American Interest Pre-Publication Copy Summer (May/June) 2007 (Vol. II, No. 5) The following article, in whole or in part, may not be copied, downloaded, stored, further transmitted, transfered, distributed, altered or otherwise used, in any form or by any means, except: • one stored electronic and one paper copy of any article solely for your personal, non-commercial use; or • with prior written permission of The American Interest LLC. To subscribe to our online version, visit www.The-American-Interest.com To subscribe to our print version, call 1-800-767-5273 or mail the form below to: THE AMERICAN INTEREST PO BOX 338 MOUNT MORRIS, IL 61054-7521 J BEST OFFER! Yes, send me two years (12 issues) of J Yes, send me one year (6 issues) for only $39*. I’ll The American InteresT for only $69*. save $5.75 off the cover price. I’ll save 23% off the cover price! Name Address 1 Address 2 City State Zip Country E-mail Credit Card Exp. Name on Card Tel. No. Signature Date *Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of first issue. Add $14 per year J Payment enclosed for shipping & handling to addresses outside the U.S. and Canada. J Bill me later A73PPC CONTENTS THE AMERICAN INTEREST • VOLUME II, NUMBER 5, SUMMER (MAY/JUNE) 2007 Eagle & Crescent 6 What Do Muslims Think? by Amir Taheri Unprecedented intellectual ferment in the Muslim world is likely to have a happier ending than many Westerners suppose. 19 The Irrelevance of the Middle East by Philip E. Auerswald Neither our energy vulnerability nor the danger of terrorism is all it’s cracked up to be. The Middle East just isn’t that important. 6 28 Adventures in State-Making by Harvey Sicherman The best historical analogy for understanding the U.S. predicament in Iraq is older—and more useful—than you might think. 42 Fixing Public Diplomacy by Michael Holtzman The State Department needs to do “information” better, but we should privatize the “engage and persuade” business. Folks Like US 47 A Conversation with Amy Tan Amy Tan and Dana Gioia plumb the power of storytelling within the 108 American immigrant experience. 52 Born in the USA by Nicholas Eberstadt If demography is destiny, America’s is greater than that of any advanced nation. 60 Toolbox: A Few More Good Men by Lawrence Korb & Peter Ogden Bigger is not necessarily better. Here are four principles for enlarging the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Governance & Growth 119 65 Survival of the Fattest by Paul Collier Not all aspects of democracy are created equal, especially the effects of resource wealth on economic growth. 72 Toolbox: Making Aid Work by Stewart Patrick Despite reforms, the U.S. foreign aid regime is still flawed. SUMMER (MAY/JUNE) 2007 3 Potomac Tales 79 Raising Cane by James Snyder America’s “sugar daddies” may soon meet their match. 83 A Slice of Intelligence Life Adam Garfinkle, editor by James Rosen Patricia Murphy, executive editor Bolling Air Force Base can be a spooky place. Daniel Kennelly, senior managing editor Thomas Rickers, managing editor Reviews Executive Committee Francis Fukuyama, chair 88 L’Enfant’s Washington Charles Davidson Josef Joffe by Francis Fukuyama Walter Russell Mead The grand, strange and illuminating story of Washington, DC, and its eccentric genius of a designer. Editorial Board Anne Applebaum, Peter Berger, 102 Islam in America Zbigniew Brzezinski, Niall Ferguson, by Peter Skerry Bronislaw Geremek, Owen Harries, Four new books try to strike a balance between fear and Samuel Huntington, Bernard-Henri complacency over America’s three million Muslim citizens. Lévy, Glenn C. Loury, C. Raja Mohan, Douglass North, Ana Palacio (on leave), 108 Thinking about Thinking Itamar Rabinovich, Ali Salem, Lilia Shevtsova, Takashi Shiraishi, by William Reinhardt Mario Vargas Llosa, Wang Jisi, Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, is Ruth Wedgwood, James Q. Wilson now joined by I Am a Strange Loop. Michael McDonald, literary counsel 112 Davos 2007 Simon Monroe, R. Jay Magill, Jr., illustrators by Fred Kempe cover photo by Getty Images Klaus Schwab’s most recent extravaganza was “lite” on America. What a difference a year can make. Charles Davidson, publisher & CEO 119 Reagan’s Brandenburg Concerto Sara Bracceschi, advertising & syndication by John C. Kornblum Noelle Daly, subscriber services th Damir Marusic, marketing & web Marking the 20 anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Jamie Pierson, circulation & operations Down This Wall” speech. ADVERTISING SALES Sara Bracceschi Notes & Letters [email protected] (202) 223-08 128 The Pollbearer: A Letter from Rabat Perry Janoski by A.M. Spiegel publishing representative Notes on the pratfalls of democracy promotion. Allston-Cherry Ltd. (212) 665-9885 132 Letters to the Editor Thomas Parker, Eliot A. Cohen Imran Ahmad Adspace Sales Corporation LLC 133 Summer Note: The First Duty of Honest Men (92-21) 587-21 by Adam Garfinkle SYNDICATION Critics of recent Administration tactics on Korea and Iran Sara Bracceschi protest too much—sometimes way too much. [email protected] (202) 223-08 140 Yankee Doodle Subscriptions: Call (800) 767-5273 or visit www.the-american-interest.com. Two years (12 issues): $69 print or online; $129 for both. One year (6 issues): $39 print or online: $69 for both. Please add $1 per year for print- subscription delivery outside the U.S. and Canada. Postmaster and subscribers, send subscription orders and changes website of address to: The American Interest, P.O. Box 338, Mount Morris, IL 6105-7521. The American Interest (ISSN 1556- 5777) is published six times a year by The American Interest LLC. Printed by Fry Communications, Inc. Postage paid www.the-american-interest.com in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. ©2007, The American Interest LLC. Editorial offices: 1730 Rhode Island Ave. NW, THE AMERICAN INTEREST Suite 617, Washington, DC 20036. Tel.: (202) 223-4408. Fax: (202) 223-4489. Email: [email protected]. that many journalists bring to this topic. Yet Geneive Abdo, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim her very openness leaves her without a steady Life in America After 9/11 (Oxford University Press, compass by which to navigate the crosscurrents 2006), 224 pp., $26. of the contemporary Muslim American scene. Abdo does avoid the bromides of naive lib- Paul M. Barrett, American Islam: The Struggle for erals, who typically insist on treating Muslims the Soul of a Religion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as not so different from earlier immigrants to 2006), 320 pp., $25. America. She is convinced that there are loom- ing challenges among Muslim Americans, but Ilyas Ba-Yunus and Kassim Kone, Muslims in the she is not very clear as to what those challenges are. She is also careful to emphasize that there is United States (Greenwood Press, 2006), 192 pp., “no evidence of militancy” among Muslims here, $55. by which she presumably means no signs of ter- rorist activity. Still, she highlights an emergent Steven Emerson, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to “rejectionist movement” among young Muslim Militant Islam in the U.S. (Prometheus Books, Americans who, in her words, “are trying to cre- 2006), 535 pp., $28. ate their own world where they can find com- fort in their faith and their communities” and “are placing their Islamic identity first.” Their religious orientation, she relates, is much more Islam in America intellectual than the innocent and unreflective faith of their parents. They are “not interested PETER SKERRY in blindly following the teachings of an imam simply because he is a religious figure.” At the udging by talk radio chatter, Americans same time, she notes, these young people “are these days are more alarmed by Mexican often more observant of Islamic practice than Jday laborers hanging out on street corners their parents. Many young women are wearing than by the prospect that Islamist terrorists headscarves, even if their mothers didn’t cover.” will blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Yet large Abdo argues that these developments numbers of Americans are anxious and do feel “largely defy decades of history in a nation of threatened by Muslims around the globe, in- immigrants, and they challenge the American cluding the roughly three million Muslims liv- ideal of diverse cultures linked by a shared at- ing today in the United States. But is there any tachment to common goals and dreams.” But good reason for Americans to fear the Muslim are these trends, if true, really so different from communities in their midst? That is the fo- those of other immigrant groups—Greeks, cus of the four books reviewed here. Each in Jews, Irish, Italian and many others—whose its own way illustrates the enormous gaps in children or grand-children self-consciously re- knowledge about American Muslims that we claimed some aspect of their heritage to define as a nation have barely begun to address. For their particular American identity? If what she its insights or for what it unwittingly reveals identifies among Muslims here today is fun- about Muslim attitudes, each also adds to our damentally different from other groups, Abdo understanding. does not make the case very cogently. Geneive Abdo worked for more than a de- An admittedly dramatic episode involving cade as a foreign correspondent in Egypt and changes at a prominent mosque in Dearborn, Iran. Undoubtedly, that experience, as well as Michigan, does suggest a degree of difference. growing up in San Antonio, Texas, in a Ma- The Dix mosque was founded in an old pool ronite Catholic Lebanese immigrant family, hall in 1937, when it was used mostly by Leba- help explain the freshness of her approach. In nese-Syrian immigrants. There were also a few Mecca and Main Street, Abdo has no axes to Yemenis, whose numbers remained low until grind, and her perspective is remarkably un- the permissive changes in U.S.