The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

F O C U S O N T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L D I P L OM A C Y MEPI: A DDING TO THE D IPLOMATIC T OOLBOX 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 n 2002, the United States elevated democracy promotion to the top of its agenda in the Arab world — a major shift for a region that had previously gotten a pass on these matters. It’s not that democracy promotion is new to U.S. foreign policy. Many of the elements of what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls “transformational diplomacy” have been in play elsewhere for decades. Think of American support for dissidents during the Cold War, for nascent political parties and nongovernmental organizations in Latin America in the 1980s or Eastern Europe in the 1990s, D ESPITE MANY OBSTACLES , THE M IDDLE E AST P ARTNERSHIP I NITIATIVE HAS COME A LONG WAY IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS . B Y P ETER F. M ULREAN I David Wink