Technology, Economic Growth, and American Influence in a New Middle East
February 4, 2013
A veteran journalist, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and onetime Taliban captive, Rohde is no stranger to the volatile regions of Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. He draws upon his experiences (and those of his colleagues) to compile a series of prescriptions and policy alternatives for improving American relations with Muslim countries and their restive populations, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring. Foremost among his recommendations are increased trade and investment, as well as “local involvement, realistic goals, and long-term commitments.” Rohde (A Rope and a Prayer, coauthor) champions the private sector as savior and envisions the U.S. State Department as a facilitator of entrepreneurship and education opportunities abroad. He also insists that America must rehabilitate its own “decayed and dysfunctional civilian agencies” (e.g., USAID), and cease to rely on awarding “megacontracts” to third parties. These recalibrations would ostensibly bolster those who “embrace democracy, modernity, and globalism” while helping to moderate Islamists, whom Rohde views as distinguishable from Salafists. Still, while advocating for more engagement, Rohde is sufficiently pragmatic to acknowledge that targeting terrorists and fostering economic growth must go hand in hand. Readers interested in American foreign policy and sustainable development will appreciate the book’s substance and approach. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency.
February 15, 2013
A stirring account of where American Middle East policy has gone wrong. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rohde (Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, 1997, etc.), a Reuters and Atlantic Monthly columnist, has covered the Middle East for more than a decade and survived as a Taliban hostage for seven months. His experience informs this impassioned discussion of the need to rebuild shriveled and atrophied institutions of foreign policy and diplomacy. Detailing the slashing of the State Department's budget and personnel, Rohde argues that the country has things upside down, with contractors and the military replacing diplomats. The author discusses the different ways in which this reversal came about. In Afghanistan, Rohde compares previous strategies--e.g., during the Cold War--with current strategies led by private contractors like Chemonics and DynCorp. He writes that contractor-based policies are "a symptom of the decay in American civil institutions," and he draws from the most recent Iraq war to show how policing and training of police ended up in private hands. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, profit-driven contractors grew stronger in the vacuum left by crumbling civilian institutions. In the aftermath of President Barack Obama's watershed 2009 Cairo speech on Islam and the Middle East, one investigation, conducted one year later, found that nothing had been done to transform the president's promises and initiatives into institutionalized commitments. Failures of this sort, Rohde insists, undermined the way the United States was able to address the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia. Potentials for transformation are not developed consistently, and the field is left to Islamic radicals. A clarion call for change and more--not less--engagement with Islam.
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