The policy of aggressive democracy promotion in the Middle East, a hallmark of former United States President George W. Bush’s administration, seems to have been sidelined by his successor in favor of a softer approach to international relations. While not renouncing the democracy campaign altogether, Barack Obama’s government has refocused its methods toward State Department projects that target economic advancement, education and job creation in the region.
This shift was exemplified by the Presidential Entrepreneurship Summit on April 26 and 27, where more than 250 delegates from 50 Muslim majority countries (MMCs), as well as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and several members of Congress, gathered in Washington, DC to discuss methods to foster entrepreneurship as a means of spurring economic growth and community development.
The summit signals a wider move in the administration to position the Middle East as part of a worldwide religious community, rather than the home of the ‘axis of evil’, as America reformulates its role in the region. The US’s long history of involvement in the Middle East, however, begs the question of whether this new initiative is a genuine policy shift or whether the White House has simply entered another phase of the decades-old strategy of quietly promoting civil society development while maintaining relations with heads of state.
On the surface, the White House appears eager to trumpet its departure from previous US policy. At April’s summit, Secretary of State Clinton cited Obama’s June 2009 “New Beginning” address at Cairo University as the administration’s “new approach to foreign policy.”
In a press statement, the Chief of Media and Cultural Affairs at the US Embassy in Lebanon, Ryan Gliha, said he considered changing the way the US administration was seen in the region as the “crux of the point” for the event.
Many of the new programs differ in that they favor local expertise over imposing an external agenda for development or aid. Yet their details remain largely unknown, and citizens’ suspicions of American intervention lingers.
A new beginning
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will partner with Walter Isaacson, president of the leadership-oriented Aspen Institute, and Muhtar Kent, the Turkish-American chief executive officer of the Coca-Cola Company, in launching the “Partners for a New Beginning” program — part of the State Department’s push for innovation. Described as “a team of eminent Americans from across sectors and industries who will lead an effort to engage the US private sector in carrying out our vision for a new beginning with Muslims,” little additional explanation was given as to the program’s specific plans.
Two other initiatives, the Silicon Valley-based Global Technology and Innovation Partners and the Innovators Fund, have already been set up by venture capitalists following Obama’s Cairo speech and aim to “support innovation” in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Malaysia.
Having already reached out to Jordanian venture capitalists Oasis 500 and several American firms, the Innovators Fund plans to expand.
Secretary Clinton also mentioned the e-Mentor Corps, a project that will allow entrepreneurs seeking advice to access mentors on-line from Intel, Ernst & Young, the Kauffman Foundation, TechWadi, the Young Presidents’ Organization, Babson College and Endeavor.
While many of the schemes sounded well intentioned if vague, Clinton delved into greater detail regarding the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP), which is set to begin in MMCs and grow from there. Clinton said that the private sector will partner with civil society groups to “help create successful entrepreneurial environments” by providing access to capital, business education from US business schools, mentoring programs and by identifying promising ideas. Launched in Egypt in April, the GEP pilot will soon start in Indonesia, the countries with the largest Arabic speaking and Muslim populations, respectively.
Egypt exemplar
Egypt’s GEP was launched under the auspices of the US-Egypt Business Leaders Forum, the latest manifestation of a decades-long collaboration between wealthy Egyptian and American businessmen, such as Taher Helmy, co-founder of Hamza, Helmy & Partners Law Firm, and Steven Farris, chief executive officer of the Apache Petroleum company, Egypt’s largest US investor. Helmy and Farris, co-chairs of the Forum, explained that after years of economic and financial reform, Egypt is ready to receive support for entrepreneurship.
“Reforms [have been] substantially successful, the private sector controls over 75 percent of the Egyptian economy…our primary focus has shifted to entrepreneurship and education,” Helmy told The Daily News Egypt.
Egypt’s willingness to undertake controversial reforms won it recognition with the GEP pilot program, and Clinton urged other nations to follow suit: “We need to encourage your governments to make the legal and commercial reforms needed to encourage trade, allow for the free flow of ideas [and] lower the barriers to launching new businesses,” she said in her speech.
Endeavour sets the pace
Although the efficacy of the State Department and its affiliates in promoting innovation in MMCs remains untested, Endeavor is an independent organization already active in the region. Initially focused in Latin America, the non-governmental organization began giving entrepreneurs access to mentors and angel investors in Morocco, Turkey and Egypt in recent years and is contemplating a Beirut office.
Endeavor’s method — identifying successful small businesses and helping them grow to scale, becoming role models for other entrepreneurs — represents what Elmira Bayrasli, policy and outreach coordinator for Endeavor Global, refers to as a “paradigm shift” — offering support to successful local initiatives rather than descending with a list of externally-generated goals.
“We don’t apply a cookie-cutter model. We have a framework that is driven by finding local business leaders and local networks that will then define how their own framework is built,” she said at Endeavor’s International Selection Panel in Cairo in March. “It’s really up to them to drive it forward in the vision they feel is best suited to that country.”
The event brought Endeavor Board Chairman Edgar Bronfman to Egypt to advise small business owners hoping to partner with the group. Bronfman, the CEO of Warner Music Group and heir to one of the wealthiest families in Canada, explained his commitment to facilitating entrepreneurship, particularly in the Middle East: “I’ve always believed that the more people that have jobs, the greater the opportunities for peace and the fewer opportunities for anger and frustration,” he said. “This is true everywhere, but especially important in the Middle East.”
His statements echo those made by Clinton, who listed a strong economic foundation and a stable middle class as “essential” to good governance and the rule of law. While the words “democracy” and “US security” enter the vocabulary of the Obama administration with less frequency than that of his predecessor, its policies represent the unspoken understanding that Bush had the right agenda but the wrong methods.
As a congressman, Obama’s record for democracy promotion included co-sponsorship of the Advance Democracy Act, while in 2005 he introduced the Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Promotion Act. Monetary support for democracy in the Middle East may re-emerge after trust has been re-established by the US’s respect for sovereignty and international rule of law.
America comes first
In the meantime, civil society groups in Egypt, Jordan and other countries have watched funding disappear. United States Agency for International Development told the Associated Press that cuts resulted from a drawing down of military aid, especially to Egypt.
The DC-based Project on Mideast Democracy reported that funding in Egypt fell from $10 million in 2008 to $2.6 million in 2010, and that only groups registered with the Egyptian government may receive funding, a hindrance for those attempting to monitor the upcoming presidential election in 2011, for example. Perhaps in an attempt to counterbalance this loss of civil society funding, the Obama administration has sponsored social entrepreneurship in the region.
Ultimately, the Presidential Entrepreneurship Summit’s role as a catalyst may be more important than the event itself. For example, it inspired the recent Arab World Social Innovation Forum in Cairo, hosted by international social entrepreneurship NGO Ashoka and attended by representatives from Microsoft, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the Arab League and USAID, among others.
However, this one summit should not be taken as a sure sign of fundamental change in US policy in the Middle East. Although the White House may seem to have changed its methods, it will undoubtedly continue to pursue policies to promote what it considers best, both for the region and for its own interests.
