June 2nd, 2010 by Josh

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Cairo address, Scott Carpenter and Dina Guirguis of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy unpack the last twelve months of Middle East engagement with respect to the seven core issues identified in the speech as paramount to U.S.-Muslim relations: the need to confront violent extremism; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons; democracy; religious freedom; women’s rights; and economic development.

Overall, Carpenter and Guirguis conclude that “tangible deliverables from the Cairo address were in short supply.” Perhaps recognizing this reality, the administration has spent the last few months “reframing the speech’s intent and legacy” away from “outreach to Muslims” and toward a notion of “global engagement” that articulated a “generational mission statement” rather than a series of initiatives. “In this context,” the authors write, “the issuance of a new National Security Strategy (NSS) just days before the Cairo anniversary is apparently no coincidence.” Yet even though the NSS strengthens what Carpenter and Guirguis view as the speech’s relative deficiencies, “Washington’s strategy remains open to the same critique as the original Cairo address.”

Posted in Democracy Promotion, Diplomacy, Freedom, Human Rights, Iran, Israel, Mideast Peace Plan, Reform, Terrorism, US foreign policy, Women |