Hard Choices: A Memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Author:Hillary Rodham Clinton [Clinton, Hillary Rodham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9781471131530
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2014-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

15

The Arab Spring: Revolution

They’re sitting on a powder keg and if they don’t change, it’s going to explode.” I was exasperated. It was the first week of January 2011, and we were planning another trip to the Middle East. This time I wanted to go beyond the usual agenda of official meetings and private cajoling about needed political and economic reforms in the Arab world. Jeff Feltman, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, my top advisor on the region, agreed. Trying to drive change in the Middle East could feel like banging your head against a brick wall, and Jeff had been doing it for years, under several administrations. Among other roles, he had served as Ambassador to Lebanon during some of its most tumultuous recent history, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 that triggered the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops, as well as the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. These experiences would serve Jeff well in the weeks to come as we tried to stay one step ahead of a wave of upheaval that would sweep the region. The period ahead would be fluid and confusing even for experienced diplomats.

I turned to two of my speechwriters, Megan Rooney and Dan Schwerin. “I’m tired of repeating the same old things every time I go there,” I told them. “I want to say something that really breaks through this time.” The upcoming annual Forum for the Future conference in Doha, the capital of energy-rich Qatar, would provide an opportunity for me to deliver a message to many of the Middle East’s most influential royals, political leaders, business tycoons, academics, and civil society activists. Many of them would be gathered in the same room at the same time. If I wanted to make the case that the region’s status quo was unsustainable, this was the place to do it. I told Megan and Dan to get to work.

Of course, I was not the first American official to push for reform. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Egypt and made a remarkable admission: for more than half a century, the United States had chosen to pursue “stability at the expense of democracy” and “achieved neither.” That would be true no longer, she promised. Four years later in President Obama’s major speech in Cairo, he too called for democratic reforms.

Yet for all the words delivered in public and even more pointed words in private, and despite the persistent efforts of people from all walks of life to make their countries more prosperous and free, by early 2011, much of the Middle East and North Africa remained locked in political and economic stagnation. Many countries had been ruled for decades under martial law. Across the region corruption at every level, especially at the top, was rampant. Political parties and civil society groups were nonexistent or tightly restricted; judicial systems were far from free or independent; and elections, when they were held, were often rigged.

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