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

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • barack obama
weapon. In June 2009, when the Green Movement was fighting for its life
in the streets of Tehran, the Obama administration didn’t call on Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei to step down or surrender power. Indeed, it left ample
room to allow for possible engagement with him.
America’s record in directing the internal affairs of other countries isn’t
great. Yes, it rebuilt Europe and Japan in the post-World War II period and
played a key role in the Balkans. And Iraq is a much improved place. But
the story there is not over, and the price the United States paid was a terrible
one.
Surrounded by nonpredatory neighbors to its north and south, and fish
to its east and west, America has never really understood the rest of the
world, nor the existential and political realities that small powers are forced
to confront.
Had Obama tried to hammer Mubarak to reform Egypt’s political system
after his 2009 speech in Cairo, he would have had no more success
than his predecessor. The devil’s bargain would have assured that. The Egyptians
have driven their own freedom express. Indeed, from the opposition’s
standpoint, the United States seemed almost irrelevant to the story.
The devil’s bargain haunts America still. The country’s limited policy options
reflected that fact and created a terrible conundrum for the administration.
It clearly wanted Mubarak gone but wouldn’t say so explicitly out
of fear of being accused of personalizing its policy, emboldening the opposition
and risking a bloody confrontation with the regime, and alienating
other Arab autocrats and Israel.
The United States may have been tempted to cut or withhold military assistance,
particularly if there had been massive violence, but it really didn’t
want to do that, either, out of fear of losing influence with the military—
the one constituency with which it will have to deal in the post-Mubarak
Egypt. And America wanted to support the opposition—as the president’s
strong statement Thursday, Feb. 10, did; but it alienated them too because it
couldn’t or wouldn’t meet their demands for Mubarak’s ouster.
And so the White House waited, watched, danced, and shuffled—
and probably talked too much.
But such are the travails of a great power having to live in the bed that
it has made. And the story of contradictions in U.S. policy and America’s
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