A NATO for the Middle East

ENLARGE PHOTO+

U.S. Marines and Iraqi policemen provide the security for the new police station in Ramadi.

Yuri Kozyrev for TIME

• Share

(2 of 2)

Rice's rhetoric has now changed. On previous trips to Egypt, she was firm in preaching the need for faster democratic reform. But that sermon was missing during her latest trip, when she instead spoke of America's "important strategic relationship" with Egypt in what she has called a struggle "between extremism on the one hand and mainstream states on the other."

In a recent editorial, the Washington Post warned that Bush should not sacrifice his democracy agenda in the Middle East. And indeed it would be perilous to abandon our ideals for the sake of short-term security.

So what would Marshall and Acheson do? They probably would have created, in addition to a NATO-like antiterrorism alliance, a worldwide coalition of true and free democracies, ranging from India to Turkey to Israel. This Concert of Democracies could work on ways to nurture and support our common ideals, even as the new antiterrorism military alliance could be used to protect our security interests. Washington could use both instruments, just as it now uses both NATO and the U.N., depending on the situation.

Perhaps such an approach could even begin to minimize the trade-offs that now seem to vex us. Membership in MATO, especially if it drains some of the bile from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, could make the leaders and citizens in places such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia feel more secure. And that may make them more open to greater democracy and reform.