Obama’s Middle East Dismay

“Not enough” was U.S. President Barack Obama’s reaction to Hosni Mubarak’s televised speech on Feb. 10. In a highly anticipated address to the nation that Thursday evening, the Egyptian leader announced that he would be transferring his powers as head of state to his vice-president, Omar Suleiman. However, he added, he would be staying on as president until elections in September.

Obama’s dismissive response to the announcement highlighted one of the most salient issues to emerge from the Egyptian crisis, namely the relative powerlessness of the United States to shape events there. Washington seemed unable to exert any influence on Mubarak, one of its closest allies in the region, or on the Egyptian public.

The Obama administration wanted Mubarak’s departure but never dared to say so publicly. It had hoped that the Egyptian president, by announcing his resignation, would give in to the principal demand of the protesters who shook Egypt for 18 days. It would have been a symbolic gesture of great political significance, calming the anger of the Egyptian demonstrators and preventing a radicalization of the movement.

And so Obama did not hide his frustration: “The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity.”

From the outset, Washington seemed to hesitate about which faction to back. On one side was a loyal ally, subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars, but a dictator. On the other side was a movement that embodied the very values the U.S. claims to uphold.

The Egyptian regime represented strategic stability, notably with its guarantee of the 1979 peace agreement with Washington’s other major regional ally, Israel. Tahrir Square was the voice of a revolt in motion to promote democracy.

The United States did not want chaos, nor did it want the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement to be brought into question. More importantly, Washington no longer wanted to be on the “wrong side” of history, because the truth of the matter was that events in Egypt had come about largely without U.S. participation.

The distress exhibited by the U.S. spoke to the full extent of American helplessness. The U.S. has nuclear weapons, and it could have withheld the billions in assistance it provides annually. But who would ultimately have benefited?

The image of an American puppet-master pulling the strings in the background now makes less sense than ever, and conspiracy theories in the Middle East no longer have any basis in reality. The Cold War is long over, and Washington and Moscow no longer control what happens in what used to be their respective spheres of influence.

Events in Egypt are evolving in an unpredictable manner. They are being shaped by a protest movement that has harnessed a revolutionary communication tool capable of unprecedented mobilization: the Internet. The confrontation between Mr. Mubarak and Tahrir Square was a complicated, multifaceted affair. But it was primarily a matter for Egyptians.