Tragedy can at times lead to rich intercultural dialog and, often, catharsis. This has been the case after the death of Ambassador Nadia Younes (1946 – 2003), one of the Arab world’s brightest diplomatic icons. Younes, chief of Staff for the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General to Iraq (2003), along with 21 others, died in the August 19, 2003 Canal Hotel Bombing in Baghdad, Iraq. Perpetrated by unknown extremists, the attack was aimed at dislodging the United Nations presence in Iraq and around the world. Unbowed by the horror of the attack, the belief in the international peace process led by the UN continues to live on. With the support of her family and the American University in Cairo (AUC), Younes’ support for cross cultural idea exchange has been voiced at the annual Nadia Younes Memorial Lecture, first held in 2004.

Due to the coronavirus, this year’s lecture came in the form of an online webinar featuring guest speaker Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag in attendance virtually.

Kaag began by referring to Younes as a trailblazer whose work has touched and transformed the world. “In the words of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, spoken here at the first Memorial Lecture, Nadia ‘brought with her everywhere a special Arab brand of enlightenment and tolerance—only to fall victim, in the end, to a special brand of extremism and intolerance’,” Kaag said.

Kaag recalled the words of 14th century Arab intellectual Ibn Khaldun who said that the past closely resembles the future, in that it is cyclic and reproduces itself. Kaag said that she was not sure Ibn Khaldun’s idea of a fatalistic repeating of past events in the future was true in our modern age.

She believes that personal decisions have more to do with how the world will change in the future. As opposed to Ibn Khaldun’s vision, Kaag believes that the future will not resemble the past. “In our present age, the steps we take as individuals echo along the paths we take as societies,” she said. 

Younes lived and died for the UN and the ideals which the international organization stands for, often exhibiting a rare humor and wit which many remember. “It was said that she would tell Bill Clinton where to stand, and Vladimir Putin what to wear,” Kaag said.

While she never told President Putin what to wear or former-President Clinton where to stand, Kaag stated that like Younes, she too attended AUC and had the chance to connect to Egypt and the Middle East and North Africa. She stated, “My time here has given me strong ties to this region and its people. I have happily spent a large part of my life and career here. In spite of its many difficulties and contradictions, it is a beautiful region whose past and future hold much promise. But also much pain.”

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought existent conflicts to the fore.

COVID-19’s Deeper Impacts in the Middle East

Kaag stressed that the biggest effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Middle Eastern countries has been the exaggeration of already existing social inequalities. Economies have come to a stop and the world is focused on finding a vaccine and fighting the virus but this singular vision has hurt the wider attention of regional policy-makers in addressing gender inequality, economic stratification, human rights and vulnerabilities of minorities and displaced persons.

She acknowledged that many governments in the MENA region had less than stellar records in the above areas of inequality. “If we look at the statistics alone, we find that the Middle East and North Africa region ranks lowest in the most recent Economist Democracy Index. Challenging geopolitical circumstances, economic stagnation and endemic corruption afflict many states throughout the region,” Kaag said. 

“All of these factors have long fed growing public unrest, which has, from time to time, erupted into public protests. This discontent and marginalization continues to make itself felt.”

The long-ranging economic effect of the pandemic is in itself a concern. The Minister stressed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the MENA region will lose 4.1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020 alone. This will be, according to Minister Kaag, the lowest forecast of the IMF in 50 years. “The weakest shoulders will have to carry the heaviest load. This will be felt in refugee camps, and migrant communities—themselves the result of long-running conflicts and fragility.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently 16 million internally displaced persons and refugees in the Middle East and North Africa,” she added.

One of the worst effects of the pandemic will be that women will suffer more than men. Kaag related that as more than half of the global female labor force works in the informal economy sector, they do not qualify for any social safety net. “When economies shut down, this group is most vulnerable, and worst affected. At the same time, gender-based violence has dramatically increased, as people spend more time in their homes. This poses a serious danger to women who live with abusive partners or family members,” she warned.

The Dutch minister stressed that young people have also been hit hard by the virus and the resulting global lockdown. International agencies have reported that millions of children in the region will not return to school once the lockdown ends.

Presently one major challenge is the 37 million children in the MENA region who do not have access to remote learning. This present lack of education and the possibility that many of these children will not return to school, means that there is a chance for the creation of a “lost generation” which will be undereducated and underemployed. Kaag stressed that moving forward, if young people in a post-coronavirus world do not find ways to improve their lives, they will either force change or try to leave their nations.

“I want to stress that, although the situation is serious, it also offers opportunities for change… Over the last few years we have seen the power of young people. The strength of their voices, and the beauty of their convictions. As young people around the world marched against climate change, and for social justice, they managed to reshape the international agenda.”

Kaag underscored the need to listen to young people in addressing the MENA region’s problems. “It is young people who show societies the best way forward, and so it is to young people that we should listen. This means giving them a greater say in policy and politics. Investing in education and youth employment.”

She Who Inspires Catharsis

In discussing the final effects of the coronavirus, Kaag referenced Aristotle who explained that following tragedy there comes catharsis which is a cleansing experience that moves us beyond fear and grief, and helps us face the world again. 

“The great medieval Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (also) wrote about catharsis. He believed that it ‘makes souls become tender and prompts them to accept virtues’,” she added.

Kaag said this spirit of catharsis reminded her of the inspirational leader Nadia Younes, “Her tragedy has left a deep mark. But that mark now inspires others to follow in her footsteps.”

Before being appointed to her present position as a minister in 2017, Kaag was active at a number of diplomatic posts with the most prestigious being the UN Special Coordinator for Syria (2013 – 2014) and the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon (2015 – 2017).

Egypt is now bearing the brunt of the second wave of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population (MoHP) Dr. Hala Zayed has publicly said. 

COVID-19 began to spread as a contagious virus in China in December 2019 and was eventually declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Ever since, Egypt has implemented a number of measures which helped to curb the spread locally. Numbers of COVID-19 cases peaked in June 2020, only to recede in the months since then.

But the number of cases have started to rise again. According to figures released from the Ministry of Health, the number of new cases a day has now reached 342, up from just under 100 a month ago.

“This is the pandemic era and everything is changing. We need to be realistic in our decisions. We need to change our mindsets to be able to manage and proceed,” Zayed said in her opening remark during a recent Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP) Tahrir Dialogue special webinar series. 

Countries around the world are now working to curb the spread of the virus by  implementing total and partial lockdowns, enforcing mask-wearing, encouraging working from home and online education, and racing to produce vaccines and establish set treatment methods. 

Zayed likened the pandemic to a sudden exam that began in January which caught the whole world without preparation, curriculum or specific guidelines. 

“We had to follow new thinking styles because the decisions we take have everlasting impacts, such as the decision to fully lock down,” said Zayed. 

Egypt & Pandemic Management 

In such unexpected global crises, the main aim is to set national health targets so that all stakeholders can look into the situation accordingly in a systematic, unified way. Since this is multidimensional and multi-sectoral, the government is responsible for overall management. Seeing as this is a high-level management issue, decisions are based on several pillars that include both health and socioeconomic issues.

Zayed said that there are two curves for the pandemic depending on what each country chooses to do. In countries that  followed the red curve (as shown above) the peak began a few weeks after the first reported COVID-19 cases. 

In Egypt, however, the peak was in June. “It took us five or six months to be able to continue flattening. We followed the blue curve. The maximum was 1,900 cases per day during the peak of Wave 1 compared to the five or six thousand daily cases in other European countries,” said Zayed.

“Our aim was always to flatten the curve.” 

Every country went through different stages of contagion, or ‘transmission scenarios,’ going  from having no reported cases, to sporadic cases, to clusters of cases. Right now, the world has reached a stage of the pandemic called “community transmission” where it has become difficult to trace the chain of transmission, as the number of confirmed cases is too high. 

In Egypt, decisions were based on infectious status, community engagement and on public health capacity. In regards to the latter, Zayed said that there is surveillance capacity, quarantine capacity for people coming in from airports and any points of entry, sanitation capacity, and an adequate health care system with hospitals, labs and testing centers. 

Managing a global health pandemic is largely about taking decisions at the right time. 

The minister explained that decisions taken at the right time need to be consistent with the infection status and with socioeconomic issues. Throughout Egypt’s management of the pandemic, the government and leadership were centrally and sub-nationally involved in health sector issues. Moreover, because health issues impact other sectors in the country, there is multi-stakeholder coordination on the national level in various sectors including, but not limited to, tourism, economy, gender, agriculture, infrastructure, etc.

In the meantime, Egypt was also heavily focused on continuous monitoring and evaluation of the efficacy of the taken measures. Funding the health sector also played a major role in moving forward. 

“The fund is not only for healthcare, but also to support the economy. The country allocated over a hundred billion EGP (6.4 billion USD) to respond to the crisis. We used 5 to 6 billion in the healthcare sector,” said Zayed. 

Equally necessary is spreading public awareness about wearing masks and social distancing. 

In a recent cabinet meeting, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said that citizens who do not wear masks in public and crowded places will face fines. Government officials have stressed that if the public does not adhere to precautionary measures, the country may have to take difficult decisions which could  harm the economy.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, a package of precautionary measures have been taken, which in turn led to flattening the curve of infections and gave the health system an opportunity to absorb the numbers so that they do not suddenly increase and lead to the collapse of the health system as has happened in some countries,” explained Zayed. 

A Timeline of Infection

In Egypt, the first COVID-19 case appeared in late February/ early March, leading to the closure of schools and universities by mid-March and the closure of airports and commercial shops by the end of March.

At all times, Zayed explained, health services were at a maximum capacity of operation so as to handle the growing number of cases. At the outbreak of the pandemic in Egypt, all cases were generally isolated in hospitals. 

Zayed said that there were nine hospitals, fifty triage hospitals and twenty seven labs alongside four hundred and forty ambulances allocated to manage the crisis in February and March. 

“We discovered that not all cases need to be hospitalized. 85 percent of the cases are mild to moderate. Those are isolated in hotels and dorms with complete medical care,” she said. Zayed added that the MoHP collaborated with businessmen and the Ministry of Higher Education to free up space for patients in hotels and in student dorms. 

By June, the MoHP decided that people with mild to moderate symptoms could also isolate in their own homes. At that time, there was a massive increase in the number of hospitals to over three hundred and forty, alongside an increase in the number of active labs and ambulances. 

“After a decrease in the number of recorded cases, we downsized the number of beds and are operating with twenty one isolation hospitals. We expand and respond according to what governorates need and as per the situation,” said Zayed.

She added that over 85 percent of the cases are isolated at home under complete medical supervision from the ministry. 

“This is how to be resilient and flexible in being able to respond to a situation without collapsing the healthcare system… If we isolate everyone in the hospital, the health care system can collapse,” she said. 

This way, any critical cases that need hospitalization will receive proper attention and care. 

Some Egyptians were abroad and unable to return home, in response to which, “when the first case was reported in Wuhan, China, we began to evacuate Egyptians,” she said. When travel was reopened in July, the Egyptian Cabinet decided that everyone returning from abroad would need to present a negative PCR test to enter the country. 

Complete Lockdown vs. Partial Lockdown

“We never did a complete lockdown in Egypt,” said Zayed. This happens to be one of the most crucial decisions that the government took. 

A total lockdown in Egypt would have had severe economic consequences, as the informal sector accounts for 70 or 80% of the country’s economy. 

People working in the informal sector do not have set working hours or a set monthly income, they are generally paid per day. Hence, a total lockdown would not have been sufficient. 

“Based on our experience, we work to flatten the curve with two sets of measures: mass testing vs target testing and total lockdown vs partial lockdown… Egypt and Japan decided to do target testing instead of doing PCR for everyone. We do PCR for people who have symptoms of infection. But in Spain, Italy, UK and France, there was mass testing,” said Zayed. 

The minister added that the above European countries also decided to go into complete lockdown, and occasional partial lockdown depending on the scenario at hand. 

“After 10 months of our experience, the total test per million in all European countries is about 88 million with more than 5 million positive cases and over 170 thousand deaths,” said Zayed. In Egypt and Japan, the total number of tests was at about 24 million where 216 thousand tested positive alongside 8 thousand deaths. 

Europe, a high-income, economically developed region, has not had to handle a pandemic in over a hundred years, said the minister. Hence, middle-income countries might actually be doing better as they have more experience dealing with health pandemics. 

Governance During COVID-19

In Egypt, there is a strong surveillance activity system in place because the country has previously had to manage infectious diseases. The country established a dynamic map that is updated every 10 minutes to show reported cases and where the clusters of infected people are located. 

“Pandemic is not a healthcare issue, it is a government issue. Governance and leadership is important especially in empowering people and letting them trust you, and to unify everyone under several targets,” said Zayed. 

Egypt has previously had to eliminate Virus C, a liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, an experience from which the country has drawn lessons for the fight against COVID-19, the minister explained. She said that the same health directors who worked on Virus C are also working on managing the pandemic. 

“The minister assistant for public health issues who eliminated Virus C is the same person who headed the pandemic management,” she said. 

While the country works to combat the virus, there are still other pressing medical issues that need not be ignored. 

“We did not close our hospitals in the face of different healthcare issues,” said Zayed. Many countries have ensured that hospitals are focused on treating only COVID-19 while cancer patients or those suffering from  heart problems remain on the sideline. 

A  CNN article titled “As hospitals focus on coronavirus, patients with other illnesses wait in fear”, reports that some hospitals abroad are so focused on COVID-19 that patients with other illnesses are ignored. 

“For some, services they relied on are no longer available or have been canceled. For others, the services they need are still available, but they’re too scared to venture out and risk contracting the virus,” writes CNN.

“COVID-19 revealed the importance of protecting vulnerable populations,” said Zayed. 

Mohamed Salma, Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Sciences & Engineering (SSE) at AUC, agrees that while curing COVID-19 is crucial, this was an opportunity to understand the health sector. 

“As physicians, we are focused on treatment and diagnosis, however now, we learn that there are other things that can shape the issue such as socioeconomic situations, mental health, and the environment,” said Salama.  

The Second Wave and Multilateralism 

“The pandemic has no borders and no one is safe until everyone is safe,” said Zayed.

France, the United Kingdom, and other countries have recently been enforcing lockdowns again due to the ‘second wave’. Inevitably, no country is safe without the protection of other countries. 

Zayed visited both China and Italy during critical times to receive assistance for Egypt and to offer assistance to other countries. 

“We supported more than 30 countries in Africa under the pandemic fund. Egypt supported with more than 4 million USD in supplies of medicine,” she said, adding that support was also given to a lot of Arab countries such as Lebanon. 

Egypt is well prepared for the possibility of  a second wave, in terms of human resources; vaccines; hotlines for immediate access to MoHP; developing a network of laboratories; enhanced medical infrastructure, supplies, and treatment protocols. 

“Health officials have assured the public that Egypt will be among the first countries to get the Pfizer vaccine once it is fully approved,” writes Ahram Online. Pfizer, a U.S. multinational pharmaceutical company, in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech, announced that their vaccine is over 90% effective in preventing the virus. 

Responding to COVID-19 requires both a multi-sectoral response on the national level, and a multilateral response globally. Within the country, various ministries supported the pandemic response. For instance, Zayed explained that the Ministry of Endowments prohibited holding funerals or marriage contracts in mosques and cancelled Friday sermons for prayers. Moreover, the Ministry of Tourism, which suffered greatly, also had to reform hotels and travel to be safe. The Ministry of Education also had to adapt to online learning and re-model curriculum to fit hybrid teaching with their reopening in October.  

“The main aim is to set national health targets so all stakeholders can focus and continue work. The management of the system shall be resilient and reactive to the changing needs of the pandemic that affect all the sectors of the government,” said Zayed. 

Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 was a surprise to many. “I’m sure, for most Americans, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster,” said Mina Al-Oraibi, Iraqi journalist based in Abu Dhabi and Editor-in-Chief of the National. Al-Oraibi was the main speaker at a webinar titled “A Conversation with Mina Al-Oraibi” hosted by Harvard University’s Middle East Initiative on November 5. In her presentation, Al-Oraibi outlined the United States–Middle East relationship over the past two administrations and charted the way in which it may evolve.

Event Co-moderator Karim Haggag, former Egyptian ambassador and professor at the American University in Cairo, asked whether challenges like COVID-19, political unrest, and election uncertainty have changed the Middle East’s perception of the United States. Al-Oraibi explained that the United States’ role as a global superpower started to weaken with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The deterioration continued as the Obama administration intervened ineffectually in Syria. At these points, the United States did not act like a superpower. 

The United States once lauded itself as a beacon of democracy; yet, its response to COVID-19 has exposed foundational cracks. With over two hundred and fifty thousand dead, the rest of the world wonders whether the United States can take care of itself: and, if not, how can it help any other nation?

To Al-Oraibi, the most surprising part of the Trump presidency has been the way that the United States’ standards of accountability have shifted. Trump’s shock factor is so unyielding that statements or actions which would have forced public officials to resign five years ago have become mere blips in the news cycle. Al-Oraibi pointed to the support President Trump still has, as evidenced by his winning over seventy-three million votes for reelection. Biden won the election with over seventy-eight million popular votes and 306 electoral seats (a quorum of 270 is necessary to win). Nonetheless, the fact remains that Trump—running for reelection during a pandemic and global economic recession—was still able to galvanize eleven million more voters to his side than in 2016. To explain Trump’s continued popularity, Al-Oraibi cited widespread resentment for the “establishment”. In 2016, Trump capitalized on this by purposefully billing himself as a political outsider. Yet, it is ironic, stated Al-Oraibi, that Trump is an outsider only in job experience: his wealth and privilege are norms to which most of Washington subscribe.

Co-moderator Tarek Masoud, Professor of Public Policy and the Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, turned the conversation more broadly toward democracy as a concept. While Trump alleges nonexistent voter fraud and vows not to leave office despite his loss, the effectiveness of the U.S. electoral system has been brought into question, as has the resilience of U.S. institutions. Al-Oraibi noted that for years the United States has criticized political processes in the Middle East. Now, pundits in the region quip that the Middle East has to teach the United States how to hold elections.

Al-Oraibi emphasized that it is difficult to generalize about the Middle East, a vast region home to different cultures, languages, religions, and circumstances. In assessing the way that the region relates to U.S. society, she pointed to a division between youth and older elites. 

Al-Oraibi first pointed to a large contingent of Arab youth who may have studied in the United States; whose parents may have done so; or who feel an affinity for U.S. culture. Yet, some young Arabs now feel that the pillars that long attracted travel to the United States—education, technology, the arts—no longer represent the same opportunity that they used to. In the place of American universities, those in Canada and, recently, New Zealand have become popular destinations for many to study.

Masoud pointed to the support given to Trump’s “Muslim ban” by the Gulf countries and Syria as evidence for a need to assess political leadership separately, and asked whether the gap in attitude between leaders and citizenry in the Middle East may cause dissatisfaction on behalf of the latter. Al-Oraibi responded that the way leaders and the people interact is quite dependent on national context. “The average Iraqi is so much different from the average Emirati,” she said.

Al-Oraibi went on to explain that the relationships between the elites and the youth majorities in many Middle Eastern countries are often devoid of trust: in these cases, disgruntlement is inherent. There, citizens might see their countries’ leadership as puppets of the United States. However, there is a small minority of regional states where individuals hold complete faith in their governments. In such nations, Al-Oraibi stated, if leaders support American actions, that feeling will resonate with the populace.

Inherited Challenges

The United States’ perceived cultural retreat in the Middle East, stated Al-Oraibi, has been accompanied by political and military withdrawal from the region, as evidenced by the destruction of the Iran deal and withdrawal from Syria. Many Middle Eastern countries wish that U.S. military and political presence could be divorced; yet, in recent history, such a division has proved challenging. U.S. military withdrawal can be traced back to fatigue, which likewise promotes political disengagement. 

As the United States withdraws from the Middle East, the region watches America “pivot to Asia”, a strategic reorientation begun by the Obama administration. In the United States, discussions of China’s rise often carry a negative connotation. In the Middle East, Al-Oraibi explained, emotions are more mixed regarding China. Even today, Chinese presence in the region is not nearly as large as the United States’; however, there is a concern that further U.S. disengagement will create a vacuum. Clearly, the hope is that regional powers could fill the emerging vacuum instead of China, but a more pronounced Chinese entry into the Middle East is possible. Thus, Al-Oraibi outlined a need for outside powers to have  political engagement in the Middle East but with no strings attached. 

Trump’s Middle East policy over the last four years has centered on the Gulf countries. Al-Oraibi related that Trump vetoed legislation that would end U.S. assistance to Saudi Arabia in Yemen, withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal, and passed the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Biden, on the other hand, is expected to restart nuclear negotiations with Iran. 

Ultimately, Al-Oraibi said she foresees a stalemate in the region during the Biden presidency. Though she did not think Biden would trigger a weakening of ties to a traditional ally like Saudi Arabia, she did not see a resolution of major conflicts—like those in Yemen, Libya, and Israel and Palestine—as likely either. 

Al-Oraibi stated that, had she been able to vote in the U.S. election, she would have been a “single-issue voter” focusing on what Biden’s and Trump’s positions on Iraq are. She called a plan proposed by President-Elect Joe Biden in 2006—which suggested partitioning Iraq along Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish lines—distressing, and worried that a Biden administration will take an overly sectarian view of the Middle East. Trump, she said, is more transactional, though Masoud contended that he is similarly superficial. Al-Oraibi also invoked Biden’s role as Vice President to former President Obama, who she said swept regional concerns about Iran under the rug. Al-Oraibi pointed to a feeling of duplicity from the Obama–Biden White House. At the minimum, “with Donald Trump, what you see is what you get,” she said.

Masoud recalled an October op-ed for the National in which Al-Oraibi called Iraq “the country in which U.S. elections matter as much as they do in America.” Al-Oraibi posited that the next U.S. administration’s policy on Iraq should aim to support the state and its institutions. When asked by Masoud how she would convince Americans to “bear the cost” of supporting Iraqi institutions—a phrase often used by U.S. policymakers—Al-Oraibi noted that a large cut of U.S. funds channeled toward Iraq actually go to U.S. contractors there. “There are a lot of very rich Americans out of the war in Iraq,” she stressed. 

In order to provide the best institutional support, Al-Oraibi prescribed narrow channels of communication. In Iraq, she said that a lack of adherence to delineated roles allows foreign parties to “undercut the actual institutions by dealing with the people that they’re comfortable with, and [playing] them off each other.” 

“Everybody acts as Foreign Minister in Iraq—the head of Parliament acts as Foreign Minister in Iraq,” she added. Institutions can be strengthened by ensuring that foreign money is channeled through state structures. This is in contrast to the strategy taken in the fight against the Islamic State, Al-Oraibi said, where the United States armed individuals indiscriminately. 

Emergence of a Regional Voice

In order to confront challenging regional issues, the question of who is best fit to approach them must be raised. Haggag stated that oftentimes U.S. criticism of the Middle East critiques a lack of regional leadership. Al-Oraibi agreed that “an Arab voice is missing.” In the case of Palestine, for example, Middle Eastern leaders are quick to blame the Abraham Accords as a barrier to a peaceful settlement; yet, the region hasn’t approached the dispute with a united front in years. “So many leaders will wax lyrical about Palestine… when they have done zilch, zero, for Palestine,” Al-Oraibi said.

In order for that voice to emerge, an honest conversation among regional players about mutual interests is needed. Can the United States access oil and levy counterterrorism operations without destabilizing regional states? Can the United States help Middle Eastern nations bring technological research and development to local markets in return? It is clear that a conversation aligning interests in full transparency needs to occur, said Al-Oraibi. However, such discourse may have to be put on hold for the moment. Not only is the United States fatigued, as exhibited by its military withdrawal from the region, but COVID-19 forces all governments to look inward. In the short term, pandemic responses will likely take precedence over creating transregional inroads.

The tumultuous U.S. presidential election has left Arab states questioning their fate and the role they will be allowed to play in their region. One thing is for certain, however–U.S. relations with Iran will be at the heart of the region’s geopolitics; at least that’s how Raghida Dergham, a prominent Lebanese–American journalist and founder of the Beirut Institute, puts it.

“There is no one Arab perspective,” Dergham says. She suggests that, generally speaking, the Arab perspective will likely fall within one of two categories: those who feel immense relief and those who feel immense anxiety with regards to the changes president-elect Biden will bring to U.S.–Middle East relations.

Dergham’s lucid dissection of Middle Eastern perspectives on the 2020 U.S. elections came as part of a conversation series organized by the Harvard Kennedy School as part of its fall 2020 Middle East Initiative (MEI). The series, titled “USA 2020: The View from the Arab World,” is co-hosted by Tarek Masoud and Karim Haggag and attempts to tackle the question of how American politics would play out in the Middle East.

Many believe that Trump’s presidency, while tedious and exhausting, provided a significant platform for the consolidation of America’s relationship with the region. This also seems to be the case because Trump’s restorative connection-making took place against a backdrop of Middle Eastern animosity toward the Obama administration.

However, a Biden presidency does not necessarily mean the demise of Middle Eastern geopolitics entirely. There is optimism among many that relative regret over the Obama administration in hindsight may bring about better regional alliances. Dergham mentioned Syria, which is pleased with the change in American administration, as the exception. So too Iran, a state she feels will be empowered to enhance its influence over the region without being hindered by the Trump administration. “Iran will feel strengthened again, and powerful again to the extent that it will implement its projects in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Yemen. And for many Arabs, this is an encroachment on Arab geography that they do not welcome,” she said.  Egypt is cited as being one of the possible losers of a Biden presidency, she added. Trump had bolstered his relationship with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, a relationship which could soon wither away. Dergham also raised the question of Turkey and its support of the expansion of the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region.

Masoud, professor of Public Policy and the Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman professor of International Relations, proverbially tied a ribbon around Dergham’s argument by suggesting that she believes “the only Arabs that will be happy about a Biden victory are those who are either in cahoots with Iran or in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood”.

Dergham added that there are those who will not be anxious about a Biden presidency because they would feel as though falling into the proverbial arms of Iran will not prove to be an easy feat. A portion of policymakers feel as though the Biden administration will need to dissect the policy system set up by the Trump administration and “build on it rather than throw it in the sea”. Dergham warns that members of the Biden team may be quick to revive old Obama–Biden policies, specifically mentioning the likely drive toward the resurrection of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, a deal Trump fervently resented and eventually withdrew from in May of 2018. However, a revival of the deal will not be possible without a fair number of obstacles, “above all because of the missiles” Dergham added. The deal itself has been a point of contention since its conception by the Obama administration. Dergham suggested that the JCPOA enabled the Obama administration to turn a blind eye to the atrocities taking place in Syria, which is possibly the administration’s biggest regret.

A challenge we must not forget is that of democratization, Dergham added. “Democracy is not an easy word, not in this part of the world or anywhere else,” she stated, because there is no trust in the American drive for democracy in the region anymore. This distrust was bred by the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and has continued to tarnish the relationship between the United States and the Middle East ever since.

The diverse range of perspectives with regards to the change in the American presidency will yield different policy implications with regards to the various players in the region. The overwhelming idea seemed to be that the sanctions the Trump administration had imposed on individuals, parties, states, and militias in the region displayed a commitment to the fortification of alliances that was somewhat absent under Obama.

Considering Arab Roles in The Region

But will Arab countries have a role to play in manufacturing policies that guarantee their decision-making power in the future? In the past, Middle Eastern countries have been notoriously excluded from negotiations that they, more often than not, eventually bear the consequences of. But what agency have Arabs given themselves before that?

“The criticism from the region toward U.S. policies under Obama led to this estrangement between the administration and its partners in the region. But the counter criticism from the U.S. side was that the Arab World has no solutions to these problems. What is the Arab solution for Iran’s nuclear program? What is the Arab solution to the Syrian civil war? What is the Arab solution for the proliferation of Iranian forces?” asked Haggag, visiting fellow at the Middle East initiative and co-managing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs.

In response, Dergham explained that Arabs have been purposefully excluded “in a very predetermined way” particularly with regards to U.S.–Iran negotiations. Overwhelmingly this seems to be the case because Arabs do not have the necessary channels through which to communicate their position. Most pertinent is the case of the JCPOA, where discussions were held between the five permanent members of the Security Council, Germany, and Iran. No Arab states were given the opportunity to participate in the negotiations, but Dergham insisted that they should have been given the platform regardless of the fact that, perhaps, they themselves did not “push enough” for it.

Dergham stressed the impotence of regional administrative structures as one of the primary reasons for the Arab inability to participate. The Arab League has proven ineffective in recent months, particularly on the issue of Arab states breaking ranks and continuing to normalize relations with Israel. Likewise, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), ridden with internal conflict due to the recent rift between Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the other, has been unable to take decisive action with regards to Arab–Israeli relations. Some policymakers suggest that GCC countries have strengthened their relationship with Israel in an attempt to consolidate power and take a stand against Iran and Turkey. There is a general understanding, Dergham posited, that Arab states are not in control of their own security structures. Attempts at developing such a structure have been made in recent years, primarily by Iran, as a way to expand its hegemony over the region. These attempts were inevitably shot down leaving Arab states in a state of limbo.

Uncertainty About the Future?

Dergham holds that Saudi Arabia will evolve into a more important American ally. Unites States–Saudi relations have thrived to a great degree under the Trump administration’s supervision, and perhaps they will stay that way. Saudi Arabia has been encouraged by Trump to normalize relations with Israel, a move the United States would support.

But normalization of ties with Israel is not a decision reached by Arab consensus. Dergham had previously said that she did not believe that the Abraham Accords—the agreement between the UAE and the United States this year to normalize relations with Israel—were unanimously agreed upon by all Arab states. She adds that there continues to be significant opposition to the idea of normalizing relations with Israel. The role the United States, in her view, should be to urge Israel to halt its annexation plans and push for a two-state solution that includes the State of Palestine.

As for the situation in Syria, Dergham said that the continuing hold of the Damascus government cannot be viewed as a “clear win” for Russia. She believes Biden will uphold the terms of the 2020 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which imposes sanctions on foreign actors conducting transactions with the Syrian government and its allies, but not without some level of guilt with regards to the policies he had initially enacted during his vice-presidency under Obama. Nevertheless, if the United States will be actively involved in the conflict resolution process, they should do so while considering the relative strengths of Turkey, Iran, and Russia but while also remembering not to overstate Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s strength.

In responding to other crises in the region, such as the Beirut explosion, the U.S. response in contrast to France’s was minimal. Dergham suggested that France has not been acting alone or in a vacuum and that Macron’s efforts have been aided and abetted by the United States in the form of individual sanctions which Dergham deems quite impactful. She cited the effectiveness of these sanctions on some Lebanese officials, singling out Lebanese Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri, in positively influencing top-level decision-making as well as helping fight the socio-political corruption that has crippled the country for decades.

Above all, Dergham is somewhat uncertain about the nature of U.S.–Middle Eastern relations in the next four years. The region could face a regretful Biden administration keen on rekindling important alliances, or a far more malicious presidency that could unravel regional connections curated by Trump.

As former South African Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Ian Plenderleith said in his valedictory address in May 2007, “South Africans are great at formulating plans, but lousy in terms of implementing them.” The National Development Plan launched in 2012 is an excellent planning document, but after eight years of state capture there is very little to show, as per capita economic growth has fallen consistently since 2011 instead of improving. The collection of essays in Recession, Recovery & Reform: South Africa after Covid-19, the book edited by Professor Raymond Parson from the North-West University School of Business and Governance, was conceived before the Covid-19 pandemic as an attempt to address the declining economic growth rate. A small multi-stakeholder working group convened by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) has since been set up to finalize South Africa’s Covid-19 economic recovery plan. The question is, will the policymakers accept these recommendations? Will they ensure that, this time, it will be different and turn plans into actions? After all, Nedlac, which groups together government, business, labor, and civil society, must implement any recovery plan.

The book itself is a hybrid between an academic tract and a popular read. So, while the essays themselves are easy to read, the authors were meticulous in backing up their recommendations with extensive endnotes and providing a large bibliography for further reading.

Preface

In his preface, Parsons sets out the reason for this collection of essays and what they hope to achieve in terms of finding South Africa’s way forward. In essence the book asks, “how can we build on our strengths and remedy our weaknesses as a country in order to create a better life for all?” While covering a wide range of topics, the book’s core message is, what comes next, and how? What reforms need to be implemented to lead to a recovery that will result in a more just, inclusive, and resilient economy?

Law and the economy through a social-justice lens

In her essay, former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela explores what the just implementation of the law can do for marginalized members of South African society. She asks whether we can ignore the plea for social justice of informal hawker Palesa Musa, who said that poverty today limits freedom in the same way past laws did during apartheid. That reminded Madonsela of an African proverb about debating whether the leopard chasing you is male or female. In other words, we should focus less on assigning blame for the lack of economic growth and more on how to escape the leopard and ensure a rapid and sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. “If we want peace we must work for justice, including social justice. And if we want rapid and sustainable economic development we must be prepared to design and implement laws that disrupt the toxic socioeconomic relations that we inherited from the past,” she writes.

The media and the markets

In his essay, Business Day editor Lukanyo Mnyanda examines the role of the free press, which he argues is facing an existential crisis. While advertising revenue is sucked away by the offshore behemoths of Google and Facebook, newsrooms now are increasingly occupied by junior, and therefore lower paid, reporters who do not have much knowledge and experience. In addition, social distancing rules and time constraints mean that many reporters sit at home and are unable to cultivate the contacts that result in breaking news exclusives, but rather regurgitate company media briefings without any critical interrogation. That is why the Steinhoff accounting scandal went largely unreported, even though Business Day investigative reporter David Gleason had raised questions about its accounts as long ago as 2013 in his Torque column. 

“Financial journalism’s failings are structural in nature, driven by business models that have emphasized cost-cutting over quality,” Mnyanda writes. Unless this is fixed, more scandals will take place with dire consequences, such as value destruction of scandal-hit shares and lack of trust in auditors and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for both investors and society as a whole.

A jobs policy for greater inclusion

In their essay, Antony Altbeker and Ann Bernstein from the Centre for Development and Enterprise make the case that urgent labor market reform is necessary to include the third of the population that is currently unemployed in the workforce. This can be done by relaxing onerous regulations on firing, which make employers reluctant to hire candidates in the first place in case the employees do not fit into the team or are otherwise incompetent. Altbeker and Bernstein also say that the education system needs to be overhauled so that the end product is fit for purpose, instead of having graduates sitting at home with degrees that hold no value for employers. The proposed reforms would result in an economy that is globally competitive and embraces the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “This will require a range of reforms, many of which go against the grain of the ruling party’s current approach to the economy,” they point out. In the short term, “accelerating growth must be at the core of any programme to increase employment.”

Making economic transformation work

In his essay, Bonang Mohale, former chief executive officer of Business Leadership South Africa, points out that economic transformation policies are necessary to create a more inclusive society. Implementing these policies will take immense courage and will on the part of the partners in Nedlac. Mohale quotes U.S. Army General George Patton, who said, “great wars are won by great execution, not great plans, because good execution will save even a mediocre plan.”

South Africa’s fiscal crisis: Is there a way back from the brink?

In his essay, former Industrial Development Corporation Chief Economist Lumkile Mondi sketches the history of South Africa’s economic plans from the 1993 Reconstruction and Development Programme to the October 2019 proposals by the National Treasury for boosting growth. He stresses that in order to pull South Africa back from a fiscal cliff, there must be rapid implementation of policies that boost growth. “It is time to practice an inclusive, low-carbon form of capitalism which addresses its problems head on, in partnership with a capable, effective and efficient regime,” he writes.

Why does South Africa have inflation targeting?

In his essay, former Nedbank Chief Economist Dennis Dykes explains the background on why inflation targeting was introduced in 2000 in South Africa, a decade after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand implemented the policy. As a good ambidextrous economist, Dykes on the one hand shows what inflation targeting has done to anchor inflation expectations and on the other hand shows what critics of the policy say is wrong with it. His conclusion is that it should be retained as a crucial monetary policy. “The view in some quarters that inflation targeting has resulted in too tight a monetary stance, given the country’s negligible growth rate, seems misplaced. Low economic growth in South Africa has had much more to do with a lack of fundamental structural reforms, a lack of policy consistency and poor implementation,” he writes.

Banking on the future: The banking sector in South Africa

In his essay, the former managing director of the Banking Association of South Africa and current chief executive officer of Business Unity South Africa, Cas Coovadia, details the steps the banking sector took to reform and recover after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. These reforms have made the banking sector more resilient, but without a rapid recovery in economic growth, the sector will remain under stress. “Despite the resilience of the South African banking sector, it is not immune from the downside risks that confront the economy,” he writes. That is why he urges rapid structural reforms to avoid further stagnation.

The emerging role of business: From outsider to strategic partner

In her essay, Tanya Cohen, the former chief executive officer of Business Unity South Africa, explores the often fraught relationship between organized business and the government. She notes that the period 2000–2007 was characterized by sustained economic growth, which created an environment enabling economic participation by previously excluded groups. After the Global Financial Crisis and the ensuing failure to return to the high growth rates of the 2000–2007 period, the ruling party reverted to the blame game as it lost electoral support. “White monopoly capital” was wrongfully blamed for South Africa’s growing unemployment crisis and endemic inequality.

After the December 2015 firing of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and the crisis of confidence this invoked among foreign investors, organized business became more vocal about the need to stop corruption and state capture. Since the election of President Cyril Ramaphosa in February 2018, organized business has engaged more constructively with the government and become more of a strategic partner rather than an adversary. As such, organized business will help with addressing the problems of power supply, measures to restore fiscal stability, investment, and maintenance of infrastructure, while aiming for policy certainty and coherence so that South Africa can return to an environment enabling high growth that provides a better life for all.

A free market for a more prosperous South Africa

In his essay, Temba Nolutshungu, a director of the Free Market Foundation, details his personal experiences of oppression during apartheid, which instilled in him a burning desire to advance the liberty and equality of all people. He notes that people in the former Soviet satellite states have chosen economic freedom, and that eight former communist countries now rank in the top thirty most economically free countries in the world with high economic growth. By contrast, South Africa has fallen from the forty-seventh position in 2010 to 101st in 2017. As a result, economic growth has also consistently slowed as economic freedom was curtailed. Nolutshungu quotes Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “I look upon an increase of the power of the state with the greatest fear, because while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the root of all progress.”

Productivity: The catalyst for competitiveness and sustainable growth

This essay by Mothunye Mothiba, the chief executive officer of Productivity SA, and Mthunzi Mdawaba, the chairman of Productivity SA, notes that the Ramaphosa presidency has been underpinned by a stated commitment to work with social partners to address the challenges facing South Africa while simultaneously eradicating pervasive corruption. “However pronouncements alone, without tangible and decisive action manifesting in effective implementation, are not enough,” they write. What is required in their opinion is a change in mindset to one of continuous improvement, which is encapsulated in the Japanese word kaizen, the concept of continuous small improvements initiated by employees from the assembly line worker to the chief executive officer. “As the Fourth Industrial Revolution gathers momentum, South Africa is under even more pressure to ensure that large and small enterprises alike are competitive, profitable and a sustainable source of productive and decent employment,” they conclude.

Evolution of South Africa’s land-reform process post-1994 

This essay by USAID Agricultural Economist Tinashe Kapuya and Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa Chief Economist Wandile Sihlobo notes that South Africa in many ways failed to meet the criteria for a successful land reform program set at a World Bank workshop in 1992. Namely, the implementation of the program should be rapid, the role of the public sector should be clearly defined, and it should be part of a comprehensive program of economic reconstruction. 

In particular, the authors note that the system of land tenure, especially for rural dwellers, has not changed since 1994, largely due to the state’s failure to pass legislation to improve tenure security. Some progress has been made, as about 2.1 million people have benefited from the land restitution pillar, but women have not benefited significantly, as only 7.8 percent of beneficiaries have been women. Given the need to recover and reform after the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors say a more collaborative approach to tackling the land issue could be one way to achieve sustainable growth.

The township economy in post-apartheid South Africa 

This essay by Fulu Netswera, the dean of the Faculty of Management Sciences at the Durban University of Technology, says that one of the most urgent challenges facing South Africa is getting the township economy working. In Netswera’s view, the township economy is a sleeping giant and has been neglected for far too long by policy makers. “Hopefully, though, we can move beyond political rhetoric to a point where government becomes an active partner in creating the right conditions for entrepreneurial activity to thrive,” he writes.

The political economy of giving economic advice

As editor, Parsons has the opportunity to have the last word, and in his essay, he says that recovery and reform depend on the willingness and capacity of policymakers to turn sound advice into actionable policy. He references Good Economics for Hard Times by Nobel Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in determining what works and what does not work in terms of economic policymaking advice. An eighteen-member Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) was announced in September 2019, and it was tasked with giving President Cyril Ramaphosa sound economic advice. To succeed in this task, Parsons says that at the outset it will be necessary to have realistic expectations as to what the advisory body can deliver within its mandate. That means it should avoid suggestions based on ideology rather than evidence. That is why he says structural reform should be seen as a marathon, not a sprint. “The PEAC could therefore underpin its implementation mandate by helping to entrench a systematic culture of setting timetables agreed growth reforms wherever feasible, and calling for progress reports,” he writes. 

The COVID-19 global pandemic has demonstrated the prominence of the digital economy and its ability to quickly digitize and digitalize practices such as education and governance. 

The flip side, however, is that we now understand there to be a significant digital divide between those who are either without internet access or unskilled in the use of modern technology, and those who could easily work and learn from home.

Working from home-and the acronym WFH it produced on social media-has been an enormous advantage for economies in crisis, when jobs are in peril or when schools shut down and human productivity appears to be lost. 

The Access to Knowledge for Development Center at the American University in Cairo (AUC) tackled the effects of the pandemic on the digital economy and the outlook for the future, in a webinar as part of a series for their tenth annual workshop.

Titled “The Digital Economy Post COVID-19: Global Outlook and Local Contexts”, the webinar was moderated by Nagla Rizk, founder of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center and a Professor of Economics at AUC. 

She opened the discussion by referencing the “common narrative” surrounding the digital economy, which is that it can be harnessed for great growth and development but also serves to widen the digital divide. Rizk then set the tone of the discussion by asking one central question: how, if at all, has COVID-19 changed the common narrative? 

Effect of COVID-19 on the Digital Economy

In today’s world, it is not at all uncommon to hear the clichéd phrase that the world is changing at an unprecedented rate, and for good reason; technological innovation is driving such rapid change. 

The first three industrial revolutions respectively brought forth steam engines and spinning looms; the electrification of industry; and digitization with the advent of circuit boards, computers and the internet. The world is now undergoing what some claim to be a fourth industrial revolution, characterized by increasing digitization and digitalization, the combining of different technologies, and technological innovation at an exponential rate. We are entering what some refer to as the second half of the chessboard–incomprehensible exponential growth. While the digital economy bears much promise for innovation and creativity, access to technology is highly unequal, thus creating a digital divide and exacerbating pre-existing inequalities.

Fabian Stephany, a researcher in Computational Social Science at the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the webinar panelists, began by questioning the very positive narrative of the internet as the bastion of free access and equality, stating that demand for online work in Africa is “only roughly 3% of the global demand of online work”, making clear that high inequality persists. On the effect of the pandemic, Stephany observed a fragmentation of work and that “digitalization will be promoted by COVID-19”. The question he raises, however, is whether such a process will move at the same speed for all parts of society. It appears that there is a lot of catching up to do in that regard.

According to panelist Monica Kerrets-Makau, the Academic Director at Thunderbird’s Center for Excellence for Africa and consultant to the World Bank, there are factors which must be taken into account: infrastructure, access, and costs. Kerrets-Makau observes a shift in how technological companies are altering their models to increase access in Africa, creating low-cost pay-every-day models. However, despite some progress, the question of internet penetration in Africa is still one which needs to be answered, as penetration rates are much lower compared to Europe.

When it comes to the nature of work, Kerrets-Makau says that the corporate sector in Africa has adapted to the pandemic, small and medium enterprises are changing how they do work, and the mobile banking and money transfer sector is experiencing a big shift, especially in Eastern Africa. Additionally, costs of digital transactions in Kenya have been eliminated for transfers up to one thousand shillings. However, she warns that people need to be watchful of predatory lending practices, and carefully consider the interest rates and terms they’re agreeing to.

When it comes to education, Kenya opened in-person teaching to three grades, with other grades and private schools continuing to teach online. Kerrets-Makau notes that the pandemic highlighted the economic divide between those who can afford to go online and others, including public schools, which cannot afford to go online due to problems in infrastructure, access, and costs, highlighting the digital divide which occurs not only between different countries, but within them as well.

Post-COVID Challenges and Solutions

It is clear that the pandemic had an accelerating effect on the nature of the digital economy. While it didn’t necessarily change the shape of the digital economy, it did force a development of phenomena that were slowly maturing, such as online learning, or inequality of access to technology. As Rizk neatly put it, it calls upon us to address scenarios that we anticipated to take place in the future.

COVID-19 is the present and its effects will be felt long into the future, which is for us to shape as a global society. Returning to the status quo before the pandemic, or keeping the present structures in place , is impossible. What lies ahead are a set of long-standing questions which have either been  amplified or had their answers reevaluated by COVID-19. The nature of work as we know it is changing, and so is the nature of education, governance, and communication. Accordingly, several challenges lie ahead.

Continuing with her focus on Africa, Kerrets-Makau identifies data as a significant challenge in the continent. She says that governments are hoarding data, and citizens, who are mistrustful of regional governments, are scared of data misuse, especially when it comes to elections. This must be addressed by bringing everybody to the table and finding answers to questions on data ownership and usage.

Another top challenge is facilitating access and affordability of digital technology. She makes the point that good infrastructure alone has little use if access and affordability of the technologies it provides are restricted by heavy taxation. She suggests making duty exemptions to devices crucial for facilitating access to the internet, such as phones and computers.

Finally, she warns that governments have to be less hasty in bringing out the “regulatory stick” when addressing innovation, noting that “the aim of regulation is to eliminate regulation.” She calls on the government to coordinate between the private and the public sectors, thinking differently across different institutions and facilitating cross-cutting cooperation across different sectors.

Stephany encourages cross-cutting cooperation, adding that despite the internet’s huge potential, activities are still clustered in certain circles and geographical areas. This goes back to the three concerns of infrastructure, access, and costs raised by Kerrets-Makau. Furthermore, AI promises to play a big role in the digital economy, but there are still questions of racial bias in the development of AI systems. This is a problem which stems from the lack of diversity among AI programmers, perpetuating their own biases in the programming; and from a lack of input by those who have limited access to such technology due to the digital divide.

To Stephany, education is key–“education, education, education”. And here he isn’t only referring to traditional education, but also to digital literacy and reskilling. He stresses that the more digital technology progresses, the more automation progresses and expands into our lives and work. In this regard, Stephany claims that we must think of automation of tasks rather than automation of jobs, which may lead to some unemployment but will also increase demand for more skilled labor. As such, there must be intensive efforts to reskill and upskill workers, looking for valuable pre-existing skills and complementing them with critical new skills related to digital technology. Stephany gives the example of someone who has a background in statistics combining this with knowledge of machine learning to become a data scientist, for example.

Stephany dubs this phenomenon “agile cross-skilling” where people remove and add new things to their skillset. He emphasizes that cross-skilling mustn’t be a one size fits all approach, and that it must be tailored to the needs of each individual.

As Keretts-Makau puts it, “COVID-19 is a free of charge consultant”. Indeed, it has shown us the flaws in our economic systems and the challenges that lie ahead, the extent of inequality both between and within states, not to mention the real effects of maintaining such a digital divide; and the huge potential of the digital economy as a platform of creativity, innovation, and empowerment. Moreover, it has shown us that history is not linear; as we enter the second half of the chessboard and experience an exponential proliferation of digital technology in our everyday lives. Under the umbrella of the fourth industrial revolution, we begin to understand that our response as governments, thinkers, and policy makers must be its equal in robustness.

Previous studies on regional integration across the Mediterranean outlined a large potential to increase trade flows of goods and services, to be developed in order to contribute to the economic and social cohesion of the region. The thought was that countries could benefit from a large regional market while also promoting foreign direct investment and mobilizing people across both shores of the Mediterranean. 

Yet, the three interlinked dimensions of regional integration—foreign direct investment, trade of goods and services, and ultimately, mobility of peoples across the Med region—seem to have fallen short of  the ambitious objective embraced by the seminal Barcelona Declaration twenty-five years ago. The stated goal of the declaration was to turn “the Mediterranean basin into an area of dialogue, exchange and cooperation, guaranteeing peace, stability and prosperity”.

CMI’s Updated Integration Vision

While advocating the merits of such objectives, the Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) has recently attempted to provide an updated and enhanced vision for regional integration in today’s context. Based on recent analysis, the CMI’s three-prong approach recommends further eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers to the trade of goods and services, with a strong emphasis on the trade of services. This is due to the effect of services on productivity and job creation that can spill over to agriculture and industry, including the fields of information, telecommunications and technology (ICT).

The CMI’s approach also recommends increasing the mobility of workers and jobs within the Mediterranean region through proactive and regularized migration policies. Finally, the CMI suggests that further promoting investment and private sector businesses and partnerships between parties on both sides of the Mediterranean will be key to the socioeconomic transformation of the region.

Fundamental to the CMI’s vision is the belief that trade liberalization cannot be dissociated from sectoral reforms. As such, removing tariffs, alone, will not result in economic growth. As long as trade restrictions remain in critical areas such as transport, infrastructure, regulations, logistics, digitalization, and financial intermediation, no real economic and political progress will be made. Such restrictions not only increase trade costs, but also make diversification and upscaling more difficult, therefore delaying structural transformation which, in turn, decreases opportunities for trade exchanges.

In addition, trade liberalization should not be implemented alone, but rather in the context of a comprehensive policy package that aims to achieve social and distributive goals in addition to efficiency gains. First, the static efficiency gain generated by trade is expected to be accompanied by scale effects linked to the possibility of operating in a larger market, as well as positive externalities associated with technology transfers and better positioning of the region in global value chains. 

This process is exemplified by the possibility of adopting co-production approaches between European and Southern Mediterranean companies, allowing investors from more advanced countries to support local initiatives in the South by transferring know-how and technology, which permit the production of higher-value-added goods in the South. 

In the long run, regional integration should contribute to a gradual convergence of average salaries between countries, an essential element for social cohesion. Since it is anticipated that increased trade flows will cause income levels to rise in exporting sectors while income in the other sectors focused on local consumption may experience a decrease, other policies must be adopted to mitigate emerging income disparities. Policymakers must also acknowledge that not all territories within the region will be equally affected by the re-allocation of factors due to trade exchanges, given their different geographic locations and endowments such as land and human capital. Therefore, territorial cohesion policies targeting vulnerable areas should be designed as part of the policy package. 

Economic efficiency gains associated with trade reforms will also depend greatly on the mobility of people within the region. Such mobility is desirable to allow for the acquisition of the relevant knowledge, the exchange of ideas, the upgrading of skills, and the transfer of techniques and scientific discoveries. However, without migration policies aiming at managing legal migration flows, including circular migration, and better dialogue (bilateral and multilateral) among countries in the region, the potential of workers’ mobility, both as a growth determinant and as a social inclusion factor, will remain underexploited. 

With the aim of mobilizing additional investment in the region, greater support from international partners such as the European Union and international financial institutions like the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank, as well as neighboring states, will still be needed. Such support—if provided as part of a proactive, partnership-based, co-development approach—could serve as the catalytic factor needed to trigger the transformation of the region. It could materialize through projects of common interest, scaled-up to involve countries on all shores of the Mediterranean, East and West, North and South. 

This transformation will also require a coordinated approach to enhance the attractiveness of the region to private foreign investors, especially in countries where the public sector still occupies a large percentage of economic activities, crowding out the emergence of smaller private-owned businesses. Regulatory reforms as well as measures to improve the overall business environment and monetary and fiscal (non-tax) incentives, as opposed to arbitrary tax exemptions, should be envisaged. In this context, co-production schemes involving small and medium-size enterprises within the region will be essential for transferring technology and know-how, while also contributing to job creation. 

In sum, this overall approach points toward further promoting growth through comprehensive trade reforms, while also fostering the mobility of workers through regularized migration schemes. CMI wants to inspire policymakers to follow a path that will promote foreign direct investments and cross-country private-public partnerships. In parallel, the provision of regional public goods and more targeted initiatives aiming at protecting some vulnerable income groups and less-favored geographic locations will be necessary to reduce and prevent income disparities. 

Providing Regional Public Goods

Regarding the provision of regional public goods, two areas can be singled out as crucial for the consolidation of regional integration: human capital and the environment, particularly, building resilience to climate change. The provision of these two common goods cannot be addressed through a strictly competitive approach. Extensive collaboration between participating nations in these two strategic and symbolic areas could make an immense contribution to future growth paths of the region. 

Human capital is involved in knowledge production, namely research, the dissemination of ideas through education and employability gained with the acquisition of know-how, which is directly useful to companies for technical and professional training. Indeed, regional development of human capital will be one of the main factors determining the success of the integration process in the Mediterranean, as it will contribute to growth through the development of a knowledge economy and more innovation. The development of innovation will facilitate human mobility between countries and sectors and enable cultural interaction. 

In this vein, student mobility is absolutely necessary to underpin human capital formation. Following the example of Europe, which has created several successful cooperation schemes, programs involving students from all Mediterranean countries should be designed in order to facilitate knowledge sharing throughout the region. 

Closer involvement of large European training institutions in teaching students from Eastern and Southern countries could also provide European companies with a new incentive to invest heavily in those Mediterranean countries. These developments are essential to ensure progress on a third element, which is instilling a thirst for knowledge acquisition among young people in “the sectors of the future”, in addition to improving the quality of educational provision and responding to labor market demands, all of which are involved in the building of human capital. 

The second area of focus relates to another essential regional public good: the environment (referring to the quality of air, water, and land), particularly in response to acute climate change threats, which are of particular concern in the region. There are numerous natural comparative advantages to be harnessed in the region using abundant natural resources and renewable energies, which integrated environmental policies (across sectors) could facilitate. As highlighted by several pieces of research, issues related to water, energy, and food cannot be considered separately in the region because of the numerous interactions between the sectors. Together, they can be at the heart of solutions to future crises. Proactive environmental policies integrating these three sectors could offer significant economic and job creation opportunities in Mediterranean countries. 

The energy sector, a truly regional public good, offers the greatest potential. In addition to reducing the carbon footprint of Mediterranean countries, investing in renewable energies (solar, wind, etc.) can aid in the development of technological leadership in this sector, provide jobs, and secure access to an affordable source of low-carbon electricity for all Mediterranean countries, including those in the European Union. 

Euro–Mediterranean electricity market integration makes it possible to connect countries of the southern shore, which are rich in carbon-free energy resources, with countries of the northern shore, which have a strong appetite for carbon-free electricity—and are willing to pay for it. Connectivity is key to energy transition and requires availability and efficient use of inter-connectors. However, such inter-connectors are notoriously difficult to finance and implement. Regional market integration would expand throughout Europe access to low-carbon supply sources such as hydro reserves (as in Norway) and plentiful solar power in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries. 

In order to successfully achieve regional energy market integration, policymakers, energy companies, and regulators from the North and South of the Mediterranean need to embrace the benefits of Euro–Mediterranean electricity market integration. Maintaining a network of experts, government representatives, and energy players from around the Mediterranean is essential to share best practices and influence policymaking. If Mediterranean countries were able to cooperate in this area, with support from the EU and perhaps other multilateral institutions, this would give rise to solidarity across the Med region, with the ultimate result being a powerful economic bloc. 

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Mediterranean Integration

Using a similar perspective, it is necessary to promote an integrated regional approach to manage water scarcity, which is severely aggravated in the Mediterranean—a region that is among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. Water is, by definition, a global issue since watercourses connect countries and the factors contributing to its depletion, including climate change, affect the whole world. In the Mediterranean region, the main goal would be to tackle water management by focusing on strengthening collaboration and integration between the different basin countries. 

Water scarcity and related insecurity in the region have been drivers of forced migrations, instability, and conflict. These phenomena are expected to be aggravated in the future. Together with the increase of demography, the effects of climate change will have a tremendous impact on the water sector. Coming changes will include a decrease of water availability ranging from 2 percent to 15 percent in the case of a 2 degrees Celsius increase of temperature. Also, water scarce populations—i.e., people living with less than 1,000 m3 of water per year—are expected to rise over 250 million during the next twenty years. 

Mediterranean countries face similar water management challenges rooted in inefficient conventional water governance systems and obsolete management practices. In order to meet future regional water supply needs, it will be essential to adopt a resilient and integrated approach in the water sector while placing cooperation at the core of the process. A cooperative framework that creates an environment that enables all stakeholders to be heard and included is a prerequisite to ensuring efficient and effective management. Moreover, in the definition of smart solutions, emphasis should be placed on engaging vulnerable communities and often forgotten population groups such as women and youth. 

Regarding food production, the region offers huge trade potential because of geographical proximity. The Mediterreanean region is perfectly situated between Africa and Europe and has similar resources and common consumption patterns, which are especially important in food industries. Furthermore, agricultural production has clear positive spillover effects for water, health, and biodiversity and also revitalizes rural areas and offers income earning opportunities in remote locations, further contributing to territorial cohesion. One of the main advantages of trade liberalization in the region is the possibility of occupying a competitive position in the market for certain Mediterranean food products. This could allow producing countries to adopt higher quality standards and create brands, rather than just supplying intermediary products to European distributors to promote them under their own brands.

The impact of growing water scarcity on agriculture is, however, worrisome, as the sector is the main water consumer. Reducing the dependence and demands of the food and energy sectors on water should be the overarching objective of water-energy-food policies in a water-constrained region. Transitioning to renewable energy can contribute to both making water more available and reducing CO2 emissions. To reach this critical objective, multiple strategies can be developed and implemented to increase nonconventional water supply sources and transform energy systems toward low-carbon solutions. Increasing intersectoral collaboration will be key in addressing water-energy-food nexus challenges. Regional partnerships with national, regional, and global actors should foster development and trust across countries, leveraging resources and knowledge needed to develop innovative and inclusive solutions. 

By integrating these three sectors, the Mediterranean region could become a model for the world by promoting the use of renewable energies to find solutions to water scarcity as well as more efficient agriculture practices and production techniques. In turn, more equitable access to water could also contribute to food diversification and preserving the stability of rural ecosystems, which will be essential for territorial cohesion and climate change mitigation.  

Reflections in the Midst of the COVID-19 Crisis

While our analysis was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic shocked the world, our approach must internalize the effects of the coronavirus, particularly since the Mediterranean region has been hit hard. No country in the region has been spared from its tragic effects and economic spillovers, such as the negative price of oil for the first time in modern history. 

When trying to adopt measures to combat this unprecedented crisis, every country in the region initially faced what appears to be a trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods. The ongoing global recession is amplifying other adverse effects, all of which require adequate responses to facilitate recovery and stimulate the economy, of the health crisis on the region’s population. In particular, vulnerable population groups are in need of immediate support. Well-targeted measures must be implemented to mitigate losses in per capita income and living standards and, in some cases, to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

Facing this shock, the notions of collaboration and cooperation among countries appear more relevant than ever. First, the virus does not know boundaries. Second, no country should fall behind in finding remedies. While every country is facing its own effects, dialogue in search of regional and global solutions appears, once again, essential. 

We cannot forget that the links that unite Mediterranean countries should be at the heart of the response. In the medium term, the crisis may offer an opportunity to circumvent the lives-livelihoods trade-off by promoting economic activities that build on the human capital of the region (such as training and mobility of health workers) while also respecting the environment (reopening renewable energy activities for job creation). This is not the time to refocus on national issues without looking at the regional context. On the contrary, regional solutions to the post-COVID crisis should further contribute to the noble goal of Mediterranean integration.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s isolationism has had significant ramifications on the general economic climate and the functioning of institutions of global governance.

Cairo Review Assistant Editor Omar Auf spoke with economist Adel Beshai at the American University in Cairo, about his local and global outlook as the U.S. presidential elections approach and what Egypt can expect in its future.

Beshai was a key player in the founding of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in his role as special consultant to the secretary-general of the 1974 World Food Conference. He was tasked with negotiating with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Development Assistance Committee countries for the creation of IFAD, who were the contributors to the majority of the fund. 

The following are excerpts from that interview.

Cairo Review: How will economic relations between the United States and Egypt and the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region differ if U.S. President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden win the upcoming election?

Adel Beshai: Whether Democrats or Republicans, they will deal with the following: Egypt will remain important in the eyes of America. When I say “America”, there is the President, there is the Pentagon, and there is the State Department, and this cannot be ignored. Egypt will always be recognized as the power in the area. Strategically, it’s very important. So, in that respect, in a way the relationship won’t be that much different.

If Biden comes, he will revive the agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and things like that. If Trump continues—which is a possibility—even Trump may be revising himself a little bit when it comes to dealing with international organizations.

I think that when we look at the Trump administration in the last four years vis-a-vis Egypt, both Egyptians were happy with the United States and the United States was supportive of Egypt, and life went very [well]. In that respect I can say all went well.

CR: Seeing as Trump has blocked the appointment of judges in the WTO’s appellate body, and is now threatening to withdraw from the organization completely, do you think he will go through with it and withdraw, or is he already starting to revise his attitudes?

AB: With the WTO, my guess is that—because America is interested, and will be more interested if the WTO behaves well—[Trump] won’t withdraw completely from it, but he will work through the structure so that when it comes to buying from abroad and when it comes to supply chains, [Trump] will give it [WTO proposals] to his people to study very well before he agrees.

CR: Will COVID-19 force the United States, along with the rest of the leading economies, to seek a higher level of independence and self-sufficiency, or will it force the global economy in general to look to strengthen and create more agile supply chains?

AB: For years and years, the god was globalization and America championed it, and suddenly America, vis-a-vis China, became dependent.

When there is globalization, and there are supply chains, this is what we call in international economics “intra-industry trade”. Prices go down because the mobile which you’re holding in your hand now is made in seventeen countries. Boeing is made in twelve or fourteen countries. This makes the whole thing cheaper. The world in the past thirty to forty years is intra-industry trading, in contradistinction to inter-industry trade. In the past, England sold you a Morris car and you sold them cotton. Now, it is different. If you’re selling parts and components, the end result is that things become cheaper. This no one can disagree about; it’s a mathematical fact.

At the same time, there can be political reasons and there can be economic reasons, which, for a country like America more than others, will make them deglobalized to a certain extent. Be that as it may, under any circumstances, supply chains from China will still continue, but the United States will try to reduce them. America will put tariffs and taxes, and America can produce the parts it wants. It would be a fraction of what it has been getting from China, but the result is that prices will rise. Now, rising prices are not a wonderful situation for America. It means the consumer in America will pay more and that their ability to export things will be reduced, so they may become not a wonderful competitor in the world market. With respect to whether supply chains will continue or not, they will continue. Some of them will be blocked, but you pay a price for it. 

Already, memories of the 1970s of the World Food Conference now spring. I think any country in the world, including Egypt, should begin to worship the term we invented in 1974, which is “food security”. Countries that have grain will be very careful before they export. They will want to make sure they have enough because of a very simple reason: food cannot wait. You buying a car can wait. But food cannot wait. And that’s why, politically, countries can raise the price of oil and [use] it as a political weapon, but they would not use food as a weapon. Because food, for the third time, cannot wait. So one has to pay attention to the agricultural sector. One of the things that saved Egypt, which functioned well during the Corona crisis, is the agricultural sector, which is 28 percent of the gross domestic product, but in reality more because of the people who work on it and depend on it: perhaps 45 percent. And none of them stayed at home. They all worked. This kept the pot boiling. This was one of the main things which allowed Egypt to sail well economically during Corona.

CR: What place do you see for isolationist sentiments and trade wars in the current economic climate?

AB: As I mentioned, supply chains will have to continue. But at the same time, when it comes to agriculture, countries want to produce more food.

America doesn’t want to be dependent on China. which brings us to a very, very crucial issue which has a lot to do with your focus on global affairs. I feel that we are now beginning to remind me of the period after the Second World War. How?

After the Second World War, slowly, England began to disappear. Until then, England had three quarters of the world. Sterling was the god. And I told you earlier, people’s memories are short. So what happened after the Second World War, from 1945 to 1956?

England, which was the colossal power, began to diminish. When people talk about the devaluation of the pound sterling, they talk about the 1967 devaluation, when the pound sterling was $2.8 and it was devalued to become $2.4. However, there is a devaluation which all my professors at Stanford and at Oxford didn’t mention. There was a devaluation of the pound in 1949. This is the beginning of England’s fall. The pound sterling in 1949 was equal to $4, and it was devalued to $2.8. Secondly, after the Second World War, America had for for the most important part in her economic history, a super balance of payment surplus. All these years since you were born, America had a payment deficit. But back then it had a huge balance of payment surplus. And thousands of articles were written in the economic journals called “The Dollar Problem”; “The Long Run Dollar Problem”; “The Dollar Shortage”; “The Dollar Glut”.  What was the dollar glut for America? America was exporting in a period of super industrialization; America was selling to the whole world. So her balance of payment was in surplus, and the dollar was becoming very powerful.

So why am I saying all this? I am saying we live in a world of cycles. England was also once upon a time the dominant power, and then the United States began to be the economic power. And as she became the economic power, she began to be the political power more and more; so much so that in 1956, in our war, when there was the tripartite aggression on Egypt, America told England to get out of Suez. Who would have told England to do that in the past?

Now I’m seeing something similar: this time not between England and the United States, but between the United States and China. What is happening in China, in terms of production, is fantastic. There is no question that China will become a very important economic power. This is happening at a time when, in America, economic policy has not been wonderful lately. Add to that that the pandemic piled onto the budget deficit of America and America was giving federal relief. The deficit is increasing over time and Americans are saving less and less. Plus, in America, there is the aging stock of capital. The international situation is not wonderful.

Of course, you can’t ignore America and you can’t ignore the dollar. 62 percent of world transactions have been dealing with the dollar. But, this will not continue. Trump’s administration began to do something which is not found in any introductory economic textbook. The head of the Federal Reserve Bank began to print money and buy shares of companies which were almost nonexistent because of Corona. So, the amount of debt skyrocketed. Frightening, you know. And you had a very interesting situation: the private sector became in essence a public sector, because you had a situation where the Federal Reserve was printing money to buy shares of companies which were hardly working. You were not competitive in the world market. The capitalist country became—don’t be shocked—China, because she was functioning normally. She didn’t print and print to buy shares. I am mentioning this point because, globally, people talk about the world economic order. Why not talk about the world economic disorder? And out of the disorder later on an order will come.

So, there’s a world economic disorder happening now. There is a change happening. So the question that should now arise in your mind is that of history. In the 1960s, Giscard d’Estaing, a former French president, said that America took advantage of its position as the world’s dominant reserve currency, and the rest of the world supported it. The dollar became the de facto international currency.

Because of it, Americans could live better and spend more, because any other country has its currency backed by what it produces, but the dollar shines of its own light. In the end currencies are relative prices; the exchange rate is the price of my country’s currency vis-a-vis yours. So my prediction is that eventually the dollar will cease to be the world’s de facto currency. What will come in place of it will take some time. I don’t know, but you have to look at some Asian countries like Vietnam, and China, of course.

In addition to that, we have gold and cryptocurrencies, which are beginning to be alternatives to that once invincible dollar. So, saying all this, and telling you the history of it, we may say that we are in the beginning of a major change.

CR: What is your view for Egypt’s economic development in the future? Do you think Egypt wants to become an industrial powerhouse, a service-based economy, or something else? What, then, is the role of the agricultural sector in Egypt?

AB: Egypt has a very huge horizon, and Egypt needs to gather its people of varying backgrounds and listen to new ideas. I am a man of agriculture. I know about agriculture. I’ll just give you one example. Egypt has done very well in agricultural exports lately, and during Corona she did very well. Yet, the scope for Egypt is unknown. I understood this once I got a packet of asparagus seeds from Italy. I planted them and they grew beautifully. And—it is one thing I can tell you from forty years of experience—it grows with zero chemical fertilizer and zero pesticides, which means it more than meets the conditions that the European Union put, as they allow you a certain amount of chemical fertilizer and a certain amount of certain pesticides. And asparagus is the most expensive vegetable on earth! This is in agriculture. In industry Egypt has been a bit slow in the last few years. You have to have an industrial policy and an agricultural policy. On the television people say: I, as a minister, my agricultural policy is this; and you, as a minister of industry, your industrial policy is that. I want to hear that.

My advice if I were sitting with the Egyptian president now would be: “Mr. President. You are very active. You talk with everyone. I’m sure you only sleep four or five hours a day. I can tell from the amount of work you do. But meet with all your ministers, and tell them: ‘You people in industry, come and tell me what you want. You in agriculture, come and tell me what you want. You want advice? Okay. Minister of Agriculture, Cairo University, AUC, bring them professors to tell them more about agriculture.’ Mix people together. And you can know that Egyptians are fantastic if you look at the informal sector.”

The informal sector is huge in Egypt—70 or 80 percent [of the Egyptian economy]—and most of it is doing wonders. We are interested in economic statements on productivity and measured productivity. Fine: you have seen this man who has this thing on his head on which he’s carrying a thousand loaves of bread, riding a bicycle. And the bicycle doesn’t have breaks; he breaks with his legs. Not only would he stop at that; now he’s talking on the phone, and the bread still doesn’t fall. 

I studied physics a lot in the past, and I cannot explain it. But, you’re talking about productivity? Measure his productivity. Go and look at the speed of the man who’s selling beans in the morning and see how many people he sells to. 

There is a big part of the informal sector where, if you try to play with it, you lose it. Secondly, there is also a big part of it which you can help by giving it some sort of loans, at a fraction of the market price, and they will be wonderful. So, there is a part you have to leave alone, there is a part you can help, and there is a part which will grow to become, you know, sort of middle level [enterprise, which can be integrated into the formal economy].

Good you asked me this question. My final wasiyya, my final legacy I would like to leave any government in Egypt, is something that I studied. It was published in 1966, and you, as a government, should hang it everywhere. Write the following down: predictability and consistency of government policy. Predictability and consistency of government policy; not you give me a policy and then, after six months, there is a new one. You will not grow [this way]. Predictability and consistency. Policy must be predictable. It must be consistent. What do I mean by consistent? I watch the price of fertilizer. There’s the gamiyya, the cooperative, but very few people buy from the gamiyya; the rest buy from the market at three times the price. So, are you consistent? Are you facilitating access to inputs needed at the right prices?

Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Broadcast on Election Day 2020, this is the third installment of a three-part podcast interview which discusses the arch and trajectory of American foreign policy in the past four years and takes a further step back to critique Washington’s actions on the global stage since 911.

Cairo Review senior editor Sean David Hobbs sat with American University in Cairo President and former United States Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. for part three of a three-part series of podcast interviews.

For part one, click here; for part two, click here.

Cairo Review: How has the Trump administration been successful in the Middle East, and what things need to be improved if President Trump wins reelection?

Francis Ricciardone: Wherever there are crises and problems and challenges, there are also opportunities to flip side the coin. So this is a region that’s been rich in problems. Therefore, if you approach it in a certain way, you can say that it’s rich in opportunities: whether by solving those problems directly or from second-order benefits that may come from them.

You ask about the accomplishments. Almost certainly most Americans would say that the brokering of Israel, UAE, and Bahrain normalization would have to be one. I’ve never heard of anyone—certainly not former Vice-President Biden nor any of his senior advisors on foreign policy—openly coming out and criticizing that. In fact, I believe they welcomed it. And, Biden may have given some lukewarm endorsement of some type; so even critics of President Trump would probably credit him with that.

Drawing down American military presence in the region (whether it was done elegantly or inelegantly, whatever the negative consequences of that): drawing down the American military footprint in Iraq; staying out of military involvement in Syria; drawing down the military presence in Afghanistan; most Americans would see these examples as President Trump accomplishing what he promised to accomplish.

Indeed, many in the American military argued against resorting to the military to solve all problems, that diplomacy ought to be the first line of defense. So, I don’t think many would think that President Trump’s administration has done much to strengthen American diplomatic presence, capabilities, influence, but he has in his way accomplished these particular deals.

My supposition is if the Biden people come in, many of the Biden people are seasoned veterans of American diplomacy, who know about military deployment and how we’re involved in it, but whose instinct is not to resort anymore to deploying the U.S. military to do nation building, for example.

It’ll be very interesting to see, if former Vice-President Biden is elected, how he will go about these issues. There’s some big underlying ones that are transnational and that aren’t even defined in the same terms, like the “Arab–Israeli problem”. Nobody uses that [term] anymore. It’s the “Palestine–Israel problem”, and that’s been redefined.

But the big overarching [issue] that I haven’t seen either candidate talk about is the horrific problem of our times that will go on for another lifetime, at least, and that is the massive dislocation of people in this entire region, in the region of failed and failing states. Whether it is internally displaced people or those who have been displaced across borders, [these are] people so desperate that they take to the sea, and they have been doing so for years in storms and in miserable weather and in unsafe craft to escape where they are and try to save their lives and their futures.

I’ve seen this because I’ve served in the region.I’ve seen Afghans and how their lives were uprooted. I personally was involved in working with what turned out to be some seven thousand Iraqis who came into Turkey in the mid 1990s after that wave in the Gulf War. There are just millions of people. I forget the most recent United Nations (UN) figures, but around the world, there are something on the order of sixty million people displaced either across borders or within borders from their homes and likely unable to go back to their homes.

This includes Africa and other places [that have displacement] not only due to war, but due to drought and climate change. That is one of the defining global problems of our time, and it’s partly due to climate change, not something beyond immediate human intervention. It will be interesting to see if a Biden administration focuses on that as part of its diplomacy.

Other global issues come from the international spread of diseases such as COVID-19, AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Ebola. These things most scientists believe are only going to be more consequential, not less. These [diseases] will directly affect not only the prosperity of Americans, but also [the United States’] national security.

These are not germ weapons unleashed by a hostile power. These are germs that are unleashing themselves as a consequence of human action or inaction to confront them. My guess is that a Biden administration might well go about this in a different way and revive American participation in international coalitions against those things, bringing to bear American diplomacy; American science; and, once again, one might hope organizing people, trying to rally countries and global public opinion and global resources against these global threats.

CR: As a polyglot with deep connections in the Arab region, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the Pacific Rim, your views on the conflicts and movements toward peace involving the peoples of the Middle East, South, Central, and Southeast Asia have been influential in forging American foreign policy over the past twenty years. Looking back at U.S. foreign policy from a macro perspective, what has the United States gotten right since 9/11 and what has it gotten wrong? How can we fix what we got wrong and how can we continue to do what we got right?

AUC President Francis Ricciardone and Cairo Review Senior Editor Sean David Hobbs during interview.

FR: (Laughs) Well, that’s quite a pack of questions that could fill many volumes, so maybe I can try to focus into some of the things I think we’ve learned; there’s a consensus, a broad consensus, that I detect, whether in the foreign policy apparatus of Washington or the broader, thoughtful, engaged American public.

One thing that we got wrong (and maybe begun to correct) is the over-reliance on U.S. military power and deployments to solve problems that are not really amenable to military force. Sometimes military power is most influential and effective when it is not used; when it is merely available and ready to be deployed so that an adversary would be deterred from attacking us.

We’ve lost some of that deterrent power by having such massive deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have been unable to accomplish our stated objectives: objectives that have evolved during the course of those deployments as we’ve been successively unable to accomplish the original formulations of them.

There’s a bipartisan consensus on this. Both Republican and Democratic secretaries of defense, secretaries of state, and generals have made this point repeatedly. And I believe President Obama himself, from his later speeches and some of his policy actions had begun [drawing down]. And certainly President Trump has continued this sort of pulling back.

So, those are broad trends that are going on, and they come from the lesson painfully learned that, when we intervene in another part of the world, in a conflict that is going on, we should have very clearly articulated objectives and think through how best to pursue them, not get trapped by our rhetoric and the fervor of the moment.

There are very important human rights causes to advance in these countries, and surely we do want to promote democracy and human rights. That, too, has been a bipartisan theme in American foreign policy throughout my career and from my boyhood. I could point to speeches from the Eisenhower administration and President Eisenhower himself. We had got it right when we were inspiring the world to higher ideals, I think, of democracy and human rights by living them and by providing an example.

That’s one of the lessons we’ve all learned: live your ideals, live your values.

Securing our borders is important. But now we know it’s not only against physical crossing by humans or contraband, but we also have to secure our borders against cybersecurity and viruses. What are cryptocurrencies all about, and how do we deal with them?

So, we’ve learned that we have to focus on these things and get them right. Those are also the things we’ve largely got wrong. There have been unintended consequences of military deployments; of hollowing out our diplomatic capabilities and the tools of diplomacy, which include people who are well trained and ready to deploy. People who have studied foreign cultures and languages and who over time develop personal relationships with people who are junior in their countries and rise to leadership positions. Those are long-term investments.

Those are things we had done right in the past. But, I believe we’ve disinvested in a lot of those things over the years. Educational and cultural exchange is something in which we were the world leaders. We invested in those programs through the Fulbright program and many, many others. We have been disinvesting in those over the years.

If I were advising a future president, whether President Trump or President Biden, or their secretaries of state, I would point to that as an American strength that we risk squandering. [We should open our] doors to foreign students, researchers, and scholars coming into the United States, and  encourage young Americans to go abroad, as we did through the Fulbright program, to learn about other people on their own terms; learn their languages, their religions, their cultures, their geography, and their problems.

So, we have a lot to work with. I don’t think there are any great secrets about the things we have bungled. They are painfully obvious. How we engage and engage effectively will be things we’ve learned about and there’s things we have yet to learn.

By organizing the world against HIV and AIDS, we’ve accomplished a lot together with others. By failing to organize the world against COVID-19, I suspect that, when we look back on this, we will see that the world is not a better place for the approach that we took.

CR: Thank you so much President Ricciardone for your time and for your ideas that you have been able to express here with us today.

FR: My pleasure. I really do choose to be optimistic. We’ve got a lot to work with. The challenges are enormous in today’s world, but I believe the United States does have a leading role to play. There are ways of leading that are not belligerent or arrogant, but that are effective—and I think we can find that path again.

Francis J. Ricciardone was appointed the 12th President of The American University in Cairo and began his term on July 1, 2016. He had served as a Foreign Service Officer from 1978-2014, including appointments as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines, and Chargé d’Affaires and Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan. After graduating from Dartmouth College Summa Cum Laude in 1973, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and taught in American international schools in Trieste, Italy, and Tehran, Iran. From 2014-2016 he was Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. He was a distinguished scholar at the US Institute of Peace in 2008-2009. He speaks Arabic, Turkish, Italian, and French.

The United States of America will continue to be a global power for the next twenty-five years at the very least given its wealth and relative propensity to exercise military power beyond its borders. Another given is that the global and national sociopolitical and economic paradigms in the United States and the Middle East will change. In fact, these two givens are what have driven us to address the question of America’s role after the upcoming presidential election in November and to do so from different international perspectives. Our answers will more reflect how rather than whether the United States will exert itself in different domains.

In reflecting on possible American policies in the Middle East, it is worth noting that both America and the Middle East are going through identity crises, each increasingly uncomfortable with its respective traditional status quo politics. In America, the Tea Party movement, the Obama and Trump elections, and the ongoing racial tensions that are polarizing the country all provide grounds for domestic soul-searching, with paramount consequences for America’s international role. Similarly, in the Middle East, the conflicting trends and forces driving toward increased secularism or conservative political Islam, and the youth bulge versus traditionalism and social conservatism, are all soul-searching catalysts that have found expression for decades, most recently in what is described as the Arab Spring.

These factors may cause tectonic shifts in the relations between Middle Eastern countries and the United States. They have affected and will continue to affect U.S. policy in the region irrespective of who is elected U.S. president. Let us not forget that the debate about how much engagement the United States should have in the Middle East is longstanding. In fact, it was Obama who declared his intention to pivot from the Middle East to Asia.

Today we live in a different world from when the Middle East was central to East–West rivalry and the United States was highly dependent on the region’s oil. I remember President Richard Nixon telling the Egyptian Foreign Minister after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War that, had the United States known that Egypt would ask Soviet experts to leave the country, it would have offered something in return, because the request significantly decreased Soviet influence in the Middle East. Regardless, he concluded that “Egypt [now] is a strategic partner.” I also remember the long lines at gas stations in the United States at the time due to the Arab oil embargo imposed in light of America’s unwavering support for Israel.

Simply put, in the absence of a full force Cold War, the Middle East no longer factors into the American foreign policy equation with the same weight, especially with the United States’ diminishing energy needs in light of technological developments and policy changes that allow it to use shale fracking technology to expand its energy reserves. This will remain true whether Trump is reelected or Biden is elected. The basic difference will be that the United States’ foreign  relations will focus more on each of the states in the Middle East, rather than on a regional or group prism concerned with previous international security issues associated with the Cold War or energy needs.

Middle Eastern states, Arab or non-Arab, are not deaf or blind to this shifting American focus and posture. They see the United States’ increasing individual, regional, or even subregional focus in the Levant, the Gulf area, and North Africa. The conclusion drawn is that, while well-managed relations with the United States are always useful and important, assurances of its support on national security issues will increasingly be in question. This will unleash a regional race to enhance national security capacities, one with shifting interests as well as new and nontraditional global and regional relationships and alliances, often with complicated baggage. Turkey’s relations with Libya, Russia, and Qatar; the United Arab Emirates’ and Bahrain’s relations with Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Russia; and the relations among Egypt and older Arab states are but a few examples of this trend.

My primary conclusion is that the United States will look at the Middle East differently as the region moves forward, irrespective of who wins the U.S. presidential elections in November. We in the Middle East will become more region-centric and more multidimensional in our international relations to avoid becoming overwhelmingly or exclusively dependent on a single major foreign power.

Numerous domestic constituencies in the United States have become increasingly isolationist and particularly circumspect about putting the country’s human resources in harm’s way abroad. They are conflict-fatigued, particularly with regard to the Middle East, and do not see a global threat to America’s interests that justifies wasting resources abroad. Consequently, it appears safe to conclude from reading the American political landscape that the United States will seek to be less operationally engaged in the Middle East, regardless of whether it is led by a Democratic or Republican president. The real question is whether events in the Middle East will allow it to disengage.

A third conclusion is that in an era of identity searching, the Middle East and the United States will be unable or unwilling to completely delink from one another. There are simply too many dependencies and moving parts to do this.

Consequently, in the short and medium terms, the difference between past relations between the Middle East and the United States and those over the next decade or so will be reflected in shades of grey rather than black and white. This will remain true irrespective of whether Trump or Biden wins the November 2020 US presidential elections. 

Allow me to elaborate further and more specifically on this comment:

• U.S. military engagement will decrease in size under either president. Though the Middle East will depend less on major foreign powers, it will still depend more on America than others.

• Anti-Iran policy will be more forceful under Trump than Biden, but neither wants to use force. There will be no potential for reinstating the Iran nuclear deal under Trump; doing so will be difficult even under Biden. Iran has already significantly progressed in nuclear enrichment.

• Trump and Biden are professional dealmakers and would exercise realpolitik in Syria; Trump a little more so. But, real political operations would require a grand design and sophisticated packaging. Let us not forget that the Clinton administration first reached out to Syria, albeit not very coherently. Trump will not have a problem reaching out to Syria, as he has repeatedly mentioned making a deal with Turkey, Iran, Israel, and the Gulf countries, all potentially important players in a grand bargain. Ironically, if tensions arise in the Middle East, America’s allies in the region will goad Biden into reacting forcibly towards Iran more easily than Trump.

• The Arab–Israeli peace process will focus on the distorted parameters of Trump’s Palestinian–Israeli peace plan if he is elected. If Biden wins, he will not embrace Trump’s plan, but will choose not to put Israel under any pressure unless its politics shift more positively toward a two-state solution. The current trend toward normalization between Israel and some Arab Gulf states will be misconstrued by some to validate Trump’s approach, when in fact these countries still support the two-state solution based on the 1967 boundaries. Nevertheless, I do not expect Biden to aggressively push Israel to be more progressive in peacemaking, as the domestic political capital required to do so would be better invested in promoting other elements of his agenda, particularly those regarding domestic affairs.

• One variable and possible catalyst for a shift in policy for the next American administration, especially if it is under Biden, is increased Arab activism and creativity in peacemaking, which could lead to a deal that would garner international support. Regrettably, this possibility seems far fetched.  

• Egyptian–American relations will initially have an easier restart with Trump rather than Biden. However, even with Trump, the restart will eventually struggle, because Trump is more transactional than strategic. And, he will bring into question the return on U.S. support to Egypt. With Biden, these relations will be tested in the short term: first, because he will want to appear to be the anti-Trump; second, because his administration will be more susceptible to the influence of different stakeholders in Washington, especially those from civil society.

• Emirati and Saudi relations with the next American administration will follow a similar pattern as that of Egypt. In the short term and a little beyond, these relations will be smoother with Trump. However, in the medium term, given that Trump is excessively transactional, if the stream of deliverables with regard to his demands is not met, these relations could become strained even under a Republican administration.

• Nevertheless, in the extended medium and long terms, the United States, whether it is under Trump or Biden, cannot afford to ignore or discard Egypt, the Emirates, or Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has global interests in which the Middle East plays an important role, even if its influence is admittedly decreasing.

• The degree of change and comfort in relations between the United States and these three countries over the medium and long terms will in fact be largely determined by how productive they are in their own region (i.e., the Middle East). These countries will also continue to need the United States, so they will attempt to accommodate it irrespective of whether Trump or Biden is elected.

• North Africa will become more complicated and relevant as it increasingly factors into the Middle Eastern security equation. This is especially true in light of an increasing Russian role in Libya. However, the region does not seem to be a priority area for the United States, and this is not expected to change under Biden or Trump.

• Relations with Turkey, which is normally considered to be on the outer perimeter of the Middle East, will be interesting. Democratic and Republican administrations have had sensitive and complicated relations with President Erdogan. It could be quite problematic if Turkey continues its aggressive, assertive, and even hegemonic policy in the Middle East, especially given its tensions with Greece, a fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member in the Mediterranean, and warming relations with Russia.

• On Iraq, it is important not to jump to the conclusion that a Biden administration would be more active in Iraq. This is false. Biden jointly published an article in the first decade of this century calling for splitting Iraq into three. Neither administration will want to increase operational engagement in Iraq, even against terrorism or in support of the Kurds.

• One can imagine potential Chinese–American energy competition for Middle Eastern supply. However, the increase in Chinese demand comes at a moment when the United States has decreasing demand for foreign energy sources. China is still obviously potentially a very big power, albeit one that has refrained from using its military capacity too far from its borders. It has strong demand for natural resources and markets. These factors contribute to the growth of blue water capacity and potential conflict on maritime waterways, which in the medium and long terms may become a potential source of contention between the United States and China in the Middle East.

October 22, 2020 Morry Gash/Reuters

This is the second installment of a three-part podcast interview looking at the state of American foreign policy hours before polls open on Election Day in the United States.

Cairo Review senior editor Sean David Hobbs sat with American University in Cairo President and former United States Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. for part two of a three-part series of podcast interviews today.

For part one, click here.

Cairo Review: As there was much public condemnation and criticism of Obama in Egypt during Obama’s presidency, how would Egyptian–American ties look if Biden wins?

Francis Ricciardone: I don’t think my speculation on this point is any more valid than anyone else’s. What’s important to do is listen to what both candidates are saying about foreign policy. And if you look for it, you’ll find they’re saying almost nothing because foreign policy doesn’t seem to be a big issue this election year. 

Nonetheless, you will find policy papers, policy platforms, if you look hard enough online, the Democratic policy platform. And you will see statements and articles by advisors, particularly on the Biden side, who have been in government before and foreign affairs before: people like Samantha Powers or Susan Rice.

So, it’s worth going back to read what they are saying currently. If they’re saying anything or the contributions they make to the party platform, that will give you some idea of their outlook. But, what candidates say in a campaign and what they do in office aren’t usually precisely identical. There’s often a connection; but, particularly as the administration matures—say, after its first year—you find a lot of high rhetoric early on and then things sort of stabilize toward a norm over time.

Now, the Trump administration has been quite a deviation from that; not only in terms of his policy choices, but in the way he uses the national security apparatus, whether the military, intelligence, law enforcement, or the State Department. It’s been really out of the norm. His administration has really shaken things up. And, I would add, for better or for worse, he was elected because a good percentage of the American people—though not a majority of the voters, but about half the American people—felt that things needed to be shaken up in the establishment of government. They go so far to call it the deep state. I don’t share that perspective, but one has to acknowledge that a lot of Americans felt that way; that the foreign policy establishment was not reflecting hard core American needs as they saw it. 

So, I think that, if former Vice President Biden wins, a lot of people expect a reversion to the norm in terms of American policy both toward other countries and the world. A rules based international order. That was the norm under Republican and Democratic presidents heretofore, and it’s a norm that President Trump has really shaken. 

Another norm is the use of government: the concepts of government and what government bureaucracies are supposed to do, whether on domestic or foreign affairs, which I think is what Egyptians are concerned about. On that, I do expect a reversion to the norm of standards of behavior and the way the White House National Security Council interacts with the Department of State, with the Central Intelligence Agency, with the defense apparatus, with law enforcement applied internationally. Law enforcement plays a very big role in American foreign policy: in interaction with other countries, both our allies and adversaries; with international organizations; and with Congress, very importantly. 

I say all that because Biden comes from a long experience in the executive branch: eight years. So, he’s a man of Washington; he is a classic Washington insider with a lot of advisors who are classic Washington policy people. 

Most Americans think that change is good. Me, I reserve judgment; I think change can be good. Change is, anyway, inevitable. Progress is not. The challenge is to take change that is inevitable and make it positive. One of the good things about refreshing our national leadership every four years is that it refreshes those channels between government.  

CR: The Iran–Hezbollah relationship is a powerful political influencer in the region. How do you think a Biden administration would respond to Iran and Hezbollah?

FR: That is a very good question and very fair one. The former Vice President was clearly with President Obama when they had the—I won’t say an “opening” toward Iran—but they worked on a very discrete problem set with Iran which was not Hezbollah, but the nuclear proliferation problem. 

My own view was that, that was quite a breakthrough agreement, with all the asterisks that go around [the deal], but work remain(ed) to be done; the questions about implementation and monitoring and what it left Iran free to do in terms of disruptive or baneful influences on the region. Clearly, Hezbollah is one arm of disruptive influence. That nuclear agreement had nothing to do with reining in Hezbollah, and left other things open as well; development of long-range delivery systems was excluded. 

My supposition is that a Biden administration would bring in many of the people that were in the Obama administration, many who might have been involved with that [deal] and seek to restore and  pick up the pieces that are still valuable or retrievable of the Iran nuclear agreement. 

I’m not sure whether that’s possible, or whether the Trump administration has so stomped on [the deal] that there’s nothing left to pick up. But, my guess is they might look at that. Are there pieces to pick up? And then, they might very much share the suspicion, not to say of antagonism, but the knowledge or the perception that Iran is an adversary and needs to be contained or dealt with in effective terms. 

The difference, I think, was that Obama and Biden were prepared to work with Iran directly. 

CR: If elected, will Biden reverse U.S. policy on Jerusalem? Is that even possible?

FR: We can only guess or speculate. Foreign policy issues have not been very salient in the campaign. I haven’t seen anything written by any of Biden’s advisors about the Middle East to the extent there is [hardly] anything in the Democratic Party platform on the region. It’s probably an old boilerplate. Maybe they will call for a two-state solution or something like that, in which case the Jerusalem issue becomes one of the elements in the ability to go to a two-state solution or not. 

But, honestly, if there is such as an element in their platform now, I don’t think anybody’s really talking about it. Even the whole question of a two-state solution just seems so buried outside of Washington policy circles, and even in Washington policy circles. My own guess is that both parties do respond at a certain level to popular sentiments on foreign policy when they get stirred up over particular issues.

In the United States (no revelation, you well know), the popular sentiment has been very much pro-Israeli; not just pro-Israeli, but pro-Likud and pro-right-wing nationalist elements of Israel, much more so than within Israel itself. 

So, the Jerusalem issue almost seems to have been relegated to a non-issue by the creation of facts on the ground, as they say, with the movement of the American embassy already there. It’s hard for me to imagine that they’re going to undo that. It’s hard for me to imagine that there will be pressure to do so within the Democratic Party. There is some rethinking going on as the younger generation comes up about Israel, Israel’s role, and knee-jerk pro-Israeli positions. So, there’s some interesting discussion going on that I detect within the Left of American politics on American policy toward Israel versus Palestine. 

All that said, I don’t detect a groundswell of support for the Palestinians or antagonism toward Israel on any of the main elements of a settlement with the Palestinians, whether it’s on Jerusalem, the settlements, or the right of return. I don’t hear a lot of discussion of those things beyond some individuals.

With the U.S. Embassy already moved, that’s a fait accompli. There’s some developments that most Americans would look upon as quite positive or favorable in terms of Middle East stability and Israel’s security, maybe even contributing to a long-term settlement with the Palestinians identified as such. 

One interesting development is the establishment of overt, normal diplomatic relations between the UAE and Israel with Bahrain tagging along, and perhaps with others to follow. The Saudis are interested, and that seems to be leading to more discussion of very practical cooperation between the state of Israel and the Gulf states. It’s a path that Egypt actually blazed with Camp David all those decades ago but didn’t finish—didn’t carry all the way forward to fruition as envisioned by the signatories at Camp David, certainly by the Americans and the Egyptians at that time. 

I know that’s very disappointing or even makes many of us who sympathize with the Palestinians quite upset and discouraged. But, there are possibilities that the world, that Israel, and even the Palestinians might be able to find something to build upon. There seems to be a kind of reset, even if it’s not what some of the Arab countries would have wished. 

The Palestinians would say for the negative, and the Israelis would say very much for the positive. Probably most Americans would say for the positive. I have to guess that most in the Democratic Party, if they come to power, would take this as a fait accompli and seek to exploit the positives, even exploiting the positives—not only for the benefit of Israel, but in some way, perhaps the Democratic administration would attempt to take up what they can in support of Palestinian rights and dignity toward a solution to the longstanding Palestinian–Israeli conflict, which could take the shape of one state, two states, or a continuing gray area… I can’t speculate any more authoritatively than anyone else can.

Francis J. Ricciardone was appointed the 12th President of The American University in Cairo and began his term on July 1, 2016. He had served as a Foreign Service Officer from 1978-2014, including appointments as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines, and Chargé d’Affaires and Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan. After graduating from Dartmouth College Summa Cum Laude in 1973, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and taught in American international schools in Trieste, Italy, and Tehran, Iran. From 2014-2016 he was Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. He was a distinguished scholar at the US Institute of Peace in 2008-2009. He speaks Arabic, Turkish, Italian, and French.

Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the United States has been the leading global superpower with a vast military stationed around the world and an extensive economic and cultural reach. Yet, two debt-inducing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 global recession, outside governments’ possible tampering with the nation’s 2016 election, and this year’s coronavirus pandemic have left the United States arguably more vulnerable than at any time in the post-World War II period. This year’s election in the United States is not happening in a vacuum but instead at a time when the world faces uncertainty around the issues of climate change, economic and racial disparity and our global response to diseases. As such this 2020 US election for the White House between Donald J. Trump and Joseph Biden has been called by many the most important election in this generation. At stake, some say, is the future of the country.  Others point to America’s international standing and believe that this election will be the bellwether moment for humanity in the early 21st century.

Aiming to critique and understand the upcoming election and how politics work in Washington, on October 14, David Dumke, director of the University of Central Florida’s Office of Global Perspectives & International Initiatives hosted with U.S. Ambassador a Lester N. Mandell Endowed distinguished Lecture Series titled “Politics and Governance: How Washington Works and Doesn’t Work.” The event was moderated by Mathew Peddie, a National Public Radio – WMFE-FM’s news commentator. Two leading U.S. political consultants, Andrew Card and Peter Rouse, were the featured speakers of the event. Card, a Republican, was the Secretary of Transportation under George H. W. Bush, and the White House chief of staff in the presidency of George W. Bush. Rouse, a Democrat, served as counselor to the president and White House chief of staff in Barack Obama’s administration.

Trump’s Digital Mob Rule

Card explained that he is not a Donald Trump supporter. Yet, he acknowledged that Trump’s greatest asset was the president’s ability to communicate and to market his ideas. Said Card, “He (Trump) is able to get the stage, keep the stage, and prevent others from standing on it. So he dominates the conversation and almost no one can talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump.”

The demographic that Trump has captured and continues to represent, stated Card, is a group of Americans who feel they are being left behind. While he is the nominee of the Republican party, Trump is the champion of this disenfranchised group. And as a representative of this swath of American voters, the president has changed the Republican party into “the Trump party… So, his biggest asset is that he has a larger than life personality and it dominates every aspect of his leadership.”

Card, who is a resident of New Hampshire and represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress before serving in successive Republican administrations, went on to explain that Trump has changed the nature of democracy in the United States—not always been for the better. Trump is an “immediate gratification expert” who often spreads his opinions in a haphazard manner via social media. Card reminded listeners that the greatest threat to democracy is mob rule and that Trump has, “brought the mob inside the rule because he is a digital communicator in such a way that he does not go through representatives.”

Liabilities of the Candidates: For Trump, Himself, For Biden Complacency

Rouse, the first and only Asian American chief of staff of the senate offices, stated that Trump has changed traditional party politics and pointed to the import of Florida in the upcoming election. Said Rouse, “Florida is at the epicenter of the fight for the Electoral College which at the moment is really the battle for the White House.”

Rouse believes that the President is running at a time when the public discourse is a referendum on his own presidency. What would be better, explained Rouse, is if Trump could reframe the election instead as a choice between himself and Biden. Rouse acknowledged that Trump is trying to do this reframing by casting Biden as a socialist or a captive of the leftwing of the Democratic Party. Further, Rouse stated that President Trump does not appear to be running for the moderate center of the voting populace and is focusing instead on his rightwing base. The thought on the Trump team, Rouse said, is that a latent ground swell of voters will rise up and push Trump to victory. This latent group are presently not expressing their overt support for a second Trump term.

Biden seems to be doing the opposite of Trump, that is aggressively trying to win the moderate center such as suburbanites, independents and working class voters. All of these groups were part of the coalition that gave Barack Obama victories in 2008 and 2012 and Trump victory in 2016. Much to the chagrin of the American leftwing, Biden appears to not be running to court their vote.

The biggest problem Biden could face is a complacency regarding the election. In the run up to the 2016 election, Rouse reminded the audience,  Hillary Clinton appeared confident in her upcoming victory as almost every poll taken before the election showed her comfortably ahead of Trump. Yet, four years ago Trump prevailed. The same could happen, stated Rouse, to Biden if the former vice-president is not careful.

Ultimately Rouse sees a way for the Trump campaign to win. In this scenario, Biden may get an even higher popular vote majority than Clinton won in 2016 by running up vote numbers in traditionally democratic states. However, Trump may win more of the battleground states with his hoped for “latent vote.” Essentially the 2020 election would be a repeat of the 2016 election where Trump holds the White House not with a popular vote victory but an Electoral College victory.

Running on the Rug, not the Fringe

Biden, said Card, needs to show voters that he is not controlled by the far left. Card explained this theory as, “standing on the rug (center) of American politics, not the fringe.” Card stated that when he was growing up the center of American politics was broader but now there are more left and right fringe elements controlling the U.S. political process. Nonetheless, it is challenging to govern the country without the necessary bravery to find the middle ground between all people. Biden could still lose the election because parts of the voting populace, though disliking Trump, are still fiscally conservative, America first in focus, and keen to grow the economy all the while wanting to keep taxes low.

Card was in agreement with Rouse regarding the framing of the political discourse around the election. If the election is about Donald Trump as a person, Card believes that Trump will lose. However, if the election is about the positives of the U.S. economy up until the coronavirus pandemic, then Trump will look like a good choice to voters. Card stressed that the fundamental problem for Trump is that COVID-19 highlighted some of his weak personality traits to the American public. In the upcoming election, given the trouble Trump appears to be in due to the polling numbers, Card predicted that Trump will not be able to win the popular vote but may win the Electoral College which would result in another contentious election.

Three Crises Three Presidents

Moderator Peddie turned from the election to a broader question on leadership in the time of national and international crisis, asking Card about President George W. Bush’s response on the day of the 9/11 attacks and Rouse on President Obama’s response to the global recession in 2008 and 2009.

Card related the story of the 9/11 attacks and his iconic picture whispering to President Bush that the United States was under attack while Bush read to school children. Rouse discussed the approach taken by Obama and his economic team in confronting the worst economic downturn in U.S. history since the Great Depression of 1929.

Rouse felt that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year is set to be a dominant factor in the 2020 election. The first debate and Trump’s subsequent catching of the coronavirus kept the focus of the voters on the pandemic. 

While Card agreed with Rouse that the seminal decision of this election will hinge on what voters think of Trump’s personality, Card stressed that Trump has a natural ability to involve and mobilize people into voting for him that hereto had been non-voters and not active in the political process. As a case in point, Card reported that despite Trump’s losing Card’s home state of New Hampshire in 2016, Trump seems now to be quite popular with a more active base than Biden, “I see more Trump signs than I do Biden signs in the communities around where I live… and I don’t live in the most conservative part of the state.”

Partisanship and the Transitions of Power

Card felt that one of the major contributors to escalating partisanship in the United States is the advent of the digital age and what Card called instant gratification in politics. Highlighting poor journalistic standards in both writing and news reporting, Card recalled a time when there was thorough fact-checking in the news business and a moderated approach to information gathering that depended on grounded sources and strong editorship. Card said, “Today with instantaneous communication people put their thoughts out as if it is newsworthy. There is very little discipline in the media. Journalists are now encouraged to have an online following, which means they write with more adjectives and adverbs.” Pining for a time when journalists used strong verbs and nouns and were impartial conveyors of the news, Card decried the present need for journalists to have fans just to be relevant in the field. The result of online followings, Card said, is that they create silos and the reinforcement of biases among the public.

Rouse emphasized the need for a peaceful transition of power regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Trump has made statements that if he does not win, the election itself is rigged. Rouse stated that he was not sure how much the president’s allegations of a fixed election are meant to enflame his base. Nonetheless, he hoped that Trump would follow the rule of law after the election. Stated Rouse, “one of the hallmarks of our democracy is the peaceful transition of power.”

Both Rouse and Card agreed that they were hopeful for the future of the United States following this 2020 election. Said Card, “It is very important for people to get out and vote.”

October 26, 2020 Hannah McKay/Reuters

In a few days millions of Americans will decide the country’s destiny in what many say is one of the most critical presidential elections in the nation’s history.

Whether they vote for the incumbent President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the fact remains that the United States has done much soul-searching in the past four years with many more obstacles ahead for one of the world’s superpowers.

In the lead up to the election, Cairo Review senior editor Sean David Hobbs sat with American University in Cairo President and former United States Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. for part one of a three-part series of podcast interviews on America’s health today.

Cairo Review: You have lived through two election years (1968 and 2020) which have arguably seen the most internal conflict in the modern history of the United States. When you think back to 1968—a time when the United States was divided over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights—and where we were then and where we are now in 2020, what is similar and what is different? Based on what you saw of how the U.S. public responded after the 1968 election, are you hopeful or pessimistic for the future of our nation post this 2020 election?

Francis Ricciardone: That question of are you hopeful or pessimistic is always a great journalistic opener and lead in. But it’s also interesting that you picked those couple of years. I’m no historian, but people talk about inflection points in years and what really, as you look back, turned out to be big shifts in the direction of the world or in the direction of a country. For me personally, the big difference is I was 16 in 1968 and I’m not 16 anymore. So it gives me a very different perspective on the world. I was a young observer learning about it. Now, I’ve been a participant in all these events. 

In terms of the United States and the other countries; of  course in 1968, even as a 16 year old, I knew things were going on in France and Czechoslovakia. So there was social turmoil that was political. Race was an issue both times. Economic factors were there. 

There was also a sense, I think, of an emergence of a generational shift. At least, we felt it then. I was involved. I remember my high school copybook having a bumper sticker for Eugene McCarthy, who was a reformist candidate in the Democratic Party. My father was horrified because he was against President Johnson within his own country. It was all about the Vietnam War, etc. The Democratic Party at that time was still coming out. Johnson had really changed the nature of it. They’d spoken of the solid South for the Democratic Party because it wasn’t the party of the Republican Lincoln. And that started to get shaken up when Goldwater ran against Johnson. 

Those times (the 1960s) were just really different times. But there was a feeling that us baby boomers were reaching our teens and preteens, it felt like a generational shift. It was time for the World War two generation, who were at their prime, people like my dad, they had their time building the country, set  the foreign policy terms and got us into Vietnam. And we thought we knew better, of course. I remember those times of protest. When I went to university, I had a beard and long hair and protested the Vietnam War. I did all that stuff. 

Now we have  not just the millennials, but those that follow who are brought up in a different world; grandkids of the other World War Two generation, the kids of the baby boomers. They’re brought up with social media (with) different ways of interacting. Whereas we were brought up in a time of rising middle class, a better distribution of wealth, when people without university education were able to advance and have a good life. Blue collar jobs were well-paid. There seemed to be a more equitable distribution. 

Now, in the United States, in the past at least 20 years there has been rising income inequality; a rise in  immigration. In my time, there were people who didn’t speak unaccented American English. I grew up with grandparents who didn’t speak very good English and I learned an appreciation for foreign languages from them. 

Now, there’s a pride actually in where we had come from, but a pride in being American and in the melting pot thing. America is now more diverse than ever, but there seems to be a reaction to that and younger people are leading the way. I think in a way, it makes me very happy and proud of America. 

Going back to your question, am I optimistic? Yes, I am. The younger people are carrying forward something that is very American: an appreciation of diversity: appreciation of other cultures; religions; languages; skin colors; races. Even gender diversity, not just gender equality, but diversity. People don’t conform to one or the other stereotypes of either the two genders. That’s what seems to be there in the atmosphere now and underlying a lot of our politics in the US. 

I choose to be optimistic. I think it shows the energy of the United States, a resilience that has been part of our American identity, our brand, if you will. It hasn’t always been pretty. It’s sometimes been ugly. There’s been violence. There’s been injustice. There’s been hate. There’s been people who have fed on that over the centuries. We were founded as a slaveholding country and episodically we’ve lurched into improvements and sometimes lurched backward. It’s part of the American story. 

What I find gives me confidence in America is we do have an openness to change. We embrace it even as we react to it. Whether we like it or not, every four years, our top leadership changes, and every two years, so do the House of Representatives and the Senate (the Senate only renews by one third every two years). But we force renewal. Sometimes we lose good people and sometimes we lose people who we want to lose. 

(laughs)

Sometimes we get great presidents. Sometimes, you know, we get less great presidents. But always it’s a reflection, one way or another, of the American people’s perceptions of their self-interest and their national interests.

So, I’m not a flag-waving jingoist. But the country has a system that most other people, many other people would prefer to live under. We still have people lining up to be immigrants. Every American embassy has a long, long list of people who want to visit or emigrate to the United States. 

Some people say it’s changing, that the prestige of America’s falling, the attraction. (That) the story of America has been tarnished. I think, again, if you don’t take the long historical view, you can see the anger and noise of the moment and think that that defines the place. It’s part of the definition of America. But I think the core is still solid:  an openness to others, an openness to change, a desire for debate, a fierce commitment to individual freedom, intellectual freedom. All that, I think, is solid and positive and will see America through.

CR: Former-Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderez famously called for Turkey to be a “little America”. Should the United States’ system of democracy be an example for other nations in the world? If yes, in what ways? If not, why not? How could emulation of the United States work and how does it not work?

 FR: Clearly, at that time and in the mid 1950s, America was quite an example for emulation and inspiration to much of the world. I think it still is in many ways. 

Along the way, maybe a certain arrogance crept in. And of course, there was the Cold War where we were offering competing examples between the United States’ system of democracy and open societies; versus what the Russians, the Soviet Union, was offering by way of sort of a dirigiste, more state controlled, collectivist, closed mentality. And when the Soviet Union and its system finally visibly failed to everybody, it let loose a new paradigm for the world to all figure out, okay, what’s working and what doesn’t work. 

My own view as a former American diplomat that very much believed and still believes in the American system for Americans, is a lot of the way America conducts itself can be valuable for others. But it’s sort of like a world of farmers. Farmers look and see what the next farmers are doing and whether it’s working for that farm before they adopt it. 

I think America is at its most influential in terms of spreading its values when its example is obviously succeeding for itself. So when it preaches tolerance of diversity and elects a black president, how many countries have members of minorities and especially disadvantaged minorities rise to lead not only the state, but the government? We combine the two roles into one. 

That’s a striking example. (Obama’s presidency) hit a lot of people even who might not have liked American policies or our style. That was still an undeniable, interesting fact that inspired a lot of people. 

So with regards to whether America should play a certain role, my own view is, as an American, it is a good thing to be a superpower. It is not enough to be a superpower by having the strongest military, which we still do. Clearly, that’s not enough to protect even your national security, much less your economic interests. And it’s certainly not very useful for promoting your values. You can’t use the military to bring democracy to Afghanistan, for example. It is ludicrous to imagine that. 

But by proclaiming our ideals and living up to them, we may be able to help bring others to share the conviction that individual freedom is a good thing. Well regulated free markets are a good thing. Gender equality is a useful and good thing for everybody. We seem to be living up to it in the Hollywood version of America that people were getting, even as we were not always, even as there was racism and bigotry and less than gender equality in the 50s and 60s. 

Now our flaws in living up to our ideals are more obvious and harder to hide thanks to modern media, let’s say. People are more interconnected than ever before. So we really have to be living what we proclaim if we want to be effective in convincing others, I would say at this time. 

CR: How is the present political divide between Biden and Trump, left and right, viewed by non-American public policy makers and leaders?

FR: I’ve only visited a few other countries—like Turkey—(that have) any degree of political discussion for some seminars and conferences in the years since President Trump was elected. So I spent most of my time here and I have been in touch. I haven’t got into in-depth discussion with officials about U.S. politics, but I have been in touch with opinion leaders whom I’ve known: journalists, intellectuals, public intellectuals of Egypt, writers, artists, professors. Of course, lots of professors, activists. 

So it is hard to say that there’s a general impression. There are many who are apprehensive about what might happen. There are many who perceive that relations between the United States and Egypt are good now, or at least relatively tranquil, and are anxious that if Vice President Biden is elected, that that might disrupt that relatively, let’s say, tranquil period as they perceive it. And that perception rests on what I think is true, a pretty good personal chemistry at the top levels between the two leaders. 

That is not to be undervalued. Personal relationships between leaders really do have an impact even on modern state relations, which are much more complicated than in the days of kings, let’s say. Right. This is an intricate relationship of many, many, many people interacting every day. We know each other better than we did in the past. So I wouldn’t over state the value of personal relations among leaders. But it’s still consequential.

I think the relationships between Egypt and the United States rest on the foundations of our own strategic interests of the two countries as not only the top leaders see it, but ultimately as their peoples understand them. So I think people perceive that the tensions between Biden and Trump correctly reflect a division in America that is starker and angrier and noisier than at any time, probably since 1968, as you started out with. So that’s there in the United States. It’s undeniable. 

We can talk about what that might mean if one or the other is elected. But I think people are dismayed in a way. People had an idea that America, through the rough and tumble of its politics and its democratic system, was better able to sort things out. At least in terms of policies that affected their countries; whereas they now see America as kind of flailing about a little bit, inconsistent. 

The things that Egyptians used to be able to count on America to support, the levels of engagement, -never mind the specific policies- but the way we engaged, the level of engagement, the level of interest in world affairs; people, I think, perceive a kind of pulling inward on the part of the United States. I think there’s something to that. It predates President Trump. Even President Obama in some of his foreign policy statements reflected an American refocusing on American interests as more nationalistically defined. 

“Why waste all that money on foreign development assistance”, for example. That’s not a new theme. It was there long before President Obama and he (Obama) made foreign development assistance a point of his policy. But there was always an undercurrent in the United States of, you know,“those foreigners, why are we doing so much for those foreigners?” 

So that American feeling, that isolationist tendency, was always there. Under President Trump, he’s played to that. There are other elements of his own party, the part that President Bush, both father and son represented, was the internationalist camp, as it’s called. And the Democrats had their own version of that. 

Back to your question. Most foreigners that I’ve dealt with, most non-Americans, Turks and others where I’ve lived among them, have, over the years, come to expect America to act toward their countries with enlightened self-interest. To be engaged with competent people, with their senior officials, secretaries of state or their diplomats and be able to understand their interests better and respond to them. 

That’s what I perceive. That they see the division in America now as playing out not in a good way with respect to their countries, a kind of more narrow self-interest than the enlightened self-interest that they expected in the past.

Francis J. Ricciardone was appointed the 12th President of The American University in Cairo and began his term on July 1, 2016. He had served as a Foreign Service Officer from 1978-2014, including appointments as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines, and Chargé d’Affaires and Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan. After graduating from Dartmouth College Summa Cum Laude in 1973, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and taught in American international schools in Trieste, Italy, and Tehran, Iran. From 2014-2016 he was Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. He was a distinguished scholar at the US Institute of Peace in 2008-2009. He speaks Arabic, Turkish, Italian, and French.

COVID-19, climate change, and racism all have some unfortunate similarities. They are global crises and they all have a death toll. Each causes maximum harm to the least well-off in society, and they all lay bare our structures of social inequality. And, they all are made worse by sometimes purposeful and strategic misinformation. 

To deal with these and other crises, we need a “sustainable humanism”. On a basic level, sustainable humanism means that we care about and value one another, which in the end sustains the welfare of communities. We need to see the dignity and worth of people and care about their future. To fight racism and the spread of the virus and bend the curve of rising global temperatures, we need to care about other people and act in a way that builds integrity, trust, and well-being. 

The picture becomes more transparent when thinking about groups that either want these crises to continue, or at best, do not want to take steps to ameliorate them. These groups have some interesting similarities, much of which surrounds preserving privilege that harms others. 

Beating the pandemic requires us to take precautions around congregating and wearing masks, but some groups have protested these measures, and often these protesters are armed. Let’s call them “anti-lockdown protesters”. Anti-lockdown protesters are angry. Their anger is fed through echo chambers that repeat medical misinformation and conspiracies. They believe their personal freedom is harmed and that the government is using the virus to control people and foster tyranny. Notably, anti-lockdown protesters are predominantly Caucasian. The Washington Post reported in May that in addition to attracting militia groups and white supremacists displaying swastikas and the confederate flag, these protests

… have been supported by conservative megadonors, have ties to a host of darker Internet subcultures — people who oppose vaccination, the self-identified Western-chauvinist Proud Boys group, anti-government conspiracy theorists known as QAnon, and people touting a coming civil war. 

This description also seems to describe counter-protesters to the Black Lives Matter protests, some of whom have appeared fully armed with semi-automatic rifles and tactical paramilitary gear. These counter-protesters have attracted white power groups and have used their vehicles as weapons, driving into crowds. To resolve systemic racism, we need the opposite behavior, that is we need—individually and socially—to see people of color as humans who possess dignity and worth. 

When it comes to climate change, we need to de-carbonize our economy. This will have costs—though most analysts believe those costs will be far outweighed by benefits and damages avoided. Bearing these costs will require us to think about and value the lives of others both at home and abroad. However, if we continue to fail to reduce greenhouse gases, insecurities and threats will multiply and the people affected most will be the poorest on our shared planet. 

Sustainable humanism recognizes the value of these lives and the suffering that the poor feel—and will feel in future generations—and requires us to act to lessen the loss and damage already underway. Importantly, we see the need to value non-human life as it is also threatened by climate change. Scientists agree that climate change will bring explosive biodiversity loss and extinctions which will have a chain reaction causing other extinctions. If this were the only fact of climate change impacts, we would still be obligated to avoid abusing the intricate web of life around us because, as many Indigenous traditions assert, our ecology constitutes part of what being human means. 

In contemporary sustainability studies, we speak of “social-ecological” systems that mutually reinforce and inform one another. We see that humans would not exist without the ecological systems within which we have evolved. We are co-constitutive with our ecological systems even though humanity has shaped the Earth so extensively that researchers refer to this time as being the Anthropocene (which means a period of time that is fundamentally human-influenced). Embedded in this Anthropocene concept is the example of climate change. Some 97 percent of climate scientists agree that the average global temperatures are rising, due mostly to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, and that this event will have many negative impacts such as species extinctions.

However, there has been a thirty-year program organized as a social “countermovement” to cast doubt on climate science without doing any science of its own. This is because climate denial is not about research or fact gathering, but instead it is about politics. Climate denial is animated by a fear of loss of power and privilege that is imagined in the transition from conventional energy sources that have fueled modern progress and industrialization. The Climate Change Countermovement disseminating misinformation was started in the United States, and is primarily a U.S. phenomenon, with some adherents in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries countries like Australia and Canada. 

The idea of de-carbonizing the economy fundamentally scares climate deniers because it threatens their global position and privilege, as well as their lifestyle of comfort. This is a lifestyle that is only enjoyed by the high classes in Western nations like the United States and the United Kingdom.

The fact that the Climate Change Countermovement is not significantly organized outside of the English-speaking world should be telling. And, yes, the countermovement supporters are mainly white. Surveys analyzed by McCright and Dunlap (2011) find “that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views … and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well.”

Why does this view gain traction? It is likely because of echo chambers of digital misinformation that go unchallenged. Active members of these echo chambers or silos share information within their homogenous community which supports narratives similar to the Black Lives Matter counter-protestors. 

Between the triple crises, these opponents to meaningful solutions fear losing their individual freedoms and white privilege. Their opposition has been inward looking and pushes its believers toward an exclusion of non-whites. This opposition results in system-defending behavior which exacerbates each crisis. In order to push back against this opposition, we must focus on public policies that value the inherent worth of all humans regardless of skin color. 

I argue that we need a new humanism to address each crisis. This new humanism will help us in the future as crises arise such as growing unemployment. I call this new humanism “sustainable humanism” because one hopes this concept can be the moral compass that will maintain humanity in the coming years.

To be sure, past iterations of humanism have been problematic, indeed chauvinistic in their focus on the Enlightened “man” and a masculine, undiluted, all-powerful “reason”. This kind of eighteenth and nineteenth century-based chauvinism is not sustainable. We have seen many examples where this concept of Enlightened “reason” is simply a cover for a white, male justification of Western consolidation of global power. We certainly do not want to resurrect that kind of humanism, but instead build a new humanism that works against prejudice and the abuse of power; a humanism that sustains all communities.

During the pandemic, countries like New Zealand and Iceland took approaches that (1) firmly acted on the best medical science, and (2) were based on valuing human wellness. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, openly embraced a humane, public empathy meant to commiserate but more importantly build trust. Both countries forcefully built the capacity to track down anyone thought to be exposed to the virus and then compelled those at-risk people to quarantine for two weeks. The result was a minor inconvenience for the public good. These and other countries with similar responses—interestingly led by women—have been spared the worst of the virus. 

In the United States, meanwhile, we have held the economy as our central priority and indecisively squabbled about how or if we should substantially support the unemployed, small businesses, and state and local governments. That has not been a sustainable approach. If we valued the dignity and worth of people, we would prioritize their lives and welfare. 

In New Zealand, twenty-two people have died of the virus as of this writing in early September 2020. Iceland has lost ten people. In the United States, more than 180,000 people have been sacrificed for a skewed moral compass empowered by leaders who do not value science. I am making a normative argument, and reasonable people can disagree over my proposition, but ask yourself this: if our beliefs inform our actions, what beliefs do you think would be able to solve virulent crises like racism, global warming, and the coronavirus?

Dealing with crises requires us to be humane—that we minimize harm and suffering and that we are good to each other. That is utterly inconsistent with racism and leaving people to starve—whether from unemployment, climate change, or systematic inequity. Sustainable humanism does not give us a detailed agenda or policies but does perhaps give us some parameters to discuss these things. This is a discussion that should be inclusive, well-informed, honest, and kind.

Dr. Peter Jacques is a Professor of the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs & the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at the University of Central Florida. Jacques specializes in global environmental politics and sustainability, and has published five books and many research articles on various related issues.

This article was written as part of the Addressing Global Crisis Project (AGC), which is run by the University of Central Florida’s Office of Global Perspectives & International Initiatives (GPII). AGC examines how governments, individually and collectively, deal with pandemics, natural disasters, ecological challenges, and climate change. AGC is organized around five primary pillars: (1) delivery of services and infrastructure; (2) water-energy-food security; (2) governance and politics; (4) economic development; and, (5) national security. Through its global network, AGC facilitates expert discussion and features articles, publications and online content.