by Vali Nasr
It is true that the global financial downturn and the Greek crisis had left little for Cairo, but that is no excuse. Egypt is a hinge upon which the fate of the whole Middle East may turn. America spent trillions addressing security problems in the region after 9/11, problems that Washington believed were caused by the failings of dictatorship. Did America not go to war in Iraq to bring democracy to the broader Middle East and end the grip of Islamic extremism on Muslim hearts and minds? Now that democracy was on the horizon, we did not want to invest in it. “In short,” writes David Sanger of the New York Times, “America would talk about democracy promotion. But it would no longer be democracy’s venture capitalist.”37 Venture capitalism or something like it, however, is just what the Middle East needs. The region boasts plenty of entrepreneurial energy, but it can find no outlet as long as the twitching hand of the sclerotic state chokes off economic liberty.38
The United States does not need to get it right everywhere, but it cannot afford to get it wrong in Egypt. It definitely cannot afford to stand back and simply watch events unfold without trying to influence them. A year and a half after Mubarak’s exit, the Obama administration still had no clear strategy for Egypt. Economic reform’s potential as a key driver of other changes has been largely overlooked. Change the economy in a freedom-friendly direction, and the generals and Islamists will have to adjust. In the words of the international relations scholar Michael Mandelbaum, “The knowledge and skills needed to practice democracy … come from the experience of operating a particular kind of economic system.… The school for democracy [is] the free-market economy.”39
Egypt’s best chance for real change came early, right after Mubarak left. That is when America and its allies should have put a big financial package on the table in exchange for big changes. We should have stressed the need for economic reform emphatically, bending all efforts to convince Egyptians that their problems will never be solved until they scale back their overgrown central state, improve its efficiency, and allow more scope for free enterprise. We should have put economic reform at the top of our talking points with Egyptians across the political spectrum, the generals included. The administration is gradually warming up to the idea, but it still does not see the economy as the fulcrum for change in Egypt and is not making the necessary big push for it to happen.
That we have settled for doing so much less than we did after 1989 in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America speaks volumes about our disengagement from the region. If the potential for democracy held by the Arab Spring was not enough to compel our engagement, it is not clear what would be.
The Arab Spring was a classic “black swan,” an unlooked-for but massive strategic shift that made the first big cracks in the hard crust of brutal dictatorship that had long encased the Middle East’s basket-case economies and scary social trends. It did what the Iraq war had been meant to do but had fallen short of. It was America’s opening to try in this region some of what it had tried two decades ago as the Iron Curtain fell and dictatorships crumbled one after the other. Back then, America jumped at the chance to leverage the West’s victory in the Cold War in ways that would change the world for the better. We led an international alliance to build market economies and consolidate democracy across many parts of the world. The chance to do the same in the broader Middle East, to build prosperous economies and nurture democracy—to try to move the region into a new historical phase and onto a safer trajectory for all concerned—has not evoked a comparable response. Reformist hopes are never a sure thing, but surely this is an opportunity tragically lost.
Obama never offered a vision or a grand strategy to guide America’s response to the cascade of events unfolding in the Middle East. He responded to the Arab Spring without a consistent strategy or much enthusiasm or engagement, as if the protests and the political changes they produced were merely an unwelcome distraction instead of a historic opening. France and Britain (and Hillary Clinton) goaded Obama into intervention in Libya,40 but there, as in Egypt, American interest evaporated once the dictator was removed. America proved even more reluctant to get involved when it got to Syria. Rebels there have received moral and material support (largely nonmilitary and humanitarian aid) from America but no promise of intervention. In Bahrain, the administration protested the crackdown on protesters but did nothing more; and in Yemen, Washington backed a plan to stabilize the ruling regime with a formula that amounted to “No more President Ali Abdallah Saleh, but no democracy either.” Evidence of repression in Saudi Arabia was simply ignored.
To be sure, Obama’s initial instinct was to support protesters demanding an end to dictatorship. He saw the Arab Spring as a turning point in history, and he wanted America to help Arabs realize democracy. His strident rhetoric in support of protesters and his personal stance in pushing Mubarak off his throne were as revolutionary as what was happening on the Arab street. But his administration backed away from that bold stance. It started talking about balancing interests against values, and in practice increasingly put interests before values. The administration would not support democracy for all Arabs (Bahrainis, Saudis, Yemenis were out of luck), but only for those Arabs whose cause fit American interests. By the summer of 2012, that was a club of one: Syria. To the rulers and people of the Middle East alike, “Obama’s wavering policies could be interpreted not as encouragement of epochal change so much as an effort to continue as long as possible the policies of the past.”41
Obama has been understandably reluctant to sign up for more wars in the Middle East. But his handling of the Arab Spring and Middle East policy has been defined by decisions that had nothing to do with armed intervention but were all about whether to support the possibility of building democracy in the wake of revolution.
In their book Bending History, Martin Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael E. O’Hanlon explain Obama’s failure to rise to the challenge of the Arab Spring by arguing that the candidate who ran on the power of ideas became, once in office, a reluctant realist. His focus shifted away from the grand visions and hopes that marked his campaign and settled on the immediate tasks required for keeping America safe in a highly dangerous world. Realist or not, Obama’s legacy in the broader Middle East will not be a Reaganesque one of having overseen one of the great historical transformations of our time. Instead, it will be far narrower and closer to the legacy of George W. Bush, whose war on terror provided the basis upon which Obama shaped his own approach to America’s role in the world.
If there is a discernible American strategy for the Middle East, it is counterterrorism—continuing the war on al-Qaeda and its franchises and offshoots using Special Forces and drones. This is to be expected—after all, there is still the threat of terrorism coming from the region. But counterterrorism will not transform the Middle East. To fully appreciate the impact of American foreign policy on the region one has to consider the responses to democracy and terrorism side by side, as the Janus faces of American engagement. It is not just that we did not have a proper response at the right time to the Arab Spring, we have doubled down on counterterrorism. And when the two have come into conflict, as in Yemen, the latter has trumped the former. For, as surprising as it may seem to those who expected Obama to be a kind of “anti-Bush,” it is Bush’s preoccupation with homeland security as the be-all and end-all of grand strategy that serves as the best guide to how Obama sees American engagement in the Middle East.
America’s fascination with drones is easy to understand. They are efficient and cheap and a far easier way to wage the war on terror than a counterinsurgency campaign involving tens of thousands of troops and nation-building to go with it. So it was not a surprise that drones quickly became the central pillar of America’s successful counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then Yemen.42
Other counterterrorism advances also came online right around the time Obama became president, most notably an enhanced cyberwar capability.43 The combination of drones, Special Forces, and
cyberwarfare presented the new president with a viable high-tech clandestine alternative to traditional military means to combat terrorism—Counterterrorism Plus. All told, as in the counterterrorism expert Peter Bergen’s estimation, Obama is actually one of America’s militarily most aggressive presidents—comfortable with making tough decisions such as killing bin Laden or expanding drone programs.44
When it came to drones there were four formidable unanimous voices in the Situation Room: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Pentagon, and the White House’s counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates may have said no to military involvement in Libya, but he was fully supportive of more drone attacks. Together, Brennan, Gates, and the others convinced Obama of both the urgency of counterterrorism and the imperative of viewing America’s engagement with the Middle East and South Asia through that prism. Their bloc by and large discouraged debate over the full implications of this strategy in national security meetings.
Quietly, and without any fanfare or debate, counterterrorism became the cornerstone and principal objective of American policy in the Middle East and South Asia.45 However, the policy of disengagement paired with drone strikes is not likely to prove viable in the long run. We have learned from our experience in Pakistan that drones are a difficult sell, though local populations may put up with drone campaigns longer if there is deep engagement with the United States and economic assistance to add other dimensions to the relationship.
Drones rely heavily on cooperative regimes that can tie America’s hands in terms of supporting change. Yemen is a good example. Washington was rightly concerned that al-Qaeda would take advantage of the pro-democracy protests that engulfed Yemen throughout 2011 and eventually forced President Saleh out of office. But Washington had to balance its support for political change with its desire to keep in place the security apparatus that supported drone attacks on al-Qaeda targets. Washington left the political negotiations around Saleh stepping down to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council and focused its attention on al-Qaeda. The outcome kept the Saleh regime in place but without Saleh himself, a sop to the protesters. In the bargain, America protected and expanded its drone program. (It was in the midst of protests that a drone strike killed the Yemeni-American al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been identified as, among other things, a player in the failed Times Square attack.) The message was that even after Arabs themselves did what America had been asking of them for so long—break with Arab nationalism and its dictatorships—America is still sticking with the same game plan, fighting al-Qaeda. Drones, not democracy, drive American policy.
There is no doubt that drone attacks have worked locally (in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s FATA region, and Yemen) to quickly decimate al-Qaeda’s ranks. Yet it is open to question whether the drones’ success in one location masks the creation of bigger problems elsewhere. The record in Pakistan and Yemen shows that drone attacks disperse al-Qaeda farther afield; the metastasis of terrorism in turn requires more drone attacks in more places. That is no success at all.
Drones are also not as innocuous as they sound. Drone strikes are aerial attacks that happen in collusion with a local government or in violation of a country’s sovereignty and in either case run the risk of inflaming public opinion. They provoke anti-Americanism and the extremism that goes with it, and once those sentiments are inflamed it will be difficult to sustain the program—Pakistan and Yemen both provide ample evidence of that. Compared with other methods of striking from a distance, drones can indeed be surgical. But drones are like an economist’s fiscal tool, clean and efficient until they encounter real-world politics.
When we were planning for Hillary Clinton’s October 2009 trip to Pakistan, her first as secretary of state, Holbrooke was adamant that we organize a town hall with women. He said that whenever Hillary got together with women the atmosphere was electric—“Just look at what happened in South Korea,” he would say. She could connect with women around issues that mattered to them, and that could produce a critical breakthrough in Pakistani public opinion.
It made sense, and the embassy invited a large group of affluent, English-speaking women—the type who cared about women’s rights, democracy, and cultural freedoms. Four young women journalists would interview Clinton, and then the crowd would get to ask questions. The atmosphere was indeed “electric,” but not because Clinton was bonding with the crowd. These modern Pakistani women were brimming with anger. From the get-go every other question was about drones, the civilians they killed, and the humiliation they visited on Pakistan by violating its sovereignty. Sitting through that inquisition, I could not see a future for a foreign policy built on drones.
In April 2012, Pakistan’s parliament recommended that the government end the drone program. The next step could be street protests—which have been on the rise since September 2012, when a YouTube video clip insulting the Prophet Muhammad went viral. That would not only make the program untenable but also radicalize politics. Drones could be promoting the very problem that they are intended to solve.
At a time when the Arab world is grappling with economic and political change, American foreign policy is marching to a different drummer. The White House favors containment rather than engagement, and drones are the main tool. And the policy is spreading fast, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Middle East. Yemen is the Middle Eastern target for the drone strategy, but if al-Qaeda proliferates in Syria, or in an Iraq now stripped of U.S. troops, or elsewhere—Somalia or Libya—the program could extend to those places as well.46 Al-Qaeda thrives in failed states. The right strategy for America is to shore up states battered by the winds of change.47
Some have argued that the Arab Spring has not given America much to work with. It has not produced liberal forces marching toward democratic capitalism. Libya is hardly a state, Syria is falling into civil war, and Egypt is descending into the unknown, caught for now between Islamic fundamentalists and their only real rival for power, a clique of authoritarian generals. Nor do democrats seem to predominate in Yemen or Bahrain. Others argue that locals themselves have waved away U.S. involvement. Egypt has been cool to the IMF and has been growing more anti-American. In fact, some say, it is a good thing that America has stayed away, making sure that it is not an obstacle to change.
But not being an obstacle to change is not enough. America should be making sure that change moves in the right direction, is not reversed, and does not go off the rails. Our policy, in the end, will be judged by whether the Arab Spring produces better Arab states that do right by their people and live up to their responsibility to the international order and its institutions. Only then will we have brought our values and interests into alignment. On that score, Obama’s disengaged attitude toward the Middle East has served neither America’s values nor its long-term interests.
At a private meeting in London in January 2012, a senior Saudi prince with influence over the oil kingdom’s foreign policy told an audience of prominent Americans that he did not like the term “Arab Spring” because it did not feel like a spring. “What about Arab Awakening?” asked one of his listeners. He did not like that either; the Arabs had not been asleep. “What would you call it then, Your Highness?” The prince thought for a moment. Then he said, “Arab headaches—that is what they are.”
We are now fairly certain that in the new Middle East, the fruit of the Arab Spring will not be a rising liberal Arab order, but an ascendant Islamist one that, if it is able to assert itself, will be a rival to Iran and Turkey and an enemy to the United States and Israel. The shape of this reality will be decided by intensifying regional rivalries playing out amid rising sectarian tensions and the still-bleak economic picture. America will have to contend with these dynamics, which will affect American interests and set the context for American policy.1
As we look down that difficult road, we can sum up our interests in the Middle East under three headings: oil, Israel, and terrorism. Ameri
cans have come to believe that their country is engaged in the Middle East because we want a cheap and stable supply of oil. That is true, but in reality even if the Middle East had no oil, it would still hold our attention. America cares deeply about Israel, and Israel is in the Middle East. Wishing to change Arab attitudes toward Israel was one big reason why the George W. Bush administration pushed for the war against Saddam Hussein. Those on the right who favored the war saw extremism, anti-Americanism, and antagonism toward Israel as different faces of the same problem, which they blamed on decaying states built on Arab nationalism. As we have seen, that bellicose ideology, which captured the Arab imagination after the Suez Crisis of 1956, launched much of the region into decades of economic stagnation under brutal dictators such as Saddam. Ironically, Arab nationalism made a wasteland of Arab intellectual life, and even after the ideology lost its grip on the popular imagination, the states that it built suffocated whole societies and pushed numerous young people into the arms of Islamic extremists. Destroy those states, free Arab society, and bring democracy to the Middle East, the logic went, and extremism will begin to evaporate while the Arab-Israeli conflict grows more tractable. How unsound this reasoning was became apparent very quickly in 2011.
