"How America Divorced Arabs"?

Daily Times, June 4, 2006
POSTCARD USA: How America divorced the Arabs —Khalid Hasan

The Americans lost the Arabs: the Arabs found the Chinese, or the Chinese found the Arabs. Freeman said in the Chinese, the Arabs see a partner who will buy their oil without demanding that they accept a foreign ideology, abandon their way of life or make other choices they’d rather avoid

Of all the people I have seen, heard or run into in Washington, no one has impressed me more than Charles W Freeman Jr, a former US diplomat and a man of utter brilliance and tremendous good humour.

Do we’ve men like him in our foreign service? I can’t think of anyone quite like him. I will concede though that we are not without a few like Munir Akram at the United Nations who have courage and conviction and who work hard to keep the flag flying even when those who have taken it upon themselves to fly that flag, often look like putting it away in the basement in mothballs.

Charles Freeman (no one calls him Chuck, be assured) is the president of one think-tank in this city of Washington, which has been trying to change the stereotyped image of Arabs and the Arab world that is common, be it newspaper cartoonists or policymakers. His is also one think-tank, which despite Freeman’s excellent contacts in the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, where he was ambassador during the first Gulf War, is woefully short of funds. In fact, last year he told a meeting of his Middle East Policy Institute that this could well be the last time it was meeting as it had all but run out of money. Happily, that prediction has not come true.

Freeman speaks Chinese, French and Spanish and has a working knowledge of Portuguese and Italian. “I’ve always made a practice of trying to learn the language wherever I’ve been,” he explains. “I didn’t do as well as I would like to have done with Tamil, in South India, but I did learn Mandarin at the interpreter level, Taiwanese, and Thai, although I’ve lost much of it, and I’ve worked hard at Arabic,” he once said. He interpreted for President Nixon on his historic visit to China.

Freeman is also one of the five sponsors of the Committee for the Republic, which has called for an “examination of the nation’s rush to empire”. I don’t suppose that has exactly earned him an invitation to a White House dinner. I think it is important for people in Pakistan to know that Washington is not entirely peopled by the replicas and clones of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. There are also men like Charles Freeman, though their number is small. But they matter and what they think and write and speak is received with respect. Sometimes they also manage to change things.

Recently, Freeman spoke in California on Arab-Chinese relations. He began his speech by informing his audience, “I want to speak with you this morning about foreign affairs, by which, of course, I mean failing marriages, extramarital relationships, and instances of bigamy, maybe even polygamy. It’s pretty racy stuff compared to most diplomacy. Those of you who may be offended should leave now. I will be brief. Therefore, I will be superficial. But this doesn’t bother me at all. Decades ago, a wise man from the East told me that, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing superficially. I have always heeded his advice. He was, of course, from the East Coast of the United States.”

Freeman called US-China relations a “failing marriage” and recalled how Chinese President Hu Jintao had been insulted by Bush and his people when he visited Washington in April. He was denied a state dinner, the Chinese national anthem was announced as that of the Republic of China, a known Falun Gang agitator was permitted to join journalists on the White House grounds where she shouted at the Chinese president for three minutes before being removed.

Protesters just outside Blair House, where the president was staying, were allowed to protest late into the night and when Hu’s staff complained, it was referred to DC police, which had knocked off work an hour before, unless it were paid overtime.

From Washington, Hu flew to Riyadh “where there was no confusion at all about how to treat him”. Freeman said, “Basically, the Arabs give us oil and we give them back little green portraits of dead American presidents. Until recently, they ploughed the money we paid them back into the American economy — about $800 billion in private Arab investment by the turn of this century. And everyone benefited. Then came 9/11. A few bad actors determined to wreck this happy partnership managed to do so.”

American business in the Arab Gulf crashed from first to fifth place. “Mutual affection between Arabs and Americans has, in short, been succeeded by mutual fear and loathing, punctuated by occasional self-righteous American demands for major Arab behaviour modification — demands that they embrace an American reform agenda of elections, women’s liberation, religious pluralism. You know the list,” he added. Consequently, the Americans lost the Arabs: the Arabs found the Chinese, or the Chinese found the Arabs.

Freeman said in the Chinese, the Arabs see a partner who will buy their oil without demanding that they accept a foreign ideology, abandon their way of life, or make other choices they’d rather avoid. They see a major civilisation that seems determined to build a partnership with them, does not insult their religion or their way of life, values its reputation as a reliable supplier too much to engage in the promiscuous application of sanctions or other coercive measures, and has no habit of bombing or invading other countries to whose policies it objects.

The Arabs, he said, are Muslims “and they don’t have to divorce us to take a second wife. Hence their romances with China and India”. He predicted that soon there would be more Saudi students in China than in America.

No marriage, Freeman pointed out, turns out the way it is expected to, but the one between the Saudis and the Chinese, given the solid foundation on the addictive behaviour of the oil consumer, shows every sign of being destined to last. At the moment, it is suffused with the joy of mutual discovery, even infatuation, if not something close enough to love, he said.

And therein lies a lesson that the Americans are determined not to learn.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net