The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  President Obama’s approach to the Middle East has been distant from the outset. He has wanted to improve America’s image in the Muslim world and feels that the best way to do this is to end America’s unpopular wars there. His modus operandi has been disengagement: end existing commitments, foremost among them Iraq and Afghanistan, and avoid new entanglements. His approach to the Arab-Israeli peace process typifies this. Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech impressed Muslims with its call on Israel to halt the building of settlements in the West Bank. In 2011, he made a similarly provocative call on Israel to agree to return to its 1967 borders (with mutually agreed swaps of territory with Palestinians). But the Muslim world was wrong to assume that these exhortations signaled a readiness on Obama’s part to roll up his sleeves and help fix problems.1 In fact, “nowhere in Obama’s foreign policy has the gap been wider between promise and delivery,” writes former American diplomat and observer of the Arab-Israeli scene Martin Indyk, “than in the [peace process].”2

  Obama started with a new approach to the issue. He was fervent in his commitment to Israel. Yet he also recognized the corrosive effects that the simmering conflict was having on America’s image and the region’s stability, and was not shy about speaking out against the everyday indignities that Israeli occupation meant for Palestinians. Many Arabs and Muslims were elated and many Israelis incensed, but no one on either side of the divide should have become so excited. All were wildly overestimating Obama’s willingness to get involved in moving the peace process along.

  What Obama had in mind was to placate Arab opinion while laying down markers for Israel to abide by. This, he hoped, would by itself spur diplomatic engagement and ultimately a solution. What he did not have in mind was to pick a fight with Israel or commit to a greater U.S. role in facilitating a diplomatic breakthrough. He definitely did not think about a comprehensive diplomatic strategy that would have created the proper context and framework for compromises by both sides (halting new settlement construction could have been a part of that). Instead, he proceeded in an uncoordinated and unproductive fashion by laying undue stress on a single unrealistic demand in a way that stopped the entire process in its tracks. He was determined to extricate America from the Middle East and thought he could do so by talking tough but from the sidelines.

  Dealing with Arab and Israeli leaders on the Palestinian issue must have been eye-opening for the president. Publicly Arab rulers pressed him on Palestine, but privately all they wanted to talk about was defanging Iran (the same is true of the Israelis). Obama may have thought that fear of Iran would create common ground between Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies, enough for them to join hands to resolve the Palestinian issue. The Saudi ambassador to Washington may have fueled such expectations by telling Obama early on that King Abdullah was eager for him to visit Riyadh and would not let him leave empty-handed.3 But the Saudi King was definitely not prepared to lend a hand to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When Obama met Abdullah in Riyadh in June 2009, most of the hour-long meeting was taken up with a royal lecture on the Iranian threat. The Saudi king wanted America to fix the Iranian problem, not the Palestinian one, and he did not want any linkages between the two issues. In that, the king and Netanyahu were on the same page.

  Whatever his personal views, the president quickly handed off the management of the Israel-Palestinian problem to his special envoy, former senator George Mitchell. But in effect, it was Obama’s senior White House adviser, Dennis Ross, who decided the matter. Ross had a long history with the issue, going back to managing the 1991 Madrid Conference that convened shortly after the first Gulf War. He differed with Obama over how best to influence events. He warned against publicly parting ways with Israel, such as by taking a stand on settlements—“showing daylight between the United States and Israel would only encourage Arabs to sit back and wait … rather than step forward and engage with Israel.”4 Ross argued that Netanyahu had to work with a difficult domestic coalition, and that the more Obama built trust with the Israeli public—by backing away from publicly pressuring Israel—the more likely the Israeli government would be to cooperate.5

  Whether or not this was an accurate reading of the situation, it meant that what Obama said turned out to be different from what his administration did. No deeds matched Obama’s bold words. Israelis found little reason to budge, and the Palestinians found themselves worse off. It was hard enough getting Israel to move, and nearly impossible when the president’s lack of follow-through allowed Israel to stand its ground. The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Daily Beast’s Dan Ephron:

  It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.6

  But Abbas could not jump, and remained stuck in the tree. “How can I be less Palestinian than the president of the United States?” was how he put it to anyone ready to hear his complaint. In other words, how could Abbas ask for less from Israel than Obama had? Abbas had to start from the marker that Obama laid down and face the Israeli intransigence that Obama prompted and was unwilling to deal with. His plaint captured the souring mood across the Arab world.7

  Obama reacted to Israeli intransigence and Arab disappointment in much the same way he dealt with the thorny problems posed by Pakistan: he walked away. The White House periodically repeated its desire for a breakthrough in peace talks, especially when crisis loomed, such as the Palestinians’ threat to ask for UN recognition of their statehood in September 2011. But for all intents and purposes, the president put the issue on the back burner. Obama did not want to get involved, and by the end of his second year in office, relations with Israel had come to focus solely on managing Iran’s nuclear program.

  The White House attitude toward the Arab-Israeli issue reflected the administration’s broader desire to dial back U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But that goal was frustrated by the onset of the Arab Spring. America was folding its tent when, in December 2010, a young fruit seller in an obscure Tunisian town set himself on fire to protest the daily injustices that he, like so many of his countrymen, suffered at the hands of a dictatorship. Mohamed Bouazizi’s story went viral on social media as he lay dying in a hospital, and just like that, the wheels of history turned. Obama understood what was happening in the Arab world; in his inaugural speech he had told “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” that they were “on the wrong side of history.”8 He would call the Tunisian uprising that Bouazizi’s desperate act set off “an inspiration to all of us who believe that each individual man and woman has certain inalienable rights.”9 But Obama’s rhetoric did not make up for a reluctant and sputtering response to fast-moving events.

  In early 2011, the Middle East looked poised for democracy—you cannot think of a transformation with more significant strategic impact. The outcome would mean much to America, perhaps even a final satisfactory solution to all that in the Middle East had flummoxed us, threatened us, emptied our pockets, and cost our soldiers’ blood. That may be wishful thinking, and there is plenty of evidence today that the Arab Spring will produce illiberal new regimes, hybrid governments blending surviving security forces with rising Islamic parties of various hues. There will be civil wars, broken states, sectarian persecutions, humanitarian crises, faltering economies, and new foreign policy challenges (ranging from warming of relations between Egypt and Iran to new issues to fight over with Russia and China)—nothing resembling a resounding march to democracy and economic prosperity, and no clear embrace of free institutions and norms.

  But we did not know this for sure in the heady and hopeful days of early 2011, nor can we say now that the Arab Spring would have been such a disappointment had we engaged with the region quickly and forcefully to give change an economic direction, helping bloated public sectors to reform and integrate into the global economy. We could have had an
impact on the outcome had we had a strategy other than washing our hands of the region, and had we shown willingness to exercise leadership. We might not have averted conflicts and humanitarian crises, but we would have had a significant impact in those countries that got through the initial change of leadership and, in the fog of victory, needed help, especially with their economies.

  As the extraordinary events were unfolding, there was certitude of a sort in the White House. Obama remained intent upon leaving the Middle East, and he was not going to let himself be distracted from that mission by sudden eruptions of pro-democracy protests, teetering dictators, and looming civil wars. He did not know whether the Arab Spring would lead to ubiquitous democracy or a prolonged period of instability, but regardless, he was determined that America would not try to influence the outcome—not if that meant reversing course to get involved in the region.

  Take the case of Egypt, the most important Arab country and the touchstone for change in the Arab world. When hundreds of thousands of Egyptians jammed Tahrir Square to demand that President Hosni Mubarak give up power, Obama took the bold step of supporting their demand for change—first cautiously encouraging reforms, but soon calling on Mubarak to step down immediately.10 This was a new chapter for America in the Middle East, but not one that amounted to a new approach to the region. Mubarak was on his way out, to be sure. But by encouraging him to resign immediately Obama was not making a commitment to support democratization across the board in the Middle East. America remained closely allied with some of the region’s most authoritarian regimes, and calling for Mubarak to leave soon muddied the waters with them—with Saudi Arabia in particular. Faced with that reality, the administration toned down its unbridled support for change. Rulers in Bahrain or Yemen would not be subject to the same White House demands to heed their people’s call for democracy.

  Egypt had little in the way of sound political institutions—no party system to speak of, a weak judiciary, and an infantile civil society. There was nothing on the far side of Mubarak but the likelihood of instability at best, and chaos at worst. America would have liked to see Egypt’s Facebook generation—young, technologically savvy, and relatively liberal—inherit Egypt, but they had no organization to sustain their political drive or charismatic leader to guide them. In time, the Muslim Brotherhood (and the bevy of more radical voices to its right), with its much sharper and more numerous cadres, would make mincemeat of them. The administration could only hope that the Brotherhood would stay the course with democracy—that our enthusiasm for Mubarak to go would not come back to bite us.

  I know it is difficult to argue for caution in the face of the overwhelming exuberance that bubbles to the surface when decades of dictatorship at last give way to rays of democratic hope. But having been a child of the 1979 Iranian revolution, I also know how misplaced and even catastrophic such exuberance can prove to be. It would be a useful exercise to read the Western media coverage of Iran between 1977 and 1979. You will not find much concern with theocracy there; any such talk was quickly drowned by giddy and often Pollyannaish expectations of democracy’s imminent triumph. But Iran’s democrats, as attractive as they may have been, lacked the capabilities of the clerics and the communists. The Pahlavi monarchy’s swift demise caught the democrats unprepared (not that they and their fans in the Western press understood this) and gave the upper hand to the architects of a new dictatorship, who already had a plan and a mass movement in place.

  The protests in Egypt captivated the world, but Egyptian liberal democrats are no more likely to win the future than were their Iranian counterparts back in 1979. The Shah’s rapid collapse benefited not democracy but theocracy. Given the decades-long surge of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a strong chance that the same will happen in Egypt.

  Hillary Clinton understood the implications. She argued early on that Egypt needed a peaceful, orderly transition to a democratic future.11 It was better for Egypt’s liberals if Mubarak held on for a bit longer and left gradually—a steady transition was better than sudden collapse. That would give Egypt’s liberals time to make up some of their organizational deficiencies vis-à-vis the Islamists—not to mention afford America time to figure out how best to assist the democratic cause. Egypt’s youth, however, were impatient for freedom and not ready for talk of gradualism. Nor were the American media forgiving of anything short of an uncompromising call for Mubarak to be gone. That is what happened in the end, but with Mubarak’s quick exit the grip on power of the military and the “deep state” remained intact, and it was the Islamist forces of Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood that dominated the political scene. The administration had no choice but to bet on the Brotherhood doing the right thing, opting for a future different from the one that became Iran’s lot when the Shah fell from power.

  In February 2011, Secretary Clinton suggested that President Obama should send a special envoy to talk to Mubarak—to assess the situation firsthand and tell the Egyptian president that he needed to plan an orderly exit and a proper transition to democracy. Clinton recommended veteran diplomat Frank G. Wisner to go to Cairo. Wisner knew Egypt well. He had served as ambassador there between 1986 and 1991. He shared Clinton’s view that after decades of dictatorship a credible transition to democracy would take time and that a gradual process would benefit liberal forces, whose institutional weakness was masked by their momentary show of strength on the street. Obama seemed to be on the same page and instructed Wisner to ask Mubarak to plan for a transition.

  Wisner delivered Obama’s message of both American support and the imperative of meaningful reform to Mubarak. Mubarak was not ready to leave but agreed not to use violence against the protesters. But protests only grew in intensity, and with Egypt on edge Obama changed course. Wisner was still on a plane back to Washington when the president called on Mubarak to step down immediately. The change came so quickly that it caught Wisner unawares. He had just got off the plane when he told an international conference in Munich that the United States viewed President Mubarak as indispensable to a transition to democracy (i.e., America needed Mubarak for just a bit longer—to get rid of Mubarak). The press focused on the “we need Mubarak” part of his comments and that caused a furor.

  With crowds in Tahrir Square growing daily, Mubarak’s position was tenuous to be sure, and the United States was right to look past the stolid dictatorship to embrace the spirit of change.12 But the president, swept up by the enthusiasm of the moment and egged on by his young staffers, threw caution aside and made a hasty about-face. He reacted to Mubarak’s remarks and maneuvers as if dealing with a campaign news cycle, where every statement had to be quickly countered to catch the next set of newspaper headlines. It was a policy style that reflected the influence of those White House advisers who rose from Obama’s presidential campaign to dominate foreign policy decision making.13 They saw the Arab Spring then as “an epochal change in line with their own views of themselves as a new generation.”14 They had little experience at foreign affairs; what they knew was the fast-paced world of political campaigns. They were dismissive of foreign policy veterans and described them in terms that conjured Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous put-down of France and Germany for questioning the Iraq war. “Old Europe,” he called them—yesteryear’s powers destined for history’s ash heap. Rumsfeld’s wisecrack did not stand the test of time. Wisner and company, too, may yet have the final word on the Arab Spring.15

  Obama’s call for Mubarak to go would not be repeated with other dictators in the region in the months to come—not in Bahrain or Yemen, not even in Libya or Syria as quickly or with the same conviction—and America would in fact deepen its reliance on authoritarian monarchies in the Persian Gulf. Calling for Mubarak to go was an isolated event; it reflected neither an embrace of change across the Middle East nor a commitment to Egypt’s transition to democracy.

  Support for dictators has been the bane of American policy in the Middle East. Since Anwar Sadat signed a peace deal with Israel in 19
78, America has poured $30 billion in aid into Egypt, with the lion’s share going to the military. The rest, another $3 billion or so earmarked for civilian use, also went to the military—the Egyptian government got to decide which economic or social agencies had technical competence to take advantage of the money and all of them were military owned or contracted their work to organizations and companies backed by the military. America subsidized the growth of the military in the security sector but also throughout the economy.

  We have confessed time and again that investing in dictatorship was not a good idea, but we could not identify alternative means for protecting our interests. In time, authoritarian rule proved unstable, producing the very problems we relied on it to contain—and when it started wobbling we were quick to let it keel over. The Mubarak regime was the poster child for this dead-end strategy. Mubarak’s regime was a rock of stability, seemingly unmovable for three decades. Over those decades, Egypt grew poorer and weaker, but also more anti-American and Islamic—with a worrying penchant for extremism. In time, the mismatch between the scale and intensity of Egypt’s problems (including massive unemployment and nonexistent job prospects among the country’s bulging youth population) and the regime’s weak capacity to do anything about them created a tinderbox situation.16