A Middle Eastern Marshall Plan

There have been calls in recent days for the United States to use the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as an opportunity to mete out punishment on all of America’s old enemies. These demands come from inside and outside Washington, and particularly from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Much like a small town sheriff rounding up the usual suspects, leaders like Secretary Rumsfeld have suggested that we bomb not only Afghanistan, but also Iraq, Syria and anyone else who has recently looked at a U.S. diplomat the wrong way. As these hawks know, in this unprecedented international climate we could probably get away with bombing the hell out of everyone we don’t like, just this once. Yet, as thrilling and titillating as this exhibition of our military strength would be, now is not the time. Instead, I say we give the countries in the Middle East a lot of money.

To avoid the Harvard Republican Club labeling me some particularly disturbed peace-nik, let me say now that I am all for retribution and punishment for the individuals and countries responsible for Sept. 11th. Anyone deluded enough to think his interests are sufficiently different from those of the United States to justify what happened this month will find just how fierce our nation can be, and rightly so. If Afghanistan and bin Laden are behind this attack, we should bring merciless, unceasing ruin to their lives and to their land. At the same time, our allies in the region are often unstable governments battling fundamentalist oppositions in their own countries, just as dangerous as the Taliban, and we must be aware of their concerns. Unilateralism died on Sept. 11th, and if we are to have any hope of stopping fundamentalism in the Middle East, we must prop up our allies in the region. In other words, a sophisticated President and Congress should now think of approving tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in debt relief, humanitarian aid and, most importantly, infrastructure and civil society development programs in the Middle East.

The precedents for this type of economic aid are compelling and persuasive. After World War II, the United States directed the rebuilding of Europe and Japan with the idea of making friends out of old enemies. No doubt the fear of Communism played a part in our decision to support the Marshall Plan and our similar commitment to Japan, but the remarkable success of Germany and Japan in the postwar era is compelling proof that countries that once were dominated by imperial, even evil governments can be rehabilitated. Though often overlooked, not only did the U.S. feed starving populations and rebuild the shattered infrastructure of these two nations, but we managed to create two strong, pacifist democracies out of two fiercely martial nations that had zero experience with successful democracy before our intervention.

Nonetheless, making similarly strong allies out of the Islamic world will be a difficult task, no matter how much money we throw at the problem. Chief among our problems: our principle allies of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and some of the smaller oil-rich emirates need humanitarian aid and infrastructure development about as much as the U.S. needs 10,000 new Starbucks outlets. In addition, as the most politically stable regimes in the region, they need far less support from the U.S. government than other countries.

Instead, we will have to deal with nations that have at best a complicated relationship with the U.S. or are geographically distant from the axis of terrorism. Nonetheless, these countries, ranging from poor to mind-numbingly destitute, need U.S. aid, both to improve the lives of their citizens and to strengthen their regimes. Doing so will require that we cast aside some requirements of our previous economic aid, like our preference for dealing with democracies rather than kingdoms and military dictatorships. It will require honoring the reverse of President Bush’s threat—you’re either with us or against us in the war on terror—by rewarding those who choose to side with us. And it will require a fortitude and commitment that extend far beyond the usual election-centric time horizons of American policy, for nothing would anger our potential allies more than if we left hospitals and bridges and courthouses incomplete when a new president was elected.

Critics in this country would counter that we cannot reward our enemies for what they did to us on Sept. 11. I agree. We cannot offer aid of any sort to the terrorism-sponsoring nations of the world until they first renounce terrorism, then expel the terrorist cells within their borders to face world justice, then reform their governments along lines of our choosing. But there must be some provisions for reapproachment, and they involve difficult diplomatic issues that I cannot even begin to imagine. Nevertheless, reapproachment and financial integration must be priorities of our new policy in the region if we are to have hope of avoiding another Sept. 11. Guided by the image on our nation’s seal—an eagle bearing a quiver of arrows and an olive branch in its talons—we must realize that we cannot win friends in the Islamic world by bombs alone. We need money.

Alex F. Rubalcava ’02 is a government concentrator in Eliot House.