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

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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 196
foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • barack obama conundrums are far from over. The real challenge the United States will face in the post-Mubarak era is that Egypt has been, and is now still, a praetorian state where the military holds tremendous power. And the United States has an interest in maintaining close ties with that military as well as encouraging political reform. Therein lies the next conundrum. With great apologies to W.B. Yeats: I wonder what new bargain slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born Aaron David Miller is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and former advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state. His forthcoming book is Can America Have Another Great President. 197
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