Mange i USA vil gerne hjælpe Arabien til nye og bedre forhold og demokrati – men der er bestemt også skeptiske røster
WASHINGTON, 17. May, 2011: Nearly 64 years ago Harry Truman laid out the case for reconstructing Europe’s economies, in a speech that became known as the Marshall Plan.
Few diplomatic, economic and foreign policy accomplishments have garnered such residual feelings of goodwill and accomplishment in the United States.
Now, days ahead of President Obama’s major address on the Middle East, former national security adviser Jim Jones, a well-respected voice in foreign policy circles, is suggesting that his vision should include a new Marshall Plan for emerging democracies.
– From my perspective, it may be time to consider a bold idea which would demonstrate our welcome to the new Egypt by considering a type of Marshall Plan for emerging democratic states like Egypt and which young Egyptians are trying to form, Jones said at the US National Press Club Monday.
– Such a plan would be international in scope as the world has much to gain from any security, economic and governmental assistance that can be provided at this critical time in Egypt’s history.
For an administration historically reticent (tilbageholdernde) to propose “big” ideas for the US’s role in the Middle East, Jones’s advocacy for the post-World War II-era program seems like a dissonant concept.
– The idea – delivering economic aid to states to foster political stability – has cropped up in foreign policy circles fairly consistently since the fall of the Soviet Union, said Jim Goldgeir, a political science professor at George Washington University.
– One of the lessons of the Marshall Plan is that we had a strategic framework for Europe, Goldgeir said, adding:
– I am assuming that [the Obama administration] would like to lay out some kind of broader framework for thinking about the ‘Arab Spring’ and how the international community can help countries that would like to move toward political reforms.
But though political scientists agree that in Egypt, where US interests are acute, finding jobs for the country’s masses of unemployed, college-educated youth will be a critical factor in the country’s stability, few believe the Marshall Plan is a cure-all for what ails the region.
– We have such a financially constrained environment right now that if the administration really wants to put a lot of money behind this, they are going to have to do a huge public diplomacy in the United States, Goldgeir said.
After Truman proposed the plan in 1947, he went on a cross-country political tour to build domestic support. Then he put a Republican, Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, in charge of administering it.
– There was broad bipartisan engagement between the Truman administration and the Republican side, said Rudy deLeon, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, noting: – Whether we can put that kind of bipartisan reach together in 2011 is a great challenge.
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