The United States has proposed the creation by 2013 of a free trade area linking it with the Middle East. The idea is worth serious consideration but should also be approached with caution. There are two factors which will be critical.

The first is that free trade between the mightiest economy on the globe and the countries of the Middle East cannot be truly free for the foreseeable future. It must instead be governed by protective covenants that stop the financial power and technological pre-eminence of the US from sweeping aside its smaller and weaker commercial competitors. All economies that seek to earn a place for their manufactured goods in the international market place need capital, as well as production and management know-how. This last extends to marketing and research, the two areas in which US corporates generally excel. Given the large quantity of petrodollars in the region looking for sound investment, the raising of capital ought not to be a problem. But is a deep pocket book enough to attract the right level of management expertise at all levels?

The second factor stems from these requirements. To the American way of thinking, capital and expertise are elements of competition. A free trade area with the Middle East would, by US logic, lead to the gradual buying up of the best regional corporate assets. Under aggressive new management they would then drive their local competitors out of business and achieve market dominance. At that point domestic businessmen would justifiably conclude that “free trade” had meant nothing more than offering up their throats to the sharp knife of US capital.

The counterarguments that the local economy benefits from increased trade and that anyone can buy shares and own a part of any of the great US corporates are, in such circumstances, both sophistry. They do however indicate the cultural imperialism behind US thinking. Americans have built a highly prosperous economy based on a free flow of capital and pluralist democracy. They therefore assume that what has been good for them will be good for everyone else in the world. Starting with Afghanistan and now with Iraq, Washington is seeking to impose its own blueprint, regardless of the history and culture of the countries involved. Behind the US generals and politicians come the bankers and businessmen, all preaching the wonders of their way while dismissing the local experience of centuries.

This blind spot is dangerous. The most tragic victims of such arrogance are the Palestinians. Americans have swallowed the propaganda of “democratic” and “free market” Zionist Israel hook, line and sinker. The protests of the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world are, by contrast, dismissed out of hand because they are not seen as democratic in the American sense. Given this myopic view of a world they hardly seem to understand, the Bush White House is going to be puzzled and angry, when potential members of their Middle East free trade area try to head off what they may fear to be US economic imperialism.

And Washington should understand from the outset that the success of their free trade area proposals will be entirely dependent upon the success of their road map for Palestine. A just settlement will only be achieved by even-handedness. The same is true of free trade.