that the independence of individual states is no longer a realistic option, and moreover that the new concept of independence relies on membership in efficient regional alliances. To really measure the distance separating us from this new equation, we have to bear in mind that our leaders never discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a regional alliance. Instead, they consider it an accomplishment to even succeed in calling together a summit.
The third equation involves relations between the wealthy oil states and the poor states.
It has been a long-standing notion that oil has divided the Arab world into rich and poor countries, after they had been on a more or less even level before. This is true, but only to a certain extent. The day will come when we acknowledge that oil deserves credit for achieving the single successful instant of Arab unity – the creation of a unified labor market across the Arab world. Tens of millions of Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and Tunisians work in countries which before they had never even thought of visiting, such as Saudi Arabia, Libya or Iraq. In return, about US$300 to $400 billion in remittances were transferred from oil exporting to labor exporting Arab countries in the last quarter of the past century. Show me one similar case of integration – you will not find any! However, this unprecedented achievement is now under threat by hastily applied policies of nationalizing the labor force in some oil countries, concerns about the migrant communities, and the increased reliance on non-Arab foreign workers under the assumption that they pose less of a threat to security.
I can understand that the labor market, exactly like the oil market, has acquired a global nature. However, in terms of a new social contract related to identity, the oil producing states ought to ask themselves if it is in their long term interests to consider their workforce a commodity available for rent, purchase or sale. They ought to ask themselves if the labor-exporting countries, under certain circumstances, may not be capable of using their citizens themselves. They should also factor in the high costs they may incur as the human rights of their foreign workforce become internationally observed. Finally, the oil producing states should think twice about what remains for them if the land is theirs, but the population is no longer their own people. The labor exporting countries, on the other hand, should ask themselves if they are sufficiently preparing their citizens to be competitive according to international standards for employment in the oil countries. Hence let us not forgo or jeopardize, by shortsightedness or haphazard politics, the integrated Arab labor market that developed spontaneously over a quarter of a century.
The fourth equation aims at striking a creative balance between a collective Arab approach to reform, and maintaining the individuality of each country.
If there is one lesson to learn from half a century of independence, it is that all political tendencies that attempted to establish a single pattern – be it royalist or republican, capitalist or socialist, liberal or revolutionary, secular or Islamic – and apply it across the Arab world, have failed.
We should not expect that one pattern will or could dominate the twenty-two existing Arab political entities in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, if we carry out a number of essential reforms, while also adopting a different pace for different countries, we may actually reach a situation similar to the amazing convergence of the 25 countries that now form the European Union. I believe that many Arab states used the high level of the regimes’ similarities as a starting point for them to approach each other. But I think they got it backwards; convergence may indeed occur as a natural result of diverse trajectories over the coming decades, which take the domestic circumstances into account, and push forward in the reform process without wavering. However, after a while it will be discovered that the remedy for the majority of problems is the same, and that the alleged huge disparities between them are nothing but the rhetoric of entities seeking to legitimize their continued separate existence.
The fifth equation stipulates developing a new equilibrium between the rights of individuals and the rights of communities.
Western democracy first and foremost liberated the individual from the Church, and after that from his kin group, relocating allegiance to the nation alone. There was no such trajectory in the Arab world, and it would be a fatal mistake to import a democratic system without understanding the philosophy of individualism at its foundations. Individuals in our societies still look to their families, clans and religious communities for support in various realms of life.
This explains the failure of those oppressive Arab regimes that attempted to abolish diverse traditional allegiances by force. Maybe one day modernization will have taken root in our societies to an extent that the individual shall be freed from all other allegiances but to that of the nation – but I think this day will be still a long time coming. Therefore, we should work toward a creative equilibrium between the right of the individual to be liberated from traditional loyalties – neither imprisoned by them nor forced to remain within their bounds – and, on the other hand, his right to continue belonging to a family, a tribe or a sect.
In Lebanon, we favored a system of institutionalized sub-loyalties over the interests of the state. However, we also abused the individual in imposing a sectarian identity that may mean nothing to him. In other countries, traditional loyalties were abolished in an arbitrary way, only to resurface once the citizen felt that the state was weakened, as is the case in Iraq today. I realize the complexity of finding a sensible balance between the right of the individual to be part of a sectarian group and his right to be free from this group. However, we simply have to find this equilibrium – in our legislations, in our election laws, as well as in our personal civil status laws – if we are to depart from the stale dichotomy of those praising tradition to the point of exhaustion, and those who are enchanted by the West beyond sense or reason.
The sixth equation calls for creating a new balance between the state and the market.
In a number of Arab countries, the permanent struggle between the state and the market led not only to state control over the market, but to a “nationalization” of the economy, the social services, education and culture, and sometimes even the intellectual life. Today the world is calling us to correct these flaws, and some Arab countries have responded, albeit with varying levels of success and persistence. But we urgently need to find a balance here, too.
I do understand the importance of privatization in various sectors of production. However, it is simply irresponsible for the state to abandon its social obligations completely, to abandon not only the sectors of transport, telecommunications, industry and agriculture, but also those of education, health care and reproductive health. If we take a look at the pace of reform over the past two decades, we have to concede that our societies achieved a wider, if not a necessarily more sophisticated, level of education and improved figures in life expectancy. Nevertheless, the rates of poverty and unemployment, as well as the income gap, have risen in a disturbing manner. Large sectors of the middle classes feel that by adopting the International Monetary Fund’s recommendations, and gradually retreating from the extensive responsibilities it had claimed in the past, the state has renounced the social contract it struck with society in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yes, these middle class communities feel a kind of neglect, or even treason, on the part of the state. They expressed their resentment during the 80s in violent urban protests spanning Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan. Some would rush to say these disturbances have abated, which, on the surface of things, is quite true. But they left behind frustration and barely suppressed anger and mistrust for the government. We have seen how parts of society expressed their vengeance by joining extremist currents, or by inventing sophisticated forms of encroachment upon state property and real estate. Their relationship to the state teeters between demands to reinstate the state’s protection they once enjoyed, and ignoring it completely for the benefit of individualism or relying instead on charity organizations, religious groups or political parties. I am convinced that this is a very unhealthy situation, and that the state should not only put an end to its over-protective, paternalistic relationship toward society, but should also end the current cold war between the two sides. The Arab regimes that have directed economies renounced their social contracts unilaterally, and succeeded afterwards – through repression and their security apparatuses, and aided by the fragility of social institutions and trade unions – to suppress the turmoil resulting from this unilateral move.
Has any new contract emerged to replace the old one? Not really. Hence, I would not rule out a return to social protests and popular demands, which may again take violent forms, especially if the gap between the poor and rich in our societies continues to grow, as it did over the past two decades.
This leads me to the seventh equation, creating a balance between the natural need of the state to impose order, in particular fiscal control, over the different sectors of economic production on the one hand, and the presence of non-official and even illegal economic sectors within society on the other.
I won’t go into detail here, but it is a fact that the need to make ends meet has driven large numbers of our societies to a policy of systematically hollowing out the authority of the state, by means of expanding and multiplying economic activities outside the official tax records. Ministers of Finance will of course attempt to bring these informal activities back into the formal economy, and to put an end to them where and when they breach applicable laws. But here, as well, there is a pressing need to achieve a new deal between the state and society. The state should bear the social cost of integrating the informal sector (estimated at between 25 and 50 percent of overall economic activity) into the formal economy, by compensating those who will be adversely affected through this process with new jobs, social security, housing and education. This will convince everybody of the benefits of moving his/her activities from to shadows into broad daylight.
The eighth equation is to find an innovative equilibrium between the generations.
Here we are facing a serious dilemma. The result of the demographic explosion of the 80s, compounded by a rising life expectancy, women’s forays into the labor market and the quantitative expansion of education, has left us facing an unprecedented challenge: The challenge of integrating the young generation into the labor market, into a meaningful concept of citizenship and the social fabric. I don’t have to explain to you that a population growth that reaches 3% in some cases puts serious pressure on the structures of society, and becomes a serious problem when these people are entering the labor market. Most Arab countries are struggling with high population growth rates and a scarcity of employment opportunities. We have a host of factors that combine here: A rapidly increasing population, an accelerated spread of education and the cessation of compulsory military service – as we all hope -, an Arab labor market of less affluence, migration to highly developed countries turning into a distant dream – all of these combine to push our youth into frustration and despair, which they express in ways that cause our concern and sometimes frighten us.
I contend that it is our generation, and that which preceded ours, who bear responsibility for this dilemma. While the highly developed countries are facing the dilemma of an increasing number of old people against a shrinking youth, our equation is even tougher. We have to simultaneously face a rising life expectancy, and a demographic explosion. Therefore, there must be a consensus on, and an absolute priority in, fighting youth unemployment. All of you are doubtlessly aware of the political, social and also security issues that this problem entails, as the regional and international outlets that alleviated the pressure in the past are becoming less and less available. And yet, we are still to see any concern on the part of our leaders, who sometimes seem to be utterly ignorant of the inherent dangers of this problem.
We have to reconsider our budgets, provision by provision, and decide where to expand, where to reduce and where to abolish all according to one paramount criteria: To what extend will this contribute to creating new employment opportunities? In fact, this should be adopted as the prime criteria not only in our financial and economic legislations, but also in our political and diplomatic decisions. It is high time for your colleagues in the Ministries of Defense and Interior, as well as your security officials, to ask themselves if security in this day and age can be achieved by new arms deals, compulsory military service or inflating the workforce of the security forces. Or will security be found in re-directing a major part of these expenses into policies designed to fight unemployment?
The ninth equation concerns the relationship between men and women.
You have spent, and are still spending, hundreds of billions of dollars on the educating of women. Do you really want to keep them out of the economy by turning them into mere consumers, and out of politics by restricting their role to that of passive spectators? I cannot find any justification to any further delay in opening access to women, neither in religious doctrine, nor in intellectual or economic analysis, nor in democratic principles. On the contrary, we have fallen behind on this account, not in comparison with Europe, but in comparison to other, non-Arab Islamic states. Thus we should not only adopt the concept of equality in the political realm, but also the mechanism of a gradual quota to ensure the participation of women in the legislative and executive institutions. We simply have to employ all possible means in this regard.
The tenth and final equation aims at establishing a new balance between protecting our identity, and connecting to and cooperating with the other.
The best way to stop the other from blaming us for the events of New York, Madrid and Bali is to admit to our share of the responsibility in creating the circumstances and following the policies that made these crimes possible. We cannot simply continue to demand that the other should see the hidden, real motives behind this widespread violence, without trying ourselves to understand these reasons and look carefully at the decisions we took or we failed to take that led to this violence. It will not serve us well if we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, which is now monitoring our capacities for leadership with an eye of distrust and suspicion. Should we appear indifferent to our responsibilities, the world may blame us for more than what we deserve, and put demands on us that are more than we can bear.
Therefore, neither our hiding behind the principles of sovereignty and identity, like a scared virgin, nor our giving in without regret like a woman of easy virtue, will solve our dilemma. Before we engage the other, we have to put our own house in order by engaging in an all-out effort to reform our regimes, institutions and legislations. The other may lose any respect for us if we simply give in to his demands, and we may well gain his respect if he feels that we have reformed ourselves – not in response to his not quite innocent advice, but according to the proper needs of our own societies. Moreover, identity has never been successfully protected by isolation, and we have seen many cultures and civilizations fall apart afterwards – and precisely because – they burned their bridges to the outside world and closed in on themselves. The position of the Arabs depends on what they have to offer to this world, in terms of ideas, models and innovations.
At the outset of this address I said that the imposing of reforms from the outside appeared an ambiguous and dubious undertaking, one possibly guided by malicious intentions in a benevolent disguise. As I observe how the sole remaining super power is trying to establish its hegemony across the globe – advancing in tanks in some places, and through intimidation and “advice” in others – I am more and more convinced that this impression is true. Therefore, I am more inclined to reject this approach than our leaders, who put their ministers to work in session after session writing drafts to calm down the threatening foreigners, without offering more than a few vague cues to a local public waiting for change.
What we don’t need are reforms designed solely to appease the powerful, and to ward off his evil intentions. We need reform because it is the logic of life, because our societies are aspiring to it and insisting on it, as much as they insist on our national claims. Contrary to our fears, a process of reform rooted in our heritage, designed to our needs and capable of forming a new social contract between state and society will not further the attempts to establish a system of custody over us. Rather, it is the most genuine and effective response to counter such attempts.
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