By DR. ARTHUR B. KEYS, JR.
Guest Writer

As Egypt marks the first anniversary of the January 25 revolution, we must remember that the primary driving force in Egyptian electoral politics has not changed. The same energy that propelled hundreds of thousands to peacefully demonstrate for weeks against Hosni Mubarak, and later against the military council, fuels the hopes of Egypt’s young people, especially working people.

Every poll and survey indicates that Egyptians want equitable and honest social and economic development. And real, sustainable development begins with young people. They have the energy, the openness, and the hope to turn ideas into reality.

Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa whose underdevelopment squanders talent, restrains ambition, and fosters instability. Nearly one in five people living in the Middle East and North Africa is between ages 15 and 24. It is this group that will build the next generation of businesses and civic institutions, infusing them with their own attitudes and expectations.

Investment in the youth of Egypt and the Middle East has the greatest potential return. However, a large and sustained commitment by governments and nongovernmental organizations will be needed to initiate, program, and monitor this public investment—a challenge in today’s fiscal environment. But my organization believes it is a reasonable, even self-evident, investment compared to what we might have to spend should the hopes and expectations of today’s demonstrators again be frustrated. More than just a voice, youth in the Middle East need resources to forge their own futures.

In Egypt and other countries, investment in social and economic development can accelerate the transformation into a more democratic, civilian-dominated state that at the same time can be influenced and shaped by Islamist groups and shared religious attitudes. Such a state may be less pro-Western in the narrow sense of that term. It will pursue an independent foreign policy and may challenge US priorities on occasion. But it will be much more able to participate in and contribute to the social, political, and economic development of the international community. Turkey has successfully made this transformation and, like Turkey, Egypt is a culturally and religiously rich society driven by youthful energy. If Western values are about representative and accountable institutions that release and effectively channel the pursuit of universally shared values, a democratic Egypt infused with the great values of Islam is sure to be a friend of the United States.

Engaging Middle East youth, and the political parties and religious groups they join, is a tremendous opportunity for all of us. These are active citizens and creative workers. Their energy, whether motivated by religious or secular hopes, will create and sustain change for the long term. As a nation and a member of the international community, we must do what we can to eliminate roadblocks to the legitimate desires and energies of Egypt’s young citizens.

Dr. Arthur B. Keys is President and CEO of International Relief & Development, a global development organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He is the recipient of the William Sloane Coffin Award for Justice and Peace from Yale Divinity School.

By William Pfaff

Most Americans would likely agree that the main shock delivered to Americans and the American government by the 9/11 attacks was that of vulnerability. Another such shock is impending. It is the national vulnerability that will be revealed this month by the American veto of a Palestinian demand for full United Nations membership.

During the century and a half preceding 9/11, Americans enjoyed national and individual invulnerability to devastating foreign attack, unlike the people of any other major nation. Much has been made in recent years of how nuclear dread lay over the land in the 1950s. My own experience was that even the Cuban Missile Crisis was not what it subsequently was made out to have been. I am sure that the people actually making decisions in Washington quaked in their boots and prayed, which is why nothing happened. The menace was on the one hand so great that there was nothing to do about it (crouching under a table or possession of a shovel notwithstanding), but on the other hand no one in power was so stupid as to initiate a nuclear attack.

The American conviction of national invulnerability marched on. The Vietnam outcome threatened it, but it was easy for Americans, especially those who were not in authority, to say well, yes, but of course we could have won if we had really wanted to use our power.

Iraq is not today really perceived by public opinion as a defeat, only as mistake, muddle and incompetence, and, besides, our troops will (supposedly) be gone by 2012, and what’s past will be past.

In Kabul, Gen. David Petraeus in 2009 promised Barack Obama and the nation that the United States Army could be relied upon for victory in 2010. Now Petraeus has left the army to pursue higher aspirations. Christopher Edley Jr., a member of the Obama presidential transition team and dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkrley, said that the team deemed the President-elect, with no military experience, vulnerable to official blackmail on national security and retroactive Bush administration justice issues, and so advised him to do whatever military and security officials proposed. Public confidence in President Obama on Middle Eastern issues may not be high today, while confidence in the Republicans seems even lower, but few Americans feel vulnerable to Middle Eastern risk. Least of all do they feel threatened by Israel’s actions.

This is likely to prove a serious mistake. National vulnerability has returned. A State Department official has confirmed that the United States intends to veto the expected Palestinian demand for U.N. Security Council recognition as a member state. The U.S. Congress, moreover, under pressure from Israel’s American friends, has declared that it will then cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority.

Egypt and the Arab governments will be angry, but the Arabs have been angry before with the invulnerable United States, and nothing has come of it—except for the 9/11 attacks and a war “on terror” that has gone on for a decade.

Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and former ambassador to the U.S., has rather desperately been trying to warn America. He has published his warning in articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and circulated it on the Web. He writes that, if Washington vetoes the Palestinian petition, “American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region.”

A veto will provoke uproar among Muslims everywhere. Everyone already knows this, but the Obama administration ignores it.

Al-Faisal indirectly forecasts that, in the case of a veto, the American “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia will come to an end, and says that the Saudis will “adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy”—as Turkey already has done, one notes. The Saudi kingdom would oppose the American-supported Maliki government in Iraq, refuse to open an embassy there, and possibly end its support for American policy in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Al-Faisal also says that Saudi Arabia, by far the largest supporter of the Palestinian Authority, would be unable to give the Palestinians all of the financial aid and religious and political legitimacy that they would need to deal with Israel in such changed circumstances. He notes that, in recent polls, 70 percent of Palestinians anticipate a new intifada if they are vetoed at the U.N.

He warns that the region and the nations principally involved are far better served by continuing cooperation and good will between longstanding allies Saudi Arabia and the United States, and that “Saudi Arabia is willing and able to chart a new and divergent course if America fails to act justly with regard to Palestine.”

The American nation and economy, and its relations with nations far beyond the Middle East, are deeply vulnerable to the political catastrophe against which al-Faisal warns.

However, what al-Faisal does not say is that the U.S. is the only nation to possess the strength and opportunity to act preemptively to solve this crisis. Israel now is incapable of rescuing itself because of its quasi-permanent internal political deadlock.

President Obama could spectacularly reverse policy and save the day. He could declare that the U.S. will vote in support of Palestine’s full membership in the U.N. It will use all of the means at its disposal to support Israeli withdrawal of illegal settlements from territory designated as part of the Palestinian state in the 1948 U.N. partition of Mandate Palestine. It will do all in its power to impose the solution that everyone—including realistic Israelis and the Palestinians—understand to be the inevitable, permanent and just solution of this problem.

The world would be dazzled. Barack Obama’s place in history would be assured.

Article courtesy William Pfaff and Truthdig