The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, former Secretary General Kofi Annan, reported to the Security Council yesterday that the government of Bashir al-Assad has agreed to a cease-fire commencing April 10th. Annan also reported there has been no abatement of the violence by the government of Syria against its citizens. Assad's government is estimated by the U.N. to have killed more than 9,000 people in the past year, when Syrians began demanding the rights we Americans consider universal.

In that year, the Obama administration has gingerly moved away from defending Bashir al-Assad. When thousands of people had already been victims of murder by their own government in Syria, Secretary of State Clinton described Assad as a "reformer" who should be supported by the United States. Astonishingly, she contrasted him with Arab despots we supported protests against.

While Obama administration policy has improved somewhat with the advance of revolutions in the Middle East, it continues to chase rather than positively affect change. Our president now concedes that Assad should step down, but endorses a U.N. peace plan that would leave the murderer of nine thousand in power. Moreover, the Obama administration considers itself restricted from intervening in Syria because Vladimir Putin shields a fellow despot with Russia's vote in the U.N. Security Council.

So while Assad's forces shell neighborhoods in Homs and Hama, Secretary Clinton promises communications equipment to the disparate Syrian opposition. Make no mistake: Syrians are paying the price for our diplomatic nicety. They understand it, and those who would challenge despotism elsewhere understand that the United States is moving slowly enough that the Assad government may well succeed in breaking the resistance before we are of any help.

In fact, the Assad government seems to believe they're close to crushing the resistance: Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi declared as much last week, and the April 10th timeline agreed to by Assad for the U.N. peace plan is probably intended to allow consolidation of government gains against the resistance.

By valuing a United Nations mandate more than we value the lives of Syrians, we have given authoritarian governments a veto on our ethical responsibilities -- multilateralism trumps morals. It is discouraging that our government champions this concession as though it were a virtue.

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How to explain the Russian and Chinese vetoes of the U.N. resolution condemning the Syrian government's continuing killing spree against its own people? What strategic interest or moral imperative dominates their thinking?

Officially, Russia and China claim to be preventing the international community from doing another Libya; they are insisting on patience and "balance." The U.S., UK, France, the rest of the Security Council and pretty much the rest of the world, including the Arab League, beg to differ. Those speaking out the most forcefully don't buy what they consider excuse making for a bloody dictator.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice finds no ethical stance that can justify it, calling the vetoes "disgusting" and "shameful" and warning that the blame for the future deaths of Syrian civilians is on Russia and China. Amb. Rice does not comment on what strategic interests the vetoing states might be pursuing, though we can certainly speculate.

For Russia, Syria's dictatorship is its last client left standing in the Middle East, both political and economic since Syria provides a warm seaport and buys Russian weaponry. To watch it fall means ceding the field largely to the U.S. and the EU, and losing revenue. The stakes are indeed high for Russia. For China, the best explanation is inertia; China defines its national interest -- apart from its freedom to engage in commerce wherever it can -- according to the principle of non-intervention. Its reaction to the Syria situation is like its reaction to every other such situation: everyone should mind his own business, we like things as they are. (That China seems to contradict itself when it comes to Filipino, Vietnamese, or Japanese territorial interests requires a little semantic gymnastics.)

But let's look at this matter from thirty thousand feet. This latest turn in the Syrian tragedy reminds one of Talleyrand's famous comment applied to Napoleon's judicial murder of a noble: "[I]t was worse than a crime, it was a mistake." That is, the stance the Russians and the Chinese are taking hinders them from attaining the very goal they seek: to be seen as legitimate world leaders on par with the U.S. and the EU. When the West and the Arab League are on the same page, and most of the second and third ranking powers and beyond are with them, any state taking Bashar al-Assad's side is hard-pressed to stake a claim for world leadership. Syria's blatant violation of the norms of the U.N. Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights is patently obvious, as was the late Muammar Qaddafi's. For Russia and China to fail to recognize that and join the rest of the world in condemning it and seeking an end to these violations is in some ways worse: We expect tyrants like al-Assad to do what he is doing, but since the democracy revolutions and the Arab Spring, we rightly expect a different reaction from members of the Security Council entrusted with the only international organizational authority to do something about it.

No one expects Russia to lightly watch an ally go down, or for China to acquiesce in what it considers the violation of the most important international relations principle. Neither country wants to see further precedents being set of the average citizen rising up to challenge the established power. But I'd use their own words against them, the words they used in announcing their veto regarding the need in the resolution for "balance." There was a certain logic to calls for "balance" during the Cold War no matter how clanging it sounded. Much of international relations was a zero-sum game. But the Cold War is over. The publics of the Middle East are all in various stages of uprising and rebellion against centuries of tyranny, and they are aided by technology and social media in a way that means they will not be deterred short of death. That is a fact. Therefore, to oppose them and call for "balance" or "restraint" is to side with those who would without compunction kill as many of their citizens as they have to in order to stay in power; we're talking genocide now as a matter of course and endless instability. The democracy genie is out of the bottle.

So now the logic of "balance" is moot; urging acceptance of the democracy-crushing status quo is a spent force. International prestige and legitimate claims to world leadership now rest on those who accept that history has indeed ended in this sense: People want the dignity of self-government and they have the technological means to perpetually bring once unshakeable dictators to the nightmare scenario. Would-be world leaders should choose the right side now. After all, both ethics and logic point the way clearly now. That's the real "reset" that is needed, and it is good to see the Obama administration's diplomats at the UN representing it.

The Arab League has finally begun to take the well-being of Arab peoples as seriously -- more seriously -- than its cherished dream of Arab unity. The League negotiated with Syria's dictator to produce an agreement Assad would cease violence against the people of Syria. When Assad violated his side of the deal, the Arab League held him to account, decrying his continuing aggression. At Saturday's League meeting, they formally sanctioned Syria's leader for continued violence against the Syrian people and not honoring his promises of political dialogue and release of political prisoners. They called for a meeting of Syrian dissidents and urged consensus on them to more effectively pressure Assad. The Arab League set a clock ticking for Assad to comply; if he does not within four days, further political and economic sanctions will go into effect.

The only previous time the Arab League has been willing to call out a member government was after the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi as he closed in on Benghazi. Qaddafi was a special case, having attempted to assassinate heads of other Arab governments. And the Arab League was following a U.N. lead;  in taking action on Syria, the Arab League has led where Russia and China prevent condemnation at the United Nations.

These actions constitute an admirable strategy of escalating and increasingly public pressure by regional governments. The vote in the twenty-two member Arab League was 18 condemnations of Syria (only Yemen and Lebanon voted to shield Syria; Iraq abstained). Technically, League rules require unanimity. Yet, as NATO did during the Kosovo war, the Arab League found a way to express its will rather than let itself be hamstrung by technicalities.

The shame for Americans is that the Arab League, so long a regressive force in the politics of the region, has a better Syria policy than does the Obama administration. 3,500 Syrians have been killed by their government this year; during that time, our government has adjusted its position from considering Bashar al-Assad a reformer -- Secretary Hillary Clinton's memorable phrase -- to saying "he cannot deny his people's legitimate demands indefinitely." 

The "Obama Doctrine," as the White House has termed its choices on Libya, gives to Russia and China a veto -- literally -- on U.S. support for freedom movements and human rights activists. This is disgraceful. Without a U.N. Security Council Resolution, the Obama administration will not consider significant support to the Syrians engaged in a fight to protect themselves from a despot.

Clinton outlined the rationale for treating the Syrian case different from the Obama Doctrine: "our choices also reflect other interests in the region with a real impact on Americans' lives - including our fight against al Qaeda; defense of our allies; and a secure supply of energy." One might ask the Secretary of State which of these interests would be in conflict with working to rein in the barbarism of an enemy of the United States who fosters terrorism and has killed 3,500 Syrians this year alone. Adding insult to injury, Clinton gave this explanation in a speech on promoting democracy.

Where the Arab League has been negotiating with Bashir al-Assad to curb his predations against the people of Syria, the Obama Administration fecklessly repeats that Assad must step down. And this from a President that insisted he would negotiate with anyone.

After a brave start by Ambassador Robert Ford in Syria, the State Department has recalled him because Syria is dangerous. Less so to an U.S. ambassador than to the people he was bearing witness for, though, and who now have no potent symbol of America's support for their cause. 

Withdrawing our ambassador is, in fact, the sadly appropriate symbol of Obama administration policy toward Syria. They pretend engagement but are unwilling to run risks in support of freedom. Instead they pontificate piously from a safe distance while others undertake the difficult, honorable work of bringing despots to their knees.

How fortunate are the people of Syria that they have the governments of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab League to stand up for freedom and universal human rights; what a pity the Obama administration will not.

President Obama's statement supporting the action of the Arab League says it all: "the Arab League has demonstrated leadership in its effort to end the crisis and hold the Syrian government accountable."

On Sept. 22, I testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs regarding the abuse of human rights in Iran and Syria. The wide-scale human rights abuses we are witnessing in these countries are atrocious, but they are certainly not new. The abuses perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad's Syria and Ali Khamenei's Iran stretch back for years and are a key element in those regimes' system of authoritarian control over their people. The Iranian and Syrian regimes have, in an effort to establish and maintain this control, cultivated illusions of democracy, prosperity, and stability which are belied by the underlying realities of these countries. The great achievement of both the Iranian and Syrian opposition is to have shattered these illusions, which neither regime will easily be able to reconstruct. Looking ahead, the U.S. should do all it can to assist opposition activists in both Iran and Syria to break the control exerted by their regimes. Whether in Iran or in Syria, preventing human rights abuses necessarily means supporting democracy.

You can read my entire written testimony here.

When the story of the Arab Spring is written in Arabic, it is unlikely to reflect well on the United States. In his speech about the Middle East on May 19, U.S. President Barack Obama attempted, and rightly so, to place his administration squarely on the side of pro-democracy activists. As seen from the region, however, U.S. actions are hard to square with the message of May 19; instead, the hallmarks of U.S. policy have been hedging and hesitation.

However vociferously we might protest, people in the Middle East are apt to ascribe motives to U.S. policy which differ sharply from those we profess. Seeking to understand our readiness to intervene in Libya and reluctance to do so in Syria, many in the region will assume that the difference is driven by designs on the former's oil resources.  Eyeing the withdrawal of U.S. support in February of longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, some accuse us of naively paving the way for an Islamist takeover, others of privately seeking renewed military rule under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. When people in the region hear us speak of supporting democracy, they look askance upon the tense relationship we have with democratic Turkey versus the coziness of U.S.-Saudi relations.

It is right that U.S. officials push back on cynical readings of U.S. actions in the region; while the United States bases its policies on national interests like any other country, we -- regardless of the administration -- more often than not try genuinely to do so with transparency and with respect for our values. It is also right that U.S. officials make the case that each of the turbulent situations we face in the Middle East is different from the others, and demands therefore a different response.

That said, the line between nuance and vacillation is a fine one, and this is nowhere clearer than in Syria. The Obama Administration has not, despite repeated urging, called for Syrian President Assad to step down. The reason seems clear -- they worry that if they issue such a call and Assad does not, in fact, leave, it will be a further blow to U.S. power and prestige in the region. Every day that Assad remains in power, he would do so in open defiance of the United States.

This reasoning is logical, but flawed. The fact is that the concatenated statements of U.S. officials amount, in essence, to a call for Assad to step down. The statements made thus far -- whether that Assad has lost legitimacy, that Syria would be better off without him, or that the U.S. has no stake in his continued rule -- certainly give this impression. They are reinforced by the sanctions recently imposed by the Administration, which among other things target Assad personally. More than a distinct policy line, the statements and sanctions appear to constitute a tortured effort to indicate that Assad should go without ever actually saying so.

The problem with this "wink and nod" approach to calling for Assad's departure is that it leaves sufficient ambiguity to hamper American efforts. It feeds the Syrian regime's efforts to convince domestic constituencies who may be on the fence that things will one day return to business as usual. It results in a lack of clarity down Washington's bureaucratic chain -- which is a very long chain indeed -- as to what precisely the U.S. policy is in Syria, leading U.S. diplomatic and military officials on the ground around the world without precise guidance. And, perhaps most damagingly, it feeds into a narrative that the U.S. response to the Arab uprisings has been to hedge our bets and decide whom to support only when the ultimate outcome is already clear. At the end of the day, our failure to speak clearly provides Assad room for maneuver, able to claim on one hand that he is defying Washington, while on the other suggesting to foes in Syria and the region that Washington despite its rhetoric will once again need to deal with him.

Just as American words must be clear, they must be clearly supported by our actions. For this reason, the White House should now withdraw Amb. Robert Ford from Damascus. as a sign of its break with the Assad regime. Amb. Ford is a talented and, as he demonstrated in his visit to Hama, courageous. diplomat who has acquitted himself well in an extraordinarily difficult assignment. Though it seems unlikely that the Syrian regime would allow him to repeat his visit to Hama or other besieged cities, it is possible that if he were to remain in Damascus he could continue to play a useful role by speaking to the opposition and calling attention to their struggle.

Any such benefit, however, must be weighed against the cost of his remaining and the benefits of withdrawing him. The Obama Administration sent an ambassador to Syria (after the long absence of an American envoy there) with the express intention of engaging with the Assad regime. Nothing would more clearly signal a change in the engagement policy than withdrawing that ambassador, just as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others have done. The continued presence of a U.S. ambassador in Damascus, however, feeds suspicion that Washington remains open to engaging Assad, and gives cover to other countries who wish to continue doing so. Better than leaving Amb. Ford in place would be recalling him and, as the U.S. ambassador to Libya has been doing, tasking him to work with the Syrian opposition globally to marshal U.S. and international support for them. This would be better, too, than simply allowing his confirmation to die in the Senate, which would further fuel the sense that Washington is split on the issue of how to handle Syria.

Affecting the outcome in Syria will require a mix of international isolation, economic pressure, and the exacerbation of internal fissures. Within each pillar there are a number of steps -- the withdrawal of Western ambassadors, the formation of an international "contact group" to coordinate policy, the imposition of energy and other economic sanctions, for example -- which can be taken to add to the strong measures which the Obama Administration has already put in place. But the United States must start by ensuring that our own policy -- toward Syria and toward democracy in the Arab world broadly -- is unmistakable.

Pity poor Lebanon. Earlier this month, the murderous regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad imposed a government in Beirut dominated by the terrorist group, Hezbollah -- which, as it happens, we were reminded just this morning, likely carried out the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Before our very eyes, the Lebanon of not-so-distant memory -- pluralist, free-wheeling, open to the West and the values of liberalism -- is being snuffed out by U.S. enemies. And by all appearances, no one can really be bothered, including, sadly enough, the Obama administration.

Six months ago, the pro-Western Saad Hariri (Rafiq's son) walked into an Oval Office meeting with President Obama as Lebanon's prime minister. He walked out a mere caretaker. Syria and Hezbollah chose precisely that moment to collapse his government. The immediate cause was Hariri's refusal to comply with the demand that he terminate his government's support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) -- whose first indictments, handed down today, finger Hezbollah for carrying out the horrific bombing that killed his legendary father.

But the gambit to take down Saad was also widely understood to have a more strategic purpose, a humiliating slap at Obama and the United States. The message could not have been clearer: Such will be the fate of the United States' friends who dare defy the ascendant Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis. Obama, and Washington, can do nothing to protect you.

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As many others have lamented, the administration's fecklessness on Syria is rapidly turning into a national disgrace. It represents a moral and strategic failing of major proportions. If sustained, it threatens to rival the president's tragic decision in 2009 to stand by mutely as millions of Iranians rallied to drive a stake through the heart of a regime whose quest for nuclear weapons poses perhaps the greatest current danger to vital U.S. interests.

Since Syria's uprising began two months ago, the best estimate is that the Assad regime has slaughtered close to a thousand of its own citizens -- though the actual toll may well be much higher. Entire towns have been subjected to full-blown siege by Assad's crack military units. Mass arrests and torture of innocents, including children, is in full swing. The savagery on display certainly exceeds anything witnessed in Egypt during the 18-day revolt that brought down Hosni Mubarak. Not even Qaddafi was able to inflict this level of human suffering before NATO warplanes felt compelled to stay his bloody hand.

But whereas Obama moved with relative dispatch to condemn Egypt's Pharaoh and Libya's Mad Hatter to history's dustbin (at least rhetorically), in the case of Assad -- as with Iran in 2009 -- the president and his team have gone mostly silent, timid, and reactive. When the brutality spikes sufficiently every Friday, and the administration is embarrassed into issuing a statement of disapproval, it invariably has been coupled with some pathetic blather that Assad still has time to implement reforms -- which the good ophthalmologist's thugs, quite predictably, have interpreted as a sign of profound U.S. unseriousness and a green light to continue their killing spree a bit longer.

This seeming ambivalence on the part of the administration is all the more puzzling when -- on top of the compelling moral calculus -- one also considers the potential strategic benefits to be had by the removal of the Assad family's 4-decade long criminal enterprise in anti-U.S. tyranny. The bill of indictment is too lengthy to review in its entirety. It includes a long alliance with the Soviet Union; master-minding the destruction of Lebanon; being a charter-member of the State Department's rogues gallery of terror-sponsoring states; an ever-deepening strategic relationship with Iran's Islamic Republic and its proxies in Hezbollah; playing host to the full panoply of Palestinian terror groups; perpetrating one of history's most egregious violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty through the covert construction, with North Korean assistance, of the plutonium-producing nuclear reactor at Al Kibar; and actively supporting the multi-year effort by Sunni insurgents, Saddamists, and al Qaeda jihadists to torpedo the U.S. effort to mid-wife representative democracy in Iraq. 

Again, the contrast with Egypt's Mubarak and Libya's Qaddafi is striking. The former was a longstanding ally, a linchpin for 30 years of the Middle East's pax-Americana whose disappearance, at least in the short term, could arguably turn out to be a net detriment to U.S. policy. The latter, though a historic foe responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American innocents, had in recent years bowed to U.S. demands to dismantle his nuclear weapons program and get out of the terrorism business, thereby relegating Libya to the margins of U.S. strategic concerns. The Assad family, by contrast, pere and fils alike, have for the better part of two generations (and seven U.S. presidencies) posed a clear and present danger to Middle East peace and security, and the advancement of U.S. interests. Next to regime change in Iran itself, it's hard to think of a more devastating blow that could be struck against the Islamic Republic than the collapse of its primary partner in crime, the dictatorship in Damascus, at the hands of a popular uprising. Yet it is here, with respect to Syria, that Obama balks.

At least initially, the president's wooly-headedness could be chalked up to his faux-realist determination to "engage" Assad. The goal, articulated from the start of his presidency, was to enlist Syria in a revitalized peace process with Israel and/or to crack the Iranian-Syrian axis by persuading Assad that his true interests lay not in playing wing-man to the expansionist theocrats in Tehran, but prospering under the patronage of a U.S. superpower willing to ply Syria with economic assistance, mediate an end to its conflict with Israel, and help recover the Golan Heights,

This was, of course, a huge conceit -- Obama playing Kissinger, but even better -- one that more or less blindly disregarded the entire sorry history of the United States' unsatisfying dealings with Baathist Syria under the tutelage of the Assad clan and their minority, Alawite regime. To be fair to Obama, it was a conceit that more than one -- indeed, most -- of his predecessors had similarly indulged, and with similarly disappointing results. Forever condemned to rule with a nagging legitimacy deficit, the Assads, lo and behold, simply refused to reprise the role played by Sadat when he switched strategic allegiances from the "resistance" camp to the peace camp. Despite U.S. protestations to the contrary, Bashar, like his father before him, was of the stubborn conviction that he actually understood better than Washington the formula for ensuring the survival of the family business -- and it most assuredly did not include permanently ending the conflict with Israel and addressing the real political, economic, and social needs of Syria's beleaguered citizenry. Not even Barack Obama's arrival on the world stage, which his most delusional acolytes promised would transform the very nature of international politics, proved capable of changing the cruel and sordid reality that was the Assad dictatorship and the type of Middle East it stood for. 

As proved tragically the case with Iran in 2009, Obama's insistence on sticking to his engagement strategy with Syria long past its sell-by date was also driven by an unfortunate brew of ideology and egotism. Obama seemed determined to show himself, evidence to the contrary be damned, the un-Bush -- sophisticated, nuanced, worldly-wise to the gray areas of world affairs inhabited by true statesmen like the one he fancied himself to be, in contrast to the boorish, black-and-white cowboy-ism of his dim-witted predecessor. Never mind that, truth be told, Bush himself spent the first few years of his administration on the fool's errand of reaching out to Assad the Younger in hopes of testing his alleged reformist instincts. And never mind that the West's most important breakthroughs with the Assad dynasty -- from Kissinger's disengagement agreement to Syria's participation in the Madrid peace process; from the eviction of PKK terrorist Abdullah Ocalan to the 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon -- all could be sourced to moments when the regime felt itself most profoundly weakened and under threat, its very survival possibly in play.

With all the carnage of the past two months, one hopes that the president and his advisors prove capable of realizing that the chance of converting Assad into a viable strategic partner, if it ever existed, has long since passed. Reportedly, that moment of illumination did eventually come in the case of Iran, though only belatedly -- long after the Green Movement had been effectively crushed and an historic opportunity to advance U.S. interests had passed, perhaps indefinitely. It would be tragic, indeed, if a similar mistake was made in the case of Syria. 

Instead, the administration needs quickly to move off the sidelines, declare its full-fledged support for the aspirations of the Syrian people, and develop a serious strategy to expedite the collapse of Assad's rule and a peaceful transition to a new, more democratic order. Barring such an effort, we seem likely on a course that will lead to one of two highly undesirable outcomes: either the total suppression of the uprising (most likely), or a sectarian-based civil war that pits the largely Sunni forces of the regular army against the much smaller, but heavily-armed Alawite shock troops and security services whose very raison d'etre is ensuring the regime's survival. 

The key to a soft landing will be fracturing the regime's elite, particularly by convincing prominent figures in the Alawite community, especially within the security services, that their interests lie not in continuing to support Assad and his family in the commission of their crimes against the Syrian people, but in abandoning them and throwing their weight behind the popular movement for peaceful change. Such an effort would require assembling a diplomatic coalition of states most capable of influencing Syrian events, including the United States, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and perhaps Egypt. The office of the United Nations' Secretary General might come in handy as well, particularly in the form of its shrewd and energetic envoy, Terje Larsen, the Norwegian diplomat who proved such a useful ally in helping coerce Syrian troops out of Lebanon in 2005.

The network of contacts, political, military, and intelligence, that these states possess across the Syrian elite would need to be discretely tapped. Inducements -- financial, political, and otherwise -- would need to be offered. Assurances -- both in terms of a future role in the post-Assad order and security protections for the broader Alawite community as well as other minorities -- would need to be provided. Punishments in the form of economic sanctions, travel bans, and international prosecutions would need to be threatened and, as necessary, imposed.

Such commitments at the international level would ideally be matched by pledges from some representative group of Syrians that could credibly claim to speak in the name of the protest movement. That likely means supporting an opposition conference somewhere in Europe or the Middle East. While such an event would unavoidably be dominated by Syrians in exile, provision could be made to solicit through every means possible the views and preferences of those still inside. A visionary, inclusive platform for Syria's democratic future could be developed, one that reaches out to all Syria's communities as well as members of the current regime in a spirit of national reconciliation. A transitional leadership council might be elected -- with half its seats reserved for insiders who will be appointed once Assad is gone, if not before -- whose primary task would be working with the United Nations to draft a provisional constitution and organize free and fair elections. To underscore their selfless commitment to the nation, members of the transitional council might pledge not to stand in the first post-Assad elections.

Implementing such a strategy would no doubt be enormously challenging, requiring a major commitment of diplomatic resources, including the sustained involvement of the president himself. But the fact that it is hard and offers no guarantee of success cannot become an excuse for policymakers to abdicate their moral and strategic responsibilities to act on behalf of U.S. vital interests and core values. The bitter fact is that the administration's current non-policy almost certainly has us on a path that ends in national shame for the United States, national disaster for Syria, and a festering sore of instability and violence in the heart of a region vital to U.S. interests. We can, we must, try to do better.

Events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and to a lesser extent Jordan have led both administration officials and the chattering classes to conclude that democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Having once again been caught by surprise by events overseas -- one wonders where our intelligence agencies have been hiding -- the Obama administration is now trying to push itself into the forefront of those seeking democratic change in the region.

Yet it was not democracy that led a young Tunisian to immolate himself and, apart from English-speaking educated intellectuals, it does not appear that democracy is what most people have been demonstrating about. Instead, what they are seeking, first and foremost, is economic opportunity unfettered by corruption and favoritism. Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire because he was prevented from earning a modest living. Three Egyptians have burned themselves because of lack of job opportunities. 

Secondly, Tunisians and Egyptian appear to be seeking responsive government, which is quite different from Western notions of democracy. In fact, it is arguable that they and other demonstrators in the Arab world would be quite comfortable living under a Chinese-style system, where there is a high and consistent level of economic growth and standards of living continue to rise. Would Tunisia have overthrown Ben Ali if its economy grew, as it had in the 1990s, and if the President's family curbed their greed? Would Mubarak be in the trouble he is now if he had a far greater percentage of the population benefitting from Egypt's economic growth?

It is noteworthy that for all the talk of upheavals in the Arab world, there has so far been little unrest in the traditional Gulf emirates or in Saudi Arabia. The rulers of the smaller Gulf States have long made it their policy to distribute wealth widely among their citizens. (Non-citizens don't count, of course. And if they made any trouble they would be deported.) Despite predictions of their imminent demise over the past two decades, the Saudis likewise have so far remained quiet. The al-Saud family recognized some ten years ago that it needed to spread more wealth to ensure the support of its increasingly younger population; so far so good.

Even Bahrain, which might have been expected to be the scene of riots, given the secondary status of the majority Sh'ia population, has not witnessed any major demonstrations. Again, most of the Bahraini Sh'ia appear to recognize that a stable Bahrain means more wealth for them too -- even if they do not achieve economic parity with the dominant Sunnis. They also know that Saudi tanks are not far from the causeway that links their state to its much larger and more powerful neighbor, and that those tanks would be quick to cross into the island kingdom if the ruling family came under siege.

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