FORMER NSA JIM JONES: A MARSHALL PLAN FOR EGYPT???SEE NOTE
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0511/a_new_marshall_plan_03e2145f-02c8-4a50-903e-0ba4c71752aa.html
MY E-PAL C.K. SUGGESTS A MARTIAL PLAN INSTEAD…..SOUNDS BETTER TO ME…..RSK
Jones rekindles foreign aid debate…a Marshall plan for Egypt?
Nearly 64 years after Harry Truman laid out the case for reconstructing Europe’s economies, in a speech that became known as the Marshall Plan, few diplomatic, economic and foreign policy accomplishments have garnered such residual feelings of goodwill and accomplishment in the United States.
Now, days ahead of President Obama’s major address on the Middle East, former national security adviser Jim Jones, a well-respected voice in foreign policy circles, is suggesting that his vision should include a new Marshall Plan for emerging democracies.
“From my perspective, it may be time to consider a bold idea which would demonstrate our welcome to the new Egypt by considering a type of Marshall Plan for emerging democratic states like Egypt and which young Egyptians are trying to form,” Jones said at the National Press Club on Monday. “Such a plan would be international in scope as the world has much to gain from any security, economic and governmental assistance that can be provided at this critical time in Egypt’s history.”
For an administration historically reticent to propose “big” ideas for the U.S.’s role in the Middle East, Jones’s advocacy for the post-World War II-era program seems like a dissonant concept.
The idea — delivering economic aid to states to foster political stability — has cropped up in foreign policy circles fairly consistently since the fall of the Soviet Union, said Jim Goldgeir, a political science professor at George Washington University.
“One of the lessons of the Marshall Plan is that we had a strategic framework for Europe,” Goldgeir said. “I’m assuming that [the Obama administration] would like to lay out some kind of broader framework for thinking about the ‘Arab Spring’ and how the international community can help countries that would like to move toward political reforms.”
But though political scientists agree that in Egypt, where U.S. interests are acute, finding jobs for the country’s masses of unemployed, college-educated youth will be a critical factor in the country’s stability, few believe the Marshall Plan is a cure-all for what ails the region.
“We have such a financially constrained environment right now that if the administration really wants to put a lot of money behind this, they’re going to have to do a huge public diplomacy in the United States,” Goldgeir said.
After Truman proposed the plan in 1947, he went on a cross-country political tour to build domestic support. Then he put a Republican, Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, in charge of administering it.
“There was broad bipartisan engagement between the Truman administration and the Republican side,” said Rudy deLeon, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress. “Whether we can put that kind of bipartisan reach together in 2011 is a great challenge.”
Looking around in Washington, most agree that the person closest to being Obama’s bipartisan ally on foreign policy is Indiana Senator Richard Lugar. But Lugar is in the midst of a rare, competitive reelection campaign in which he has taken heat from tea party opponents for his work with Obama on the START deal. As a result, he has quickly distanced himself from Obama on issues like immigration reform, and has launched a crusade against the administration’s policy in Libya.
The debate over a Marshall Plan’s relevance for the Middle East also highlights the complexity of Obama’s task in his address on Thursday. He must articulate a broad vision for the multi-faceted region, but he can’t over-promise, said Elliot Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser for George W. Bush who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Focusing on the economic development of countries transitioning to democracy in the Middle East is “something we all need to attend to,” Abrams said. “I assume he’s going to mention it, and I assume he’s going to be careful to talk about how this needs to be a joint project of the U.S., Europe, China Japan … the Gulf Arab states, just to make it clear that he’s not promising anybody big bucks from the United States.”
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