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A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East

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Take the case of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: just about every college freshman has heard of him, most have an opinion of his work, a few have read (or attempted to read) his books and a very small number have an informed opinion, derived from careful study and consideration of his thoughts in context. Analogously to Nietzsche, most everyone, well at least political blog readers, media pundits and avid conspiracy theorists, have heard of Kenneth Michael Pollack. Also analogous to Nietzsche, most have an opinion, but, at least based on my impressions of the majority of internet postings, few have actually read and attempted to understand his thinking. Such is the case with Pollack's latest book, "A Path Out of the Desert: a Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East".

By way of introduction, Pollack, a former CIA Middle East Iran specialist, analyst and National Security Council member in the Clinton Administration, who is now Director of Middle East Research at Brookings, was launched into media attention with the publication of, "The Threatening Storm: the Case for Invading Iraq". That book presented detailed arguments which addressed the problems presented by the Saddam Hussein regime. After careful consideration of the various alternatives, Pollack favored invading Iraq, as this option, which appeared to be the best of those available at the time when considering the level of evidence, presented the most expedient and reasonable method for dealing with the geostrategic problems posed by Saddam's government. Note that nearly one third of "Storm" detailed the likely consequences of military action and gave recommendations for managing the aftermath, namely, the efforts required to stabilize and rebuild the country after the war.

While the administration of George W. Bush chose the military option (an action some attributed to Pollack's highly influential book), it ignored his "grand strategy" for rebuilding the country. The debacle Pollack predicted resulted, along with the expected barrage of public outrage. As a result of Bush Administration actions, now unfairly associated with Pollack, he was promptly tarred with the "neoconservative" epithet by Bush detractors as well as a myriad of anti-war activists. Pollack's commentaries on CNN and elsewhere confirmed his position as an authority on the Iraq War, but simultaneously solidified the public perception of him as a "war supporter". Once that polarizing linkage was established, few troubled to read his subsequent work ("Persian Puzzle" and now, "Path"), but strident opinions on his books abound.

Worse for Pollack, his area of interest, the Middle East, is like the proverbial "tar baby": once touched, you're sort of stuck to it. Of course, the main attraction to the area from a strategic perspective is oil. Despite the fact that the greatest wealth transfer in history is now in progress (presently amounting to around $475 billion/year from oil consuming nations to oil producers) with all it's political and strategic implications, many people, including some influential policy makers, focus on the region for emotional reasons derived from religion. It is indeed an unfortunate fact that the majority of the world's petroleum resources are located in this area and that it is the nexus of 3 major religions, as this incendiary and toxic combination is causing apparently endless troubles.

With that preamble, it is hardly surprising that Pollack's newest book, "A Path Out of the Desert", has generated divisive internet traffic. A highly critical and largely uninformed review of the book was published in "The New York Times" by a commentator for "The Economist" (Max Rodenbeck) on August 22 of this year. Numerous blogs have quoted approvingly of Rodenbeck's commentary but many have done so without evident knowledge of the book itself. This is especially true of the more ideologically oriented blog writers. While this is not surprising, it is unfortunate, as Pollack clearly intended this book for the general reader, many of whom will not now take the time or effort to read the book.

"Path" is written in a highly colloquial manner. The majority of the book consists of a clear and logical synopsis of the problems facing the Muslim countries. Pollack summarizes a vast amount of data, most all of it dismal: burgeoning populations, lack of foreign investment (outside petroleum), bad educational systems, despotic governments, rising frustration from lack of opportunities, under- and unemployment...the list goes on. The causes for the hatred garnered by foreign states that have trodden upon the Middle East (US, Britain) are explained and responsibilities acknowledged and assigned. None of the information Pollack summarizes is controversial: it is all open-source and, in many cases, was published by Arabic analysts, the UN and other international organizations. Lacking an understanding of the problems of the region and their context makes informed perspectives impossible; yet, that appears to be the unfortunate state of affairs for many media and blog critics.

Note that the previous paragraph mentions specifically "Muslim" Middle Eastern problems. By virtue of his tangential association with the present Bush Administration, Pollack has been labeled as an unfettered supporter of Israel by some critics. For this reason, his concentration on the Muslim Middle East might be viewed as prejudicial by some readers. Pollack concentrates on those countries, rather than on Israel as "the problem", as Muslim nations mostly comprise that region and, more particularly, because they have what we want: that, naturally, is oil. That commodity (and maybe a dose of religion) is the source of our involvement and it is this involvement that Pollack argues is the origin of the resentment that is directed against the US.

However, this book is not arguing a particular political position. The point of Pollack's careful exposition of the vast array of problems which invest the region, almost none of which involve Israel, is that foreign interest in the region will persist, tensions will increase and an overall solution will required if the world wants access to oil and economic stability. Despite this, Pollack is careful to acknowledge that US support for that country aggravates our problems in the region, but these problems would exist for us even if Israel did not exist. Pollack further notes that our reasons for supporting Israel do not devolve from an insidious "neo-conservative", manipulative cabal, nor are they derived from Zionist machinations. Rather, they stem from the general American strategy of supporting democratic ideals, worldwide and from US strategic interests. American religious traditions (see, for example, Walter Russell Mead's recent "Foreign Affairs" article on this subject) also figure prominently into our support for Israel. While this last is an important consideration, US support for democracy and support for a stable international order are the crucial issues here. Thus, political reform is the crux of the "grand strategy" Pollack describes later in the text.

Of course, any book which deals with the modern Middle East must address the issue of terrorism, an issue that directly and indirectly involves Islam or Islamism. Pollack makes the case that terrorism is a problem, but it is not the primary problem the US faces in the Middle East. Our interest is oil and our presence is the problem. Until and unless the reliance on petroleum vanishes, the US and (increasingly) other countries will have vital and competitive interests in accessing and protecting this resource and will incur problems as a result.

Pollack attributes the xenophobia encountered in the area to the constellation of social problems endemic in the Middle East: religion certainly plays a role, but, he contends, it is neither the necessary nor the sufficient determinant of the specific problem of terrorism nor of the general resentment toward the West experienced there. The only way to massage the matter to our benefit is to devise a "grand strategy" for dealing with the plethora of problems infecting the Middle East.

Note that Pollack does not place blame for terrorism on Islam. Islam clearly does have an important role, both directly and indirectly, as it provides the ideological framework and justification for many if not most of currently active terrorist factions of interest to us. However, it does not constitute an ideological or theological straight jacket. Within the Arab world there are widely divergent interpretations of Islam, which in turn correspond to very different patterns of behavior. Anthropologists continue to argue about whether the individual's interpretation of the religion shapes the behavior of the individual, or the individual's desired pattern of behavior shapes his interpretation of religion. Clifford Geertz, in his monumental work "Islam Observed" makes a compelling case that religion (in this case,Islam) is modified by communities to suit their culture much more than the introduction of the religion reshapes the culture.

Regardless of the role of religion and it's interplay with Arabic culture, Pollack favors an "operant" approach derived from B.F. Skinner, to wit, positively reinforce the desired "behavior", negatively reinforce those you don't like and you will correct the underlying "problem". It can, and has, also been argued that large populations of young, under- and unemployed men can (and do) foment political and social disorder, so conflicts between religious and ethnic groups can often be traced to more mundane and malleable factors. Pollack suggests this is the case in the Middle East; hence, the "grand strategy" he favors deals primarily with this aspect, rather than dealing with the possible theological and cultural roots of the problem. This is pragmatic, as we can have little influence in the "spiritual" arena, anyway.

At a deductive level, there is nothing about the Quran or the Hadiths that make them especially crippling to economic development or governance in the same way that the Torah, the Gospels, or any other work of religion doesn't necessarily fetter Judaism or Christianity. The problem with scripture is how you interpret it. For instance, the Old Testament sanctions both slavery and polygamy, but neither has persisted in Israeli society (or the many "Christian" countries of Europe and the Americas). Additionally, Muslim countries in Africa do not necessarily demonstrate more problems with development than their Christian and Animist counterparts. Muslim countries in South and Southeast Asia (particularly Indonesia and Malaysia) are doing far better than the Arab states. Muslim communities do not have any problem adapting to (and profiting from) highly developed societies in the United States, India, and elsewhere. These observations suggest that, with the proper support, the Arabic Middle East might also evolve in a fashion congenial to US interests.

Given the constantly changing, but ever vexing, nature of the Middle East, it is difficult or impossible to make highly specific prescriptions or proscriptions for dealing with them. As a result, many of the recommendations made in this book come across as bromides. However, a complex, long-term policy simply cannot be described in detail at its outset. Such a policy evolves over time through a process of cogitation, consultation, discussion, debate, realization and a great deal of trial-and-error as Pollack repeatedly notes. Harkening back to the speech announcing the Marshall Plan itself--or Kennan's "Mr X" article, or Willy Brandt's various speeches, NSC-68, or any other of the foundational documents that helped establish the postwar Western strategy of reconstruction and containment in Europe--you will find them similarly skimpy on details. Even at his most insightful, Dean Acheson himself could not have foreseen the course of containment/reconstruction in Europe at its inception. What is important, and what all of these documents did, was to argue that the strategy was necessary and feasible, and define some concrete short-term steps to be taken.

With these qualifiers in mind, Pollack argues that the "grand strategy" the world (not only the US) must promote in the Middle East is to encourage reform: political, economic and social. Without some fundamental changes in governance, ones which encourage democratic participation (but not necessarily a parliamentary democracy), there is "no exit" from the morass besetting these countries. The case for this approach is carefully and repeatedly made in chapter after chapter. Patience, investment over decades (maybe longer) and occasionally acting through intermediaries will all be required. The maladroit interventions of the G.W. Bush Administration are raised as cautionary standards (the insistence on elections, quite premature, in the Palestinian Authority being a case-in-point).

One point with which I take issue is the recommendation to use Arab military forces as to "stabilize" and "moderate" Arab politics. The
suggestion that the US further support Arab militaries as potentially
"secular", stabilizing and reform-minded forces seems dubious, as their competence and democratic disposition leave much to be desired (caveat: possible exception of Turkey). The role of the Pakistani military, the Interservices Intellence (ISI), in particular, with it's support of militant Islam in the form of the Taliban being a case-in-point.

While Pollack's recommendations seem logical and compelling and ultimately necessary, rather than optional, there is one critical flaw in the reasoning: the American political system and the domestic constituency. The time horizon for successful transformation will be measured in decades or generations, rather than weeks or months. US public opinion has, at
least since the post-WWII Marshall Plan in Europe and the reconstruction of Japan, never tolerated a commitment of this sort (excepting Korea, the "forgotten war" and forgotten obligation). Worse, the lack of American political leadership, one bedeviled by
"focus groups", public opinion surveys and the need for votes, all militate against any sort of long-term measures of the type Pollack advocates. When called upon to sacrifice, the American public is nowhere to be found, even when the investment in time and resources
can be manifestly shown to be in our interest. Rather, the general voter, whether it's the Middle East or global warming wants "something" to be done...but not by me if there is any cost involved. This perhaps feckless tendency, not necessarily unique to the US, is
the crux of the problem.

Paradoxically, the "light on the horizon" in this case is oil, itself. While the time line has been disputed, it seems likely that, at current levels of consumption and considering known and likely reserves, technology, etc, oil will become economically unfeasible to recover in about 40 years. The cost of oil is already having baleful effects on the world economy. Burning fossil fuels is also having dire environmental consequences. Competition for this resource is increasing. Because of these factors, there is some prospect for adoption of the approach Pollack advocates, but it will likely require concerted effort by multiple governments, probably under the aegis of the UN. Once reliance on petroleum products becomes a lesser issue, great power involvement in the Middle East is likely to decrease in scale and the irritation provoked by US presence, at least, is therefore likely to recede.

In summary, this is an excellent and important book. It cogently presents a plan for dealing with the Middle Eastern "tar baby" and, just as importantly, it provides the necessary background materials for understanding the region, it's problems and the need for addressing them. Like "The New York Times", I thought it was notable
work, one of the most important published this year.

Since everyone else has posted their favorite review of Pollack's terrific book, here is LTG Dubik's from Army Magazine. Dubik was commander of MNSTC-I in Iraq when we finally turned the Iraqi Army around and built one that could fight.

Throwing Out a Challenge: A New Strategy for the Middle East

By Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik
U.S. Army retired

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A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East. Kenneth M. Pollack. Random House. 543 pages; tables; index; $30.
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If you're looking for a one-volume answer to the questions--"What is going on in the Middle East?", "Why should we care?" and "What should we do about it?"--then this is your book. Simply put, Kenneth Pollack's A Path Out of the Desert is a must-read for any serious strategist, military practitioner, student of the Middle East or informed citizen. Pollack starts with a clear description of America's vital interests in the Middle East, then presents a set of well-documented, cogent arguments demonstrating that those interests are threatened by the anger and frustration of the people in the region--anger and frustration caused by an interlocking set of crippling societal problems. Finally, Pollack recommends a grand strategy for the United States and its allies in which they "encourage and enable the countries of the Middle East to pursue a gradual process of political, economic and social reform--one that grows from within, rather than being imposed from without; one that reflects the values, traditions, history and aspirations of the people of the region themselves, not a Western guess at them; one that recognizes that reform and stability are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing--and ultimately mutually essential."


A Path is grandly written and argued, as is Pollack's vision for U.S. policy. His personal history--Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA, director for Persian Gulf affairs in the Clinton National Security Council and now a director of research at the Brookings Institution--has come to bear in the pages of A Path. The dots connecting the twin threats facing countries in the Middle East--instability and terrorism--to American vital interests are clear in Pollack's mind: "Global economic dependence on oil has risen to the point where the United States and its trading partners simply cannot tolerate the kind of instability for which the Middle East has become famous. A major calamity there could bring down the entire international economic order." Oil, Pollack goes on to remind us, is the lifeblood of modern civilization. China, Japan, Northeast Asia, Europe, the Americas--all have interests in the production, distribution and pricing of oil. Pollack deals with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.


Clear, sober and complete might best describe the framework for this book: clear in describing U.S. vital interests in the Middle East and the threats to those interests; sober in acknowledging the difficulties in mitigating those threats as well as the commitment necessary to be successful; and complete in presenting a multi-decade, multifaceted grand strategy for the United States. Terrorism and instability are both symptoms of an underlying disease. "To be blunt," Pollack writes, "the countries of the Muslim Middle East are broken. Their political, economic and even social systems are stagnant. The people of the region feel that their culture is under assault. ... They feel powerless, angry, frustrated and frightened, and their leaders feed them a steady diet of lies, exaggeration and blame shifting. ... It is these powerful forces that have fed the rise of Islamic opposition groups and, at the extreme, vicious terrorists groups lashing out at a remarkable range of perceived enemies."

Curing the disease over the long term (acknowledged as a decades-long task requiring international cooperation with indigenous reformers) while treating its near-term symptoms (continued counterterrorist operations) is the tall order of Pollack's grand strategy.

Chapter 5, entitled "A Sea of Socio-economic Problems," and Chapters 7, 8 and 9, respectively entitled "Political Islam," "The Threat from Instability and Internal Strife" and "The Threat of Terrorism," all provide readers of A Path with a network of arguments and associated documentation leading to two major conclusions. First, the most immediate and direct threat is one of terrorist attack. September 11, 2001, and the series of attacks on America and Americans that led up to 9/11 "should not require any additional proof that this is a real threat that needs to be dealt with." Second, the most dangerous threat that the United States faces is "instability in the form of civil unrest, coups, insurgencies, civil wars and possibly even revolutions," all produced by the economic, political and social problems of the Muslim Middle East. This longer-term threat "has reduced oil exports ... affecting the price of oil and causing recessions in the United States, and it has also contributed meaningfully to the threat of proliferation."

Readers will experience the same rigor in Part Four: "The Core of a Grand Strategy for the Middle East," in which Pollack acknowledges "the simple but inescapable fact that there are no quick fixes to the problem of instability." Pollack explains, "The only approach known to mankind to eradicate, and not merely suppress, the kind of problems experienced by the Muslim Middle East is to embrace a long-term process of reform--toward more pluralist forms of government, toward the rule of law, toward a dynamic education system, toward a market-driven economy and toward a more `modern' pattern of social interaction."

Simply beginning such a path--or committing to it--may, in Pollack's view, start to alleviate many of the pressures that produce both instability and terrorism. "Humans," he reminds us, "have a remarkable capacity for hope." Pollack is not a blurry-eyed idealist, however. He confirms his understanding that "explaining how to turn theory into practical reality, how to overcome all of the potential problems, how to settle a spate of conundrums, how to encourage the people of the region to follow this course and enable them to do so--not to mention actually executing it over the course of the next several decades--is the hard part." Throughout the detailed description of the grand strategy that he proposes, Pollack again and again underscores the difficulties that execution will pose.

At the end of this excellent volume, I found myself ruminating on precisely this point of difficulty in execution. I have just finished 14 months in command of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, the command responsible for reforming Iraq's security sector as well as training and fielding its military and police forces. I had overseen the growth of Iraq's security forces by more than 125,000; led the efforts to improve the ministries of defense and interior, helping get them to the point of capability and confidence they have reached today; and supervised the attempts at structuring modern acquisition systems from antiquated methods--theirs and ours--resulting in almost $3 billion of Iraqi money being invested in procurement. As compelling as I found Pollack's vision, and as important as I believe adopting the grand strategy he presents is to our nation (and the world, for that matter), I found myself returning to execution. In the hopes of helping to sharpen the thinking about "how to do what we need to do," I offer several questions.

First, how can we attract the right people to this project, military and civilian? Senior people, military and civilian, with considerable experience and broad managerial skill sets will be necessary to operationalize the vision presented in A Path. Senior people like this are hard to attract and keep. In the military, for example, there are already insufficient numbers of senior officers and sergeants with the necessary work experience. Even in the retired ranks, a smaller force produces fewer retirees. Civilians who are experienced in banking, agriculture, labor and economic development will be in higher demand and even harder to hire. Making Pollack's vision operational will take some detailed thinking in the human resource department.

Second, how can we create, then sustain, the bipartisan consensus and consistent funding that such a grand strategy will require? Given the decades-
long time horizon that Pollack correctly identifies as necessary to see his grand strategy through, bipartisan support in Congress will be a sine qua non. The vision presented in A Path will span both Democratic and Republican administrations and congressional majorities. It will span good economic times and bad. Such a grand strategy, therefore, will require an equally grand political consensus.

Third, how can we add more emphasis on reduction of oil dependency as an element of this grand strategy? "Oil," Pollack acknowledges, "is the lifeblood of the international economic order and probably will be for some decades to come, try as we might (and should) to end that dependence." Initiating serious discussion among the major oil-dependent states that leads to a workable accord of some sort, it seems to me, will itself be helpful in motivating producing nations toward the kinds of change A Path suggests. Such discussions, and the actions that would follow, would not be sufficient by themselves, but are a necessary component of the set of actions Pollack outlines.

These are only three of many more questions that derive from serious consideration of the well-argued, cohesive set of ideas that constitute the grand strategy of A Path. Pollack has thrown out a challenge--now it ought to be taken up in a series of conferences, workshops, briefings and discussions among those who believe his vision is correct, as well as those who think it is deficient.

A Path Out of the Desert is that good.


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LT. GEN. JAMES M. DUBIK, USA Ret., is a former commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq and a senior fellow of AUSA's Institute of Land Warfare.

On the subject of what the US should do in the Middle East, Ken Pollack has written perhaps the most ambitious and memorable book in recent years. Pollack acknowldedges the magnitude of redirecting American policy and constantly reminds his audience that it will not be easy and that it cannot happen overnight, but that it is absolutely necessary. One of his main criticisms of US policy in the Middle East to date is that we've tried to do 'too much with too little resources, time, and effort.' Pollack then sets out to identify America's interests in the Middle East and how our policy can protect those interests without selling out America's ideals.

An important aspect of Pollack's discussion of America's interests in the Middle East is that he doesn't confuse them with the threats we face from the region, such as terrorism. He speaks of the concept of stability and while many of our interests are served by the preservation of stability, it does not mean stability itself is one of America's interests. On that subject, Pollack identifies oil, Israel, our Arab allies, and nonproliferation as America's interests. Pollack makes convincing arguments on each of these topics, but does so in a way that doesn't adhere to any singular ideological framework. For example, he recognizes that in the short term, the preventing the sudden loss of oil production is absolutely in America's (and the world's) interests, but that keeping the price of oil low is not. On the matter of Israel, Pollack makes a very convincing argument that while America's partnership does cause problems for the US, it's not nearly as problematic as it's commonly portrayed to be. For example, the relationship has zero impact on oil exports, it hasn't kept the US from having strong relationships with Arab governments, and there isn't much we want from Arab states that we aren't already getting that could be achieved by cutting ties to Israel.

Another intersting aspect of Pollack's argument is that he credits the Bush administration's intent in the region, and that at least on paper, the ideas behind these policies should be continued, it's the execution of the policies that need adjusting. Speaking to that topic, Pollack devotes chapters at the end of his book to Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Path Out of the Desert is an accessible and compelling read. Pollack pulls no punches here....he lays out what America's long term interests in the region are, and how we can go about protecting them. He reminds his readers throughout the book that change is coming to the Middle East whether we want it to or not, and that the US can either sit back and hope that change benefits us, or we can engage the region in a more intelligent way.

In this book, the author presents his grand strategy for U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The bottom line is that the author considers the uninterrupted flow of oil from the Middle East as THE vital interest of the U.S. in that region of the world, and that all actions of the U.S. must revolve around protecting this vital interest.

Foremost in his argument is that in order to protect the flow of oil from the region, we must prevent upheavals such as civil wars, Salifist activities - to include terrorism within the region, and violent government overthrows that could ultimately spread to regional conflicts and disruption of oil flow from occurring. Further, he states that to achieve this end, we must help in the reform of the region's governments, educational systems, and economies, among other things, in order to reduce civil unrest and ultimately lead to a more stable region.

Overall, I thought his arguments and ideas were easily understood, well thought out, and supported with facts and data when necessary. Obviously, the amount of resources required to implement such a strategy would require greater thought and more detailed analysis (military forces and money required) based on the specific actions taken to implement this strategy - but as an overarching "doctrine" I think that the author presents an outstanding framework.

I was especially intrigued by the author's last chapter dealing with the future impact that China could play in the Middle East, and the potential difficulties and opportunities that this presents. I also thought that his arguments pointed to the urgency of becoming less dependent on foreign oil - which would provide the U.S. more "breathing space" and options when dealing with the governments of the region. Finally, his detailed ideas for specific actions for the U.S. to pursue with each country within the Middle East are excellent starting points for future discussion and plans.

Overall I think that this is a must read and I highly recommend.

The formulation of any strategy is dependent on knowing the goals which the strategy is to achieve. In this excellent book, Pollack identifies two goals that he sees as the purpose of his so-called Grand Strategy for the Middle East. The first goal is to ensure the flow of oil from the Middle Eastern and to protect its petroleum reserves. The second goal is to ensure the national security of the State of Israel. The first goal is based on the fact that the U.S. (and world) economy currently is dependent on petroleum. The second goal is based on the fact that the very value system of the U.S. demands that the nation support the Israeli State. Of the two the second is the most important since it is directly related to what the U.S. means as a nation-state.

Pollock then identifies how he believes the U.S. can achieve these goals. In his thinking, if peace, prosperity and the rule of law can be implanted among the Islamic states of the Middle East some form of democracy and regional stability will follow. Ironically peace, prosperity, and rule of law are also what the Islamic fundamentalist (including the Salafi extremists) wish to achieve although they appear to wish a theocracy rather than a democracy. Also Pollock understands prosperity to be a direct function of a free market economy and a secular, but functioning legal system. He therefore advocates a sensible implementation of a long term strategy involving diplomatic, economic and social operations designed to move the Middle East in this direction. And he realistically sees this implementation as running over years if not decades.

He addresses the issue of terrorism with equal good sense. He implies, but does not state that the U.S. will never be entirely safe from terrorist attacks simply because of the nature of terrorism as a function of the disaffected. But he maintains that Islamic forms of terrorism are less probable in a prosperous and just society. In the same manner a prosperous and just Middle East will not solve the problems of Israel and the Palestinian question, but it may make them easier to resolve for all concerned.

Now this all should sound pretty familiar since this is more or less the strategy that the George W. Bush administration espoused as the main reason for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pollock supported this action, (see The Threatening Storm, 2002), but believes that the Bush administration so mismanaged post-war Iraq and demonstrated such monumental incompetence as to give this strategy a permanent black eye. Pollock sees this as a tragic consequence and argues that with intelligent and thoughtful implementation this strategy is truly the way to bring the Middle East as a whole into the fellowship of prosperous and just societies. He may be right.

Here is The Economist's Review of Path Out of the Desert.

The Economist
Books and Arts
America and the Middle East
How they got in, how to get out
Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Foresight and hindsight in the world's bad places
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
By Kenneth M. Pollack
Random House; 539 pages; $30

A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East
By Lawrence Freedman
PublicAffairs; 624 pages; $29.95. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; £20

HOW did America get into its current mess in the Middle East? And how can it get out again? Kenneth Pollack's book is all about the second question but he starts by making a confession relevant to the first. He was a champion of the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, in an influential book entitled "The Threatening Storm", he argued the strategic and moral case for removing Saddam Hussein. Mr Pollack admits now that the intervention a year later was a fiasco, and that after such a disaster the inclination of most Americans is to turn away from the region completely and focus on problems at home. But that is not his view. His latest book is a powerful argument for continued, and perhaps even greater, American involvement in the Middle East.

As befits a former CIA analyst and member of the National Security Council, Mr Pollack builds his case on a hard-headed examination of America's interests in the region. Of these, the most important is oil. If a big percentage of it were suddenly to be removed from the market, the shock of higher prices could on some estimates spark a global recession akin to the Great Depression. American policy, he concludes, should therefore be designed principally to prevent "catastrophic oil disruptions". This means guarding against possibilities such as a revolution in Saudi Arabia or a massive terrorist attack on the oil-supply network.

You might expect a book that starts this way to dwell mainly on how America can maintain military forces in the region. Mr Pollack, however, wants nothing less than "an integrated grand strategy" to secure American interests for the long run. Such a strategy, he admits, may take "many decades", just as it took nearly half a century for America to help Europe and East Asia repair themselves after the second world war. For this grand strategy to work, he says, America will first have to harmonise its separate policies towards Iraq, Iran and Israel. It must also transform the region's politics and economics. That is to say--let no one accuse the chastened Mr Pollack of imperial hubris--America must help along the efforts of the locals, since outsiders "cannot possibly know how to change the society of another people".

But do the people of the Middle East want what America wants for them? Given the growth of political Islam, and the fact that Mr Pollack deems many Arab countries to be on the point of revolution, perhaps not. Nonetheless, a policy of continuing to prop up repressive regimes is like "playing Russian roulette" with foreign policy, as America discovered when the shah's fall turned Iran from staunch friend to implacable foe. Far better, he says, to encourage the region's governments to address popular grievances by embracing political freedom and social equality.

This will not be easy, not least because of the hated Bush administration's insincere or at least incompetent pursuit of this very policy. But Arabs tell pollsters that they want both democracy and Islam, and Mr Pollack reckons these two are compatible. Quoting an Egyptian activist who says that what her countrymen need is a job and a voice, he thinks America must find its path out of the desert by helping all Arabs get both.

A simple summary of Mr Pollack's main ideas does scant justice to this thoughtful and informative book. None of its prescriptions is especially novel. The patient promotion of reform, careful containment of the spillover from Iraq, a policy of carrots and sticks (but no military pre-emption) for Iran, building the sinews of a Palestinian state: to all except isolationists and the few surviving neocons, this has become a fairly conventional prospectus for America's post-Iraq policy in the Middle East. But Mr Pollack binds the strands together deftly and imparts a good deal of learning and wisdom along the way.

Sir Lawrence Freedman is less interested in how America should proceed after Iraq and more in working out how it tied itself in such knots in the first place. As an historian, he is more tolerant than Mr Pollack of George Bush, noting that after September 11th this president faced a challenge more complex in some ways than the one Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with after Pearl Harbour in 1941. Whereas Roosevelt knew who the enemy was and what America would have to do, Mr Bush had to choose and name an enemy in a new sort of war without obvious rules, aims or front-lines. He did so, moreover, in a region where no power had exercised a consistently sure touch, and where America had long been torn between an underlying dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and the traditional instinct of a great power to protect the status quo from aggressive states or radical movements.

It is instructive to read these books together. Sir Lawrence's aim is not to lay out a policy. He has no grand unifying theory of the Middle East. His aim is only to render the "most credible" account possible of momentous events such as the fall of the shah, the three wars in the Persian Gulf, invasion and jihad in Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter's half-success at peacemaking at Camp David in 1978 and Bill Clinton's failure there two decades later. All these and more formed the treacherous backdrop of American interests and alliances against which Mr Bush had to formulate his response to the attacks on the twin towers. Sir Lawrence's subtle narrative is a marvel of concision, even over more than 500 pages. By the end it cannot but make the reader wonder how realistic it is to advocate, as Mr Pollack does, an "integrated grand strategy" capable of being sustained for decades in such a violent and unpredictable part of the world.

To that Mr Pollack has a simple answer, in the form of a question. What is the alternative? Thanks to its energy needs, America is locked into the region for the foreseeable future, even though the future is so hard to foresee in the unhappy Middle East. Since there are no quick fixes, it had better reconcile itself to the long slog. And although unexpected events will continue to knock it off course, it is more likely to succeed if it can cling to at least some general sense of where it is trying to go.

As Michael Rubin expressed in The Sun, the Middle East will continue to dominate American security concerns regardless of who next occupies the Oval Office. Record oil prices, terrorism, Israel's security, Iraqi stability, and Iran's nuclear ambitions will top the new president's foreign policy agenda, whatever his ideological outlook. Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Clinton-era National Security Council staffer, has penned a thoughtful rejoinder to those who, frustrated by President Bush's failures, might throw up their hands in frustration and walk away from the region.

Mr. Pollack is a good writer and his narrative is clear. He begins by outlining America's interests in the Middle East, dedicating separate chapters to oil, Israel, America's Arab allies, and nonproliferation. His acknowledgment of Israel's safety and security as a fundamental American interest is refreshing, given statements made by his colleagues at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, where Mr. Pollack is director of research, and given an increasingly large bloc within the Democratic Party that now argues the opposite. He does not include terrorism, political Islam, and instability in countries such as Iraq as American interests per se, but rather as threats that emanate from other problems, a semantic construction that allows Mr. Pollack to argue that American policy should better address the root causes of the Middle East's troubles.

These he outlines in chapters examining socioeconomic problems and the crisis in Middle East politics. Mr. Pollack's omission of the treatment of women as a major social issue may surprise half the region's population, but his emphasis on the Middle East's "crippling educational method" is long overdue, as anyone who has ever sat through a university class in Egypt, Iraq, or Iran can attest. To his credit, Mr. Pollack condemns the tendency to mix education and politics -- unfortunately an import now plaguing Middle Eastern studies in America -- but the issue is worth more than the two pages he gives it here. A discussion of press incitement to violence, unfortunately missing in Mr. Pollack's analysis of the region, would also have been worthwhile. Arab broadcasting of hatred and agitation to murder has undermined peace efforts under both Presidents Clinton and Bush, yet too many diplomats happily ignore it.

In his policy proposals, Mr. Pollack bends similarly to the political winds; the position he stakes out in "A Path Out of the Desert" reflects a tendency to allow the mistakes of the Bush administration to crowd out the experience of his predecessors. This is especially apparent in his discussion of the root causes of terror and instability: He underplays the importance of Islamist ideology as a cause, in favor of an overemphasis on political and economic factors.

Mr. Pollack argues that political Islam "is not necessarily a threat to the United States," though he acknowledges that "neither is it unrelated to the threats we face from the Muslim Middle East." Later, he declares that "Islam is not the reason for the rise of Islamist movements, nor is it the cause of the terrorist threat that the United States faces." True, many Muslims may not accept the radical scriptural interpretations offered by fundamentalists, but it is wrong to argue that religious motivation, no matter how twisted the exegesis, isn't a chief motivating concern of Islamists.

In his effort to understand Islamism, Mr. Pollack has drawn on the work of a Sarah Lawrence College professor, Fawaz Gerges, whose work, if not quite apologetic for political Islam, is nevertheless superficial. Economic, political, and social grievance is only half the Islamist story: After all, most suicide bombers are not poor and dispossessed, but middle-class and educated. Perhaps Mr. Pollack is correct that suicide terrorists are not sociopaths, but what did mold them psychologically? Anger and despair are not explanation enough: Sub-Saharan Africa does not breed global suicide bombers like the Arab world. Nor do radical interpretations rise from grass roots; often Saudi funding for radical mosques plays an essential role.

Mr. Pollack is also too trusting of adversaries. He believes the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, was sincere in his Dialogue of Civilizations, but the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate exposed the program as a cover for an accelerating covert nuclear weapons program.

With 20/20 hindsight, Mr. Pollack takes issue not with the Bush policy of pre-emption, but rather with the assessment of threats that brought about the war in Iraq. Nor does he oppose transformative diplomacy, just the incompetent way in which it was undertaken. He parts ways with liberals who ironically insist that democracy cannot take root in the Middle East's infertile ground. Former fellow travelers will be disappointed in his argument that economic liberalization -- including, presumably, foreign direct investment -- must come to the Arab world's socialized economies.

When he looks forward, Mr. Pollack's prescription -- legal and educational reforms -- should provoke little argument, and he is correct that the next administration must repackage its approach because of the stigma left behind by the Bush administration's whiplash reversals and poor policy implementation.

In an effort to rehabilitate the reputation of democracy promotion, Mr. Pollack traces its history to Clinton hands such as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Dennis Ross, and "reasonable and moderate" Bush administration officials such as Richard Haass. This is hogwash. Bush administration implementation was both sloppy and spastic, but little in the historical record suggests the Clinton administration grasped transformative diplomacy as anything more than window dressing for their belief that autocracy equals stability.

Ultimately, there is very little new in the "grand strategy" Mr. Pollack suggests should replace the failed policies of the past. Indeed, while he describes himself as a liberal internationalist, "A Path out of the Desert" is little more than a neoconservative manifesto uncorrupted by the bluntness of Richard Perle or the arrogance of Douglas Feith.

His strategy consists, essentially, of implementing the George W. Bush doctrine as it was articulated during his first term: actively aiding reform in the region on the principle that short-term stability and long-term security are very different things.

Mr. Pollack might have contributed more had he also addressed how to reform the bloated and ineffective State Department and international organization bureaucracy, which impeded the implementation the first time around. Foggy Bottom is inept at international development, and the World Bank spends far more on its own administration than it does on micro-loans. Some proposals beg more realism. Creating regional security architecture sounds great in principle, but expecting Arab dictators to abandon their antipathy of Israel in order to solve regional problems is tilting at windmills. It is hard to judge, from this vantage, the merits of the Bush doctrine, since it was never implemented properly or competently, but as a vision of change in the Middle East it remains a compelling project. If Mr. Pollack's grand strategy gives the Bush doctrine a second wind, both the Middle East and long-term American national security will be better for it.

The Middle East will continue to dominate American security concerns regardless of who next occupies the Oval Office. Record oil prices, terrorism, Israel's security, Iraqi stability, and Iran's nuclear ambitions will top the new president's foreign policy agenda, whatever his ideological outlook. With A Path Out of the Desert (Random House, 592 pages, $30), Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Clinton-era National Security Council staffer, has penned a thoughtful rejoinder to those who, frustrated by President Bush's failures, might throw up their hands in frustration and walk away from the region.

Mr. Pollack is a good writer and his narrative is clear. He begins by outlining America's interests in the Middle East, dedicating separate chapters to oil, Israel, America's Arab allies, and nonproliferation. His acknowledgment of Israel's safety and security as a fundamental American interest is refreshing, given statements made by his colleagues at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, where Mr. Pollack is director of research, and given an increasingly large bloc within the Democratic Party that now argues the opposite. He does not include terrorism, political Islam, and instability in countries such as Iraq as American interests per se, but rather as threats that emanate from other problems, a semantic construction that allows Mr. Pollack to argue that American policy should better address the root causes of the Middle East's troubles.

These he outlines in chapters examining socioeconomic problems and the crisis in Middle East politics. Mr. Pollack's omission of the treatment of women as a major social issue may surprise half the region's population, but his emphasis on the Middle East's "crippling educational method" is long overdue, as anyone who has ever sat through a university class in Egypt, Iraq, or Iran can attest. To his credit, Mr. Pollack condemns the tendency to mix education and politics--unfortunately an import now plaguing Middle Eastern studies in America--but the issue is worth more than the two pages he gives it here. A discussion of press incitement to violence, unfortunately missing in Mr. Pollack's analysis of the region, would also have been worthwhile. Arab broadcasting of hatred and agitation to murder has undermined peace efforts under both Presidents Clinton and Bush, yet too many diplomats happily ignore it.

In his policy proposals, Mr. Pollack bends similarly to the political winds; the position he stakes out in A Path Out of the Desert reflects a tendency to allow the mistakes of the Bush administration to crowd out the experience of his predecessors. This is especially apparent in his discussion of the root causes of terror and instability: He underplays the importance of Islamist ideology as a cause, in favor of an overemphasis on political and economic factors.

Mr. Pollack argues that political Islam "is not necessarily a threat to the United States," though he acknowledges that "neither is it unrelated to the threats we face from the Muslim Middle East." Later, he declares that "Islam is not the reason for the rise of Islamist movements, nor is it the cause of the terrorist threat that the United States faces." True, many Muslims may not accept the radical scriptural interpretations offered by fundamentalists, but it is wrong to argue that religious motivation, no matter how twisted the exegesis, isn't a chief motivating concern of Islamists.

In his effort to understand Islamism, Mr. Pollack has drawn on the work of a Sarah Lawrence College professor, Fawaz Gerges, whose work, if not quite apologetic for political Islam, is nevertheless superficial. Economic, political, and social grievance is only half the Islamist story: After all, most suicide bombers are not poor and dispossessed, but middle-class and educated. Perhaps Mr. Pollack is correct that suicide terrorists are not sociopaths, but what did mold them psychologically? Anger and despair are not explanation enough: Sub-Saharan Africa does not breed global suicide bombers like the Arab world. Nor do radical interpretations rise from grass roots; often Saudi funding for radical mosques plays an essential role.

Mr. Pollack is also too trusting of adversaries. He believes the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, was sincere in his Dialogue of Civilizations, but the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate exposed the program as a cover for an accelerating covert nuclear weapons program.

With 20/20 hindsight, Mr. Pollack takes issue not with the Bush policy of pre-emption, but rather with the assessment of threats that brought about the war in Iraq. Nor does he oppose transformative diplomacy, just the incompetent way in which it was undertaken. He parts ways with liberals who ironically insist that democracy cannot take root in the Middle East's infertile ground. Former fellow travelers will be disappointed in his argument that economic liberalization--including, presumably, foreign direct investment--must come to the Arab world's socialized economies.

When he looks forward, Mr. Pollack's prescription--legal and educational reforms--should provoke little argument, and he is correct that the next administration must repackage its approach because of the stigma left behind by the Bush administration's whiplash reversals and poor policy implementation.

In an effort to rehabilitate the reputation of democracy promotion, Mr. Pollack traces its history to Clinton hands such as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Dennis Ross, and "reasonable and moderate" Bush administration officials such as Richard Haass. This is hogwash. Bush administration implementation was both sloppy and spastic, but little in the historical record suggests the Clinton administration grasped transformative diplomacy as anything more than window dressing for their belief that autocracy equals stability.

Ultimately, there is very little new in the "grand strategy" Mr. Pollack suggests should replace the failed policies of the past. Indeed, while he describes himself as a liberal internationalist, A Path out of the Desert is little more than a neoconservative manifesto uncorrupted by the bluntness of Richard Perle or the arrogance of Douglas Feith.

His strategy consists, essentially, of implementing the George W. Bush doctrine as it was articulated during his first term: actively aiding reform in the region on the principle that short-term stability and long-term security are very different things.

Mr. Pollack might have contributed more had he also addressed how to reform the bloated and ineffective State Department and international organization bureaucracy, which impeded the implementation the first time around. Foggy Bottom is inept at international development, and the World Bank spends far more on its own administration than it does on micro-loans. Some proposals beg more realism. Creating regional security architecture sounds great in principle, but expecting Arab dictators to abandon their antipathy of Israel in order to solve regional problems is tilting at windmills. It is hard to judge, from this vantage, the merits of the Bush doctrine, since it was never implemented properly or competently, but as a vision of change in the Middle East it remains a compelling project. If Mr. Pollack's grand strategy gives the Bush doctrine a second wind, both the Middle East and long-term American national security will be better for it.

Michael Rubin
New York Sun
July 22, 2008

The Earth does not revolve around the U.S.; Pollock, however, writes as though it does. China is rapidly taking an important (often lead) NON-JUDGMENTAL role in resource-rich nations; meanwhile, Muslims within the Mid-East take an increasingly jaundiced view of the U.S. (involvement in overthrowing Iranian leaders, support for autocrats, flaunting American customs within holy Muslim lands, invading Iraq, prisoner abuse), while others tire of our constant self-interested meddling in their internal affairs while failing to correct our own problems - eg. political domination by vested business interests, an over-extended military, an obvious bias towards Israel, enormous federal and trade deficits, unwillingness to cooperate in solving global warming, a lack of a credible energy policy, and out-of-control health care and education systems.

The principal theme of Pollock's book is that America must take a long-term, internationally-assisted, strategic view of the Middle East aimed at encouraging these countries to pursue gradual political, economic, and social reform from within.

Pollock correctly alleges that autocracy, patronage, bloated bureaucracies, stifling of dissent, inadequate education, unemployment and underemployment all predominate in the region. He also admits that efforts to work with the region's autocrats failed in the 1990s because of public anger at the U.S. vs. Israel. Yet, he still blithely proceeds with the conclusion that the U.S. has a moral debt to support the creation of Israel because of the Holocaust (I thought Nazi Germany was responsible!) and that Israel further deserves support because of their "democratic" nature - unless you're an Arab within Israel, or worse yet, a West Bank Palestinian constantly subject to property expropriation and roadblocks that make earning a living difficult. (Pollock also forgets that democracy in the Mid-East has not worked out well for either the U.S. or Israel - witness the results in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. Similarly, elections in Croatia, Rwanda, and Serbia were manipulated by depots who whipped up long-standing ethnic sentiments to launch ethnic cleansings.)

Pollock's recommendations for increased cultural exchanges and commerce between the Mid-East and America make sense - encouraging their acquisition of consumer goods would reduce feelings of hopelessness and futility, and provide a disincentive for violence (eg. towards Israel). However, this will not accomplish nearly as much as desired.

Pollock forgets that China's power and respect is quickly rising due to their rapidly improving economy - standards of living are on track to improve 100X within a human life span. Further, their non-judgmental approach to relationships with other nations, non-attachment to Isreal, and strong currency are likely much more attractive to the Mid-East than our own involvement. As for current U.S. domination of important institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and U.N. Security Council - these are not likely to last after China becomes the world's most powerful economy by 2050; regardless, China has worked its miracle without them. Finally, U.S. credibility as a mentor was severely damaged when we "helped" Russia's initial reform efforts, reducing their GNP 45%, increasing crime, and lowering health levels.

The U.S. obtains only a minority of its oil from the Mid-East, and China represents the greatest opportunity for increased oil demand. So, why should the Mid-East put up with more aggravation from us when the Chinese pose a more attractive alternative?

Bottom Line: Pollock is living in the past. The U.S., preceded by Britain, has made a mess out of the Mid-East. Hopefully, China's future involvement will lead to significant improvement.