President Obama's speech today, welcome as it was in tenor
and intent, sought to test whether American identity politics could effectively
translate into a new form of U.S. identity diplomacy. While there has always
been some element of playing to cultural and historical affinities in
international relations, it is telling and rather worrisome that a speech
offered as a centerpiece of the new president's Middle East policy spoke to a
type of relationship that has seldom if ever been similarly invoked in U.S.
diplomatic history-that between our country and a religion.
Seventy-eight times in his 55-minute
speech did President Obama use the words Islam or Muslim, their variants or
make mention of Islamic texts, language or institutions. The central thesis of
the speech was that the United States needs to redefine
its relationship with the Muslim world. And while it is hard to be against
strengthening our relations with any group, this approach does contain a trap.
It posits the existence of something that does not really exist. With over a
billion members, "the Muslim world" encompasses a group so geographically,
culturally, ideologically, and ethnically diverse as to be almost a meaningless
term.
Further, as some critics
have rightly pointed out, despite the occasional acknowledgement that Muslims
may exist in Asia, Africa or the United States, the speech was primarily
addressed to the Muslims of the greater Middle East. Not only does this
unintentionally marginalize Muslims who are not Arab or Persian, upon further
examination the focus on that region reminds us that our problems are not with
Muslims per se but with often deeply divided subsets of that group with other sect-related,
national, tribal or other identities. This in turn underscores why repairing
relations with Islam is not a highly meaningful goal from a practical
standpoint (because Islam is hardly monolithic and our relationship with it is
hardly central to solving the problems we face).
While the purpose of the speech seemed to be to try to
engender better will toward the United States and our new administration...and
while it may have succeeded
in this respect...from a diplomatic perspective one can only get so far by
appealing to an entity that doesn't really
exist. Ultimately the representatives of the U.S. government have to sit
down with representatives of local governments and most of the governments in
the region are not known for their responsiveness to the needs or moods of
their people. Even among those that are
democratic such as Iraq, Pakistan and Iran, divisions among Islamic sects or
between fundamentalist and moderate factions are likely to trump generalized
views that this U.S. administration is less offensive to Muslims than the last
one.
In the United States, identity politics work because
churches or synagogues mobilize voters. In the Islamic world the effect is
likely to be much less easily translated into political movement. This is not
to say that today's speech does damage to the United States. That could only
happen if the administration were to expect too much of it in the way of
meaningful consequences.
In the end, I guess I am of the school that believes in the
strictest and most far reaching interpretation of the separation between church
and state. There's no place for the cozy relationship that has emerged between
the two in U.S. politics or in the politics of the Middle East. And there is no
place for it in U.S. diplomacy. In the first instance, it is a matter of
principle that should divide the two. In the second, it is a matter of
practicality and a sense of history. To my mind, America should have no
relationship with Islam to repair...or with any other religion. Our government
should be blind to such issues and treat all countries with tolerance and
respect. Which is just one more reason why today's speech, for all the merits
clearly underlying its conception and evident in its execution, made me uneasy.
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