US-Muslim relations: hard choices ahead

For George W. Bush, the defining issue of this campaign is the war on terror. For John Kerry, the most important foreign-policy issue is nuclear nonproliferation and access to weapons of mass destruction.

In both cases, these are issues closely linked to events and developments in a broad crescent of Islamic countries stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. It means that whoever wins the presidency, America's relations with the Muslim world are going to sit high on the agenda.

The Bush administration receives good marks from many officials and experts both in the United States and overseas for responding to the events of Sept. 11 with stepped-up attention to Arab and other Muslim countries.

But an administration carrying either candidate's surname will have to address a growing dilemma, analysts say: between nurturing longstanding ties to calcifying regimes, and rocking those relationships in the interest of hitting at the region's deepening political and economic challenges.

"Whoever wins and sets out to improve long-term prospects for answering these top priorities will face this basic dilemma of how to balance our different interests in the Middle East," says Amy Hawthorne, a specialist in Arab democratization at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

It's a choice that has sharpened, she says, "between preserving relations with regimes that are often part of the problem, and promoting democratic reforms, economic openings, and educational opportunity that are part of the answer, but which could also unsettle those regimes."

The overriding theme of the relationship between the US and Muslim world over coming years may thus be the friction between stability interests - as a short-term tool for addressing terrorism - and reform as a more strategic response to Islamic extremism's deeper causes. But that theme is likely to play out through a list of high-interest and often highly emotional issues.

At the top of that list are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq, which will continue to complicate any administration's relations with the Muslim world, analysts say. "There is an urge to democratize, liberalize, and develop. But unfortunately as long as there is this simultaneity between the US administration's pressing for action in these areas and the perception of America favoring the Israel of Ariel Sharon and managing growing chaos in Iraq, the suspicions about America's motives will only strengthen," says Clovis Maksoud, director of the Center for the Global South at American University in Washington.

As an example, Mr. Maksoud points to Jordan, which he notes benefits from a free-trade agreement with the US and close ties between Jordan's King Abdullah and President Bush. Still, he says, the "hemorrhaging" in support for the US among Arab and Muslim publics has narrowed America's field of action and dampened enthusiasm for the kinds of reforms the US is promoting.

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