A Step Back for the White House

We can all agree on restarting direct talks between the Palestinian authority and the Israeli government, when considering the prospect of a nuclear Iran as an unacceptable risk to regional security and when reaffirming the “unbreakable link between the United States and Israel.” But beyond the rhetoric, the real winner to come out of the talks in the Oval Office is Benjamin Netanyahu, while Barack Obama must grin and bear it. Perhaps Obama has once again chosen to focus on the internal agenda; he thought of the powerful Jewish lobby and its ability to influence mid-term elections, which has been presented as a decisive test for a presidency that is seriously declining in popularity. But perhaps it is also the beginning of a revised strategy from the U.S. administration, which has so far led to very bad results.

Obama’s ambitious project to make the United States an honest broker in the Middle East has probably collided with reality: a reality in which Obama’s America is far less powerful than Clinton’s, and perhaps even less powerful than the America of George W. Bush — though the latter is without a doubt less captivating.

It seems as though the summit hasn’t even seriously considered the clash between the two main U.S. allies in the region — Israel and Turkey — which is becoming less hypothetical every day: This is due to Israeli rigidities, Turkish miscalculations and America’s loss of influence.

After focusing on Turkey as a bridge between the West and Islam, trying a soft approach with the Iranian regime, making a brilliant speech in Cairo, announcing a change of strategy in Afghanistan (repudiating and then justifying President Karzai in different weeks) and repeatedly distancing Israeli government policy, the results achieved by Obama have been very modest. An eventual escalation between Israel and Turkey — even if it may not get to the point where gunfire will be used to defend the next “freedom flotilla” — would reveal a prospect even more devastating for the future of NATO than the military confrontation between Turkey and Greece in the ‘70s (during the Cyprus crisis). This is because it would be built around a Middle East in which NATO has become increasingly involved.

The Israelis, who in any case, are leaving this summit with an unexpected success, cannot hide an obvious fact: The loss of Turkey means the loss of their only ally in the region and the strengthening of the “great enemy” Iran, which Ankara is prepared to recognize as a partner in all respects. So Tehran is further capitalizing on the effects of the war in 2006 (a disaster for Israel), with Lebanon’s gradual exit from the West, the resumption of Syrian influence and the strengthening of the political power of its ally, the Shiite movement.

Meanwhile, Turkey still does not understand that it is a dangerous illusion to think it can both play a greater role in the Middle East and also be able to disengage from multiple alliances while not undermining its traditional and increasingly uncertain positioning in the West. The fact that the Ankara government can think of closing airspace to Israeli commercial aircraft or can define Israel as a “pirate state” (with a rhetoric dangerously similar to the one of Ahmadinejad) objectively puts Turkey on the dangerous edge of the Western camp, in which Israel has a different and privileged position compared to other states in the region.

Moreover (and this is the most mocking and most important corollary in the whole situation), almost nine years after September 11 and despite all the efforts of the United States, the seed of religious radicalism permeates the region and grows stronger every day: from Lebanon to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Iran, and from Turkey to Israel itself, which increasingly resembles the other countries in the region, in which the politicization of religion plays a decisive and unbeneficial role.