Reed Magazine: Mideast democracy (3/4)

Seeing Mideast democracy as more than ‘‘pie in the sky’’

Craner studied international relations at Oregon’s Reed College, where its tradition of liberalism made Craner an unlikely specimen. He said the experience of being “the only Republican at Reed,” as he recalls it, made him more tolerant, and more likely to question litmus tests and party labels.

Along the way, he spent a formative summer in Taiwan in 1981, studying Chinese.

It was pie in the sky in the 1990s to have functioning democracy in Central Europe. It was pie in the sky to have a rebuilt El Salvador. I’ve worked in too many regions, and heard that it can’t work,to believe that it can’t work in the Middle East.

“I remember people in Taiwan who wanted to talk about independence. They’d be arrested. They couldn’t gather in groups of more than two or three,” Craner said. “Obviously this was better than China, but this is not what most Americans would think of as kindred spirits in terms of liberty and freedom.”

After school, Craner spent a year on Capitol Hill working for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and 2 1/2 years as foreign policy adviser to McCain, first in the House, then in the Senate. He spent three years as deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, then moved in 1992 to the National Security Council, where he worked in the Asia directorate on Vietnam and Cambodia. He was planning to enroll in business school when McCain asked him to run the IRI for a few months.

Those few months became eight years. During his tenure, IRI invested heavily in political-party development overseas and efforts to expand civil society and bring women into politics. Its best-known project was the promotion of village elections in China beginning in 1993.

That first year, the IRI spent $85,000 on the China project. By 2001, the figure was $1.5 million. Once Craner moved over to Secretary Colin L. Powell’s State Department, the budget for China projects soared, to$5 million in the 2002 fiscal year and $10 million this year, Craner said.

During the Clinton presidency, Craner said, he and colleagues chewed over the idea of seeking a democratic opening to the Middle East, where successive U.S. presidents have favored the stability of undemocratic governments over the uncertainties of political change.

Among those he discussed it with were two men who would become influential players in the Bush administration: Paul D. Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary, and Elliott Abrams, who oversees Middle East policy at the National Security Council.