Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • barack obama
Cairo Wasn’t Obama’s to Lose
BY AARON DAVID MILLER
If we’re lucky this time around, we’ll avoid the who-lost-Egypt debate.
Hosni Mubarak’s decision to step down has pre-empted a catastrophic crisis
for Egypt and for American interests. We may not be adept at manipulating
Middle Eastern politics; but we’re sure experts at beating ourselves up.
Commentators and analysts have argued forcefully that Barack Obama’s
administration failed to anticipate the current crisis, blew an opportunity by
failing to push Mubarak to make significant reforms during the early days
of the upheaval, and risked being on the wrong side of history by not being
assertive in trying to force Mubarak’s removal. But the administration was
smart to keep its distance from this crisis.
If the last eight years in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran—and the previous
800 years in the Middle East—demonstrate anything, it is that great powers
cannot micromanage the affairs of small tribes. And when they try, they
almost always fare badly.
There is much to quibble with in the administration’s approach—too
many daily political weather reports about the current situation in Cairo,
not enough initial coordination about what the administration should say,
and too many presidential statements.
But on balance, the administration has played a bad hand pretty well. The
cards the president were dealt were largely beyond his control. Hammering
him now completely ignores the reality that U.S. policy made its bed in
Egypt decades ago, and now the administration—forced to sleep in it as it
confronts the current crisis—has few good options.
For decades, the United States cut a devil’s bargain with a number of Mid-
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