Obama between the Drops

Mubarak feels betrayed; the demonstrators feel that the U.S. is not standing beside them. The American administration has difficulties deciding between democracy and stability.

If there is a country with a record of disappointments, it’s the United States of America — it is a country with a record of failed gambles, a record of assessments proven false and a record of unrealized alliances. In its relations with Egypt, it has always had a difficult time trying to decipher the intentions and actions of the other side. It has also, in its quest for the democratization of the Middle East, demonstrated a poor ability to understand the Arab political order.

“Just like President Kennedy’s dreams to bring about processes of modernization and development in Nasser’s Egypt were utterly crushed in the deserts of Yemen, President Bush’s own faith and beliefs were disappointed — these being his faith in the power of democratic procedures to establish a true democratic experience even in the absence of governmental, institutional, ideological and social infrastructure,” Professor Avi Ben-Zvi wrote in his new and comprehensive book, “From Truman to Obama” (Yedioth Books). In this book, one could find, among other things, several instructive examples of the perturbations in the relationship between Washington and Cairo. An example would be the sharp turning point between John Kennedy — who believed in his capability to lead Nasser toward a positive channel — and Lyndon Johnson, who was “from the very beginning devoid of illusions and oppositional in his approach toward the land of Nile.”

A striking turning point was also recorded at the transition from the George W. Bush administration to the Barack Obama administration. Bush vigorously supported democratization, even at the price of “stability.” When he spoke in Egypt in 2008, he lashed at those suffering from “a condescending form of moral relativism” and those remaining “skeptics about democracy in this part of the world.” But Obama was elected to office in order to eliminate this agenda and bring the American policy back to the “less ideological and more practical” days — days that were to resemble more closely those of Bush Sr.’s administration.

Understandable Caution

In his notorious speech in Cairo in 2009, Obama was way more careful with his wording than Bush had been: “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years,” he said, but “that does not lessen my commitment […] to governments that reflect the will of the people.” What had been high on the list of priorities in the Bush days was relegated to a footnote in Obama’s time. In February 2010, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked to Islamic leaders in Qatar, she listed five sections that needed to be taken care of: human rights was the fifth and the closing issue.

A year after that, in January 2011, Clinton sounded different. In her speech in Doha on the first of the month, she warned the Arab leaders that their “people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.” Suddenly, she sounded not like Obama’s secretary of state but more like Bush’s Condoleezza Rice, who in 2005 didn’t think twice about publicly criticizing President Mubarak.

As a matter of fact, Obama himself seemed to resemble his predecessor much more this weekend than in the past. It’s not sure whether he has changed his taste, and it’s doubtful that he is embracing Bush’s worldview, but Obama is also like the evolving liberal referenced in a well-known saying of Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism: someone “who has been mugged by reality.” This reality refers to the political reality in the Middle East — demonstrators in the streets — and the political reality at home — public sympathy for the freedom-seekers and instinctive revulsion at the idea of supporting the autocrat regimes.

Obama, for clear reasons, is trying to proceed cautiously. He has no clue who’s going to win in the streets of Cairo, and does not want to alienate himself from the regime which might continue to stay in control in Egypt. On the other hand, it’s difficult for the American president to stand aloof without expressing support, even weakly, for those aspiring for democracy and reform. Therefore, Obama is walking with reasonable circumspection between the drops, and so far he has disappointed everyone: both Mubarak, who feels betrayed, as well as the protesters, who feel that America does not stand by their side.

Egypt is among the countries whose degree of trust in the Americans stands at some of the lowest rates in the world, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way even after the riots die down and a new political order is established. So in other words, should Mubarak survive, Obama will lose — should Mubarak fall, Bush will be the one to win.