About two months ago, I was watching another U.S. election season when I learned that one of those bloggers had been sentenced to two years in prison in Egypt. Ahmed Naje was convicted of offending “public morals” and “spreading licentiousness” after an excerpt from his graphic novel was published in a local newspaper. The novel, which includes sexually explicit content, had already passed a censorship office in 2014. But an individual took Naje to court, alleging that the novel caused the plaintiff’s blood pressure to fall and his heart to race.

I first met Naje and his best friend, Mahmoud Salem, back in 2008, when I spent a few weeks in Cairo interviewing them along with six other Egyptian bloggers. Under a program funded by USAID and run out of the American University in Cairo, the eight men and women took courses on the U.S. electoral system and then traveled to the U.S. to cover the elections. I reported a story about them for The National, a news magazine based in Abu Dhabi, following the bloggers from Cairo to Austin and Lincoln, Nebraska.

They were experienced, savvy observers of their country and of international affairs. They had blogged about issues facing women, human rights abuses and the struggles of civil society. Wael Abbas, who reported on his blog about police brutality and voting irregularities, received awards from Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Journalists and was recognized by the BBC as one of the Most Influential People of the Year in 2006.

The rich blogging culture in Egypt has been instrumental not only in breaking news but also in pushing back against free speech restrictions. But bloggers often paid a heavy price for their outspokenness. Salem, who blogged anonymously on “Rantings of a Sandmonkey,” later revealed his identity when he went public with videos showing how he had been beaten by the police.

Back in 2008, I was curious about what they thought about the U.S. political process as Bush’s term came to an end and the U.S. elected its first African-American president—whose feel-good campaign focused on “hope” and “change.” The bloggers in the USAID program spoke to elected officials in the nation’s capital as well as to residents of trailer parks and contractors on wind farms. They debated evangelicals on street corners, canvassed in North Carolina and traveled to rallies. On their blogs, they wrote about the everyday as well as the profound.

On Election Day, Naje and Salem filmed a spoof at an Austin voting station, parodying their own system by acting like confused Luddites trying to make sense of the American democratic process. After asking whether the voting lines were really bread lines (bread lines were making headlines in Egypt) and noting that there was no judicial oversight at the voting station, they commented on how “safe” the elections felt. Where was the fighting, the arguing, they jokingly wondered. “These poor Americans,” Mahmoud says, laughing, as the scene ends.

But they were serious about elections, and the future of their country. Later that evening, Naje told me how his father, then a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, used to dress in his best suit on the morning of parliamentary elections and head down to the polling station. Naje would check up on him later, at his mother’s request, and find his father waiting patiently to vote. When he was not allowed, he would calmly await the arrival of news organizations. When thugs showed up to intimidate voters, he would find out how much they were being paid and offer them more money to leave once the cameras were gone. The whole dance had left Naje jaded.

Debating them that 2008 evening, I wanted the experience of a U.S. election to pierce such cynicism. George W. Bush’s talk of democracy had not made Egyptian democracy any better, but I thought Obama’s might. I wanted them to believe that an Obama victory was also a victory for the Middle East, for the Arab world, and most all, for them. Bush had invaded Iraq on a lie and helped dictators in the region oppress their populations. Bush supervised water boarding and Abu Ghraib; Bush opened Guantanamo. But Obama had promised to reverse it all.

Naje and Salem, however, were having none of my arguments. They were not Obama fans. They were skeptical.

A little over two years later, in January 2011, our different opinions were put to the test. It was Naje and Salem’s turn to demand “change” for their country. Millions took to the streets of Cairo to demand that then-President Hosni Mubarak step down. Young activists like Naje and Salem marched through Tahrir chanting slogans like, “The people want the fall of the regime,” and “Lift your head up high, you’re Egyptian.”

Meanwhile, the United States fumbled its response. The Obama administration was left calling Mubarak an “ally,” asking for “reform” and merely condemning any violence. For nearly a week, the American government struggled to reconfigure decades-old policy that supported dictatorships in return for stability.

The U.S. eventually supported the uprising, but in the Egyptian election that followed, too many candidates split the liberal vote, which provided an opening for the Muslim Brotherhood. The elected government of Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by the military. The possibility of an Islamist government opened the way for a new authoritarianism—and the rise of a new strongman, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. The Sisi government, in turn, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, jailing most of its activists and making membership once again illegal. It has also imprisoned thousands of activists, journalists, and other people who continued to struggle for democratic change.

Which is why Naje is now locked away. A 2013 protest law has been used to clamp down on all forms of dissent. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists named Egypt as the second worst jailer of journalists worldwide, coming in just after China.

Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State in the political vacuum of war-torn Syria has made authoritarianism in Egypt more palpable to some. Dictators once again present a “them or us” argument. America has returned to a pre-revolutionary policy of propping up dictators in the name of stability.

Now, as I follow the current year’s election in the United States, I find myself wondering what Naje and Salem would say about the rise of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Or what Naje, the pro-union liberal, would think of Bernie Sanders’ revolutionary message. Would the two of them parody Trump? Or their own system again? Would they still have it in them to make fun of it all—after all that they’ve been through?

I’ve tried to reach out to Salem, but haven’t heard much from him. Which leaves me to reflect. Mostly, I think about how I just didn’t get it the last time. Naje and Salem were right. Obama was not good for them. Sanders, Clinton, or any of the other current candidates probably won’t be either. The feel-good “change” and “hope” campaigns of U.S. politicians are not directed at the Arab world—though many there desperately want those same things. Naje and Salem understood that. They know the U.S. and its history—what we’ve done in the Arab world and abroad for decades. They know the U.S. deposed democratically elected governments in Iran. They know the U.S. counts on dictatorships in “moderate” countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia in exchange for political support and financial gains.

The sentiments that led to the Egyptian revolution of 2011 did not and will not disappear. The desire for more freedom and democratic change are still there.

But U.S. candidates won’t matter to Egyptians until the U.S. examines and re-evaluates policies in the Arab world. As The New York Times editorial about U.S.-Egypt relations put it a few weeks ago, it is time “to reassess whether an alliance that has long been considered a cornerstone of American national security policy is doing more harm than good.” But even this falls short. We must re-evaluate policies towards Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt, and our hand in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (Sanders’s unprecedented comments in a recent debate might be a start.)
Decades of supporting dictatorial regimes in the Arab world will never result in peace and stability—not for them, and not for us.

So we must look at new options. When Naje and Salem hear a candidate really speaking about different foreign policy in the Middle East, they might have a different opinion of our politics—though they’ll still rightly be skeptical.

Until that point, Naje and hundreds of others remain in jail in Egypt. And we remain silent.

The post Why the Middle East Never Bought Obama’s Politics of Hope appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The latest such reminder came when Anbang Insurance Group won a bidding war against Marriott to acquire Starwood Hotels, only to pull out of the deal at the 11th hour, on March 31, vaguely citing “various market considerations” as the excuse for withdrawing its $14 billion offer. The erratic behavior by Anbang, an insurance conglomerate with rather opaque finances and ownership structure, has given pause to investors (and regulators) around the world who’d come to view China and its major enterprises (which typically have some level of state ownership) as an increasingly welcome investor and buyer of assets.

Anbang’s thwarted courtship of Starwood reflects a broader, little understood truth behind the Chinese curtain: the extent to which the country’s leadership remains uncertain, and/or divided, on how best to proceed out in the world. Even as Chinese companies have been busy snatching up foreign enterprises at a record clip in recent years—Swiss pharmaceutical giants, Korean insurers, Canadian energy firms, U.S. meat producers and appliance makers, among them—the leadership in Beijing is conflicted about all this overseas spending, and appears to have drawn a line at the Anbang purchase of Starwood.

The itch to invest abroad is understandable: Chinese companies want to acquire strong global brands (and Starwood, which operates the Sheraton and Westin brands, among others, certainly fit the bill); hedge against a slowdown in domestic consumption and economic growth, and a devaluation of the yuan; invest in markets with higher (or more stable) returns on investments and greater regulatory certitudes. And, of course, in some cases the urge to buy assets overseas is more of a laundering urge, as individuals and companies seek to take tainted money (ill-gotten gains from corruption, for instance) out of the country, beyond the reach of Chinese authorities.

But the government is conflicted. The Communist leaders applaud the instinct to acquire prestigious overseas targets, and to diversify the nation’s holdings and expand its soft power. In many instances, especially in emerging markets such as Brazil and sub-Saharan Africa, Chinese overseas investments have followed a strategy of securing access to essential raw materials and commodities. But many of these investments have proven to be financial disappointments, and Beijing is increasingly concerned about the outflow of so much capital, especially the capital of dubious origins, and is wary of drawing down the nation’s foreign reserves.

China’s economic regulators are also mindful of the Japanese precedent. In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans were amazed, and somewhat alarmed, as Japanese companies acquired numerous famed assets in the United States including the Rockefeller Center in New York and Pebble Beach Co., the golf course operator, in California. This was seen as a sign of Japanese economic prowess at the time, but in retrospect it looks more like a reckless assumption of debt on the part of a corporate Japan eager to pursue returns and growth overseas as a means of avoiding needed restructurings and reforms closer to home. Chinese economic regulators are wary that the wanderlust of the nation’s state-owned enterprises now amount to a similar end-run around needed reforms. Instead of investments in the organic growth of their own (core) businesses, too many acquisitions of foreign companies by Chinese entities would seem to fall under the category of speculative bets intended to mask weaknesses in the core domestic business with overseas profits.

All these conflicting impulses played themselves out in the drama surrounding Anbang’s bid for Starwood, from the initial bid to the eventual withdrawal (reportedly at the behest of the nation’s political leadership) of the $14 billion offer. The company had already acquired prestigious hotels abroad, including New York City’s landmark Waldorf-Astoria for $2 billion, but this ambitious bid by an insurance company ostensibly barred from investing more than 15 percent of its assets overseas proved a deal too far. The pulling of the plug on the bid for Starwood was reminiscent of the government’s ham-fisted, and ultimately panic-inducing, attempts to impose circuit breakers on stock market trading last year.

Chinese direct investment in the U.S. is still expected to reach a new high this year—with an anticipated $20 billion to $30 billion in mergers and acquisitions, a figure that doesn’t count the billions more invested by Chinese nationals in U.S. real estate and other financial assets. But the strange outcome of Anbang’s pursuit of Starwood and questions about its accounting opacity, coupled with political trends in this presidential election cycle, will likely sour U.S. attitudes towards China as an investor in this country, which could raise tensions between the world’s two leading economic powers.

As for China’s leadership, the question of how to think about its overseas investments, and how to regulate them, now becomes the latest test of the country’s commitment to abide by the rules of the global marketplace. As with the stock market and a freely convertible currency, overseas investments present the ruling party with both a vehicle for greater national prosperity, and a threat to their penchant for controlling the nation’s destiny. We should expect more Anbang-like dramas revealing behind-the-scenes conflicts on these questions about how China should engage with the world.

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“This could have been the end of Mexico’s story,” O’Neil told a crowd at the RAND Corporation. “Instead it was a tipping point for Mexico.” The United States stepped in to assist, the middle class rebounded, and voters, fed up with the autocratic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), brought real democracy to the country.

By the mid-2000s, when O’Neil returned to Mexico, she could see that changes there were permanent and ongoing, from the better quality of the air and the geographical expansion of Mexico City to the presence of supermarkets and big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco, which has led to the price of basic goods in the country falling by half.

Mexico has been on a rise economically, politically, and socially. As a result, its economic ties to the United States have deepened. Trade between the two nations has quadrupled since NAFTA was signed; $500 billion go back and forth every year.  Many American companies have reacted to globalization by making products in both countries: If you look at the products the U.S. imports from Mexico, 40 percent of those products were made in the U.S. by American workers.

“Mexico today is by far and away the best partner not just for U.S. companies but for U.S. workers,” said O’Neil, thanks to “this deep integration and the fact that we really make things together.”

The nations are also tied personally, thanks to an unprecedented wave of immigrants from Mexico who have come north since the 1980s. Today, there are over 35 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States. Migration has shifted dramatically in the past few years, with inflow recently reaching net zero, but the connection that’s been forged is a permanent one.

Other countries, said O’Neil, may capture American headlines. But there’s no other country as important to the U.S. on a day-to-day basis as Mexico, which is where our vegetables come from—along with our drugs, our car parts, and many of our consumers.

However, Mexico faces some tremendous challenges as well, the biggest of which is security, thanks to a rise in organized crime and drug trafficking. The border city of Ciudad Juárez boasts big factories as well as a recent designation as the most dangerous city in the world.

Security isn’t just an issue for Mexico; it’s one that Mexico and the U.S. have to face as partners. O’Neil concluded by asking the two big questions that just might define both nations’ futures: Can we benefit from our interconnectedness? Or will we be pulled apart by violence?

In the question-and-answer session, audience members asked O’Neil to talk more about what she thinks the future holds for Mexico.

What changes will new president Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI bring?

O’Neil does not think the return of the PRI to power means the country is going to go back to the old ways of doing things. There are checks and balances among the three branches of government that will prevent an imperial presidency from returning, she said. And the media is free to criticize, investigate, and shame corrupt politicians in ways they weren’t before.

What can Mexico do to combat violence and security issues?

O’Neil called violence Mexico’s “fundamental challenge”; it threatens to undermine everything from democracy to the economy. A big problem is corruption impunity, which O’Neil thinks the nation can fight. It takes a long time to purge a country of corrupt officials and enforce the rules—but the United States was able to do it, and Mexico might be able to, too.

Will the rural, southern, and poorest parts of Mexico get to participate in this economic and political boom?

Mexico’s southern states, O’Neil acknowledged, have not reaped the same benefits as the northern ones. Many of the states that never left PRI hands are in the south, and that part of the country scores lower on human rights indices than the north. The major challenge is infrastructure; there aren’t roads or airports or train routes that connect the south to the rest of the country, and to America. If Mexico spends on infrastructure, a lot of other problems might be solved for the south, she said.

Where will Mexico be 20 years from now?

Mexico, said O’Neil, is at a crossroads. She sees one future where it has a top-10 economy and is a strong ally for the U.S. globally. But there’s another future where Mexico just muddles through its problems, doesn’t get the violence under control, and doesn’t improve the education system. The actions Peña Nieto’s government takes in the next six years, she said, will either set Mexico on a better path or result in an enormous missed opportunity.

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