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Thoughts on Obama’s Outreach to the Arab World

In an interview with AlArabiya.net POMED’s Director of Advocacy, Stephen McInerney highlighted the significance of Obama’s interview last week with Hisham Melhem. He explained how “this sends an important signal about the new administration and its desire to directly engage the people of the Middle East and the Muslim world. For too long the American administrations have focused too much on relationships with Arab governments rather than Arab people.”..

Reactions to Obama’s Al Arabiya Interview

The blogosphere is abuzz with talk of President Obama’s interview yesterday with Al Arabiya’s Hisham Melhem. Here’s a brief round up of what people are saying…..

More on Mitchell

Yesterday, new Middle East envoy George Mitchell stopped off in Cairo on the first leg of his trip to the region. In a discussion with Hosni Mubarak he stressed the importance of supporting Egypt’s efforts in extending and consolidating the Gaza ceasefire...

Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2009″

Yesterday, Freedom House hosted an event discussing the findings from its recently published Freedom in the World 2009 survey. The report shows that global freedom is continuing its retreat, with 34 countries registering declines. Participants in the discussion included Arch Puddington, Director of Research for Freedom House..

The UN & Human Rights, Conflict Mediation, and Democratiya

David Ginsberg at Partnership for a Secure America highlights an interesting WorldPublicOpinion.org survey on Muslim Perceptions of the UN. The organization polled Muslims from several countries, finding, “there is widespread support for a more active UN with much broader powers than it has today. On the other hand, there is a perception that the UN is dominated by the US and there is dissatisfaction with UN performance on several fronts…” Notably, 63% of those surveyed said they wou..

Democracy in Palestine

One: Michael Allen at Democracy Digest collects several pieces on democracy efforts in Palestine, including an article by David Keyes at The New Republic on teaching democracy to schoolchildren in Ramallah...

All Roads Lead to…Cairo?

In case you haven’t heard, Barack Obama has been toying with the idea of “making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.”..

The Case for Democracy Promotion

In a piece in the Washington Quarterly, Rep. David Price (D-NC) presents the case for a sustained U.S. commitment to democracy promotion abroad, and offers practical advice to the new administration. Price stresses that the U.S. must not sacrifice the democracy agenda for other goals: “Democracy is an antidote to terrorism and violent conflict because it facilitates economic opportunity and channels societal grievances into peaceful and predictable processes for addressing them.”..

The Baby, the Bathwater, and the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East

Michele Dunne has a new piece in the Washington Quarterly titled “The Baby, the Bathwater, and the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East.” In it, she urges Barack Obama to resist the temptation to abandon democracy promotion altogether in an attempt to break clean from the failures of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda..

Hot off the Presses: New Arab Reform Bulletin

The December issue of Carnegie’s Arab Reform Bulletin is up. With characteristic excellence, the new issue includes an article on Iraq’s upcoming provincial elections, and a piece analyzing the evolution of Libyan ..

POMED Asks: “As President, What Should Obama Say to the Middle East?”

In this period of transition, as we all look toward the Middle East policy of the new Obama administration, we here at POMED have asked a variety of respected voices from the community of Middle East policy experts, democracy promotion practitioners, pollsters, academics, and human rights advocates to answer the following question in 300 words or less:..

The Islamist Dilemma

The Century Foundation has published a report by POMED’s Director of Research Shadi Hamid entitled “Resolving America’s Islamist Dilemma.” In it, Hamid points out that the U.S. has no clear and consistent policy for dealing with moderate Islamist groups in the Arab world. He notes the U.S. is more apt to engage and encourage political space for Islamist parties in countries with less strategic relevance. Conversely, in countries more central to U.S. national security interests, we ar..

Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President

The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations have joined efforts to conduct research, travel the region, and develop non-partisan policy recommendations for the President-Elect Barack Obama. You can purchase your own copy of “Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President” online, and executive summaries of all the chapters, along with two full chapters, are available as well...

A New Wave of Democracy

Larry Diamond of Stanford University has released a new paper with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), “The Spirit of Democracy: How to Make Democracies Work,” in which he predicts that large authoritarian countries are unlikely to turn into full-fledged democracies in the near future, but that any change will be due to deepening reforms in young, fragile democracies...

Human Rights in the Arab Region in 2008

e transition period in Washington offers a useful moment for policymakers to take stock of a number of serious issues. In the Middle East, one area that demands attention and re-evaluation is the manner in which the U.S. approaches the question of human rights and democracy..

Don’t Forget Yemen

This past week the people of Yemen threatened to boycott parliamentary elections in April because “they believe the balloting next April will not be fair, mostly because a 9-member electoral body overseeing the vote is all-appointed by the country’s president and its members are closely linked to the ruling party. Socialist leader Yaseen Said No’man said the opposition has been holding demonstrations across Yemen to protest the government’s rejection of amendments to the country’s elec..

Grassroots Nation Building and US Foreign Policy

In today’s New York Times David Brooks highlights a major shift in Washington the Obama adminstration would do well to maintain: the move away from top-down militaristic attempts at democracy-building toward strengthening governmental legitimacy and efficacy from the bottom-up. “Some theoreticians may still talk about Platonic concepts like realism and neoconservatism, but the actual foreign policy doctrine of the future will be hammered out in a bottom-up process as the U.S. and its a..

Can Hillary be an Honest Broker in the Middle East?

Eli Lake at the New Republic writes on the prospect of conflict between likely appointees Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Jim Jones over issues in the Middle East. “While General Jones wants to take steps now to empower Abbas and his Fatah party to take over a Palestinian state, Clinton is asking if even the Palestinian moderates are ready to govern.”..

POMED: This Week’s Events

Monday, December 1, 2008 10:00am NAF: Public Diplomacy 2.0 Tuesday, December 2, 2008 11:00am AEI: Iran’s Nuclear ..

The Authoritarian Mindset

The LA Times has an interesting profile of prominent Egyptian poet Iman Bakry. Her writing of late has skewered the Mubarak regime, as well as critiqued and lamented “an Egypt plagued by self-doubt, repression, corruption and a dangerous divide between rich and poor.”..