After Tahrir Square

For some time it has been obvious that no one in the Middle East really cares what an American president says. In any case, it seems that the risk of anyone being concerned about what an American president says is diminishing. Regimes that have essentially had America to thank for their position of power, have, for differing reasons, been forced to inspect the USA’s hand and have discovered to their dismay that the cards are weak.

The latest to be forced to inspect the cards was the Mubarak regime in Egypt, which thought itself to have the backing of the USA, which has long given Egypt reason to believe so.

Vice President Joe Biden forthrightly maintained that Mubarak wasn’t a dictator; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted that the Egyptian regime was stable; and President Obama’s special envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, Jr., a man with strong business ties to the Mubarak regime, advised the president to back Mubarak.

In the choice between a pliable oppressive regime and something a little more capricious, the USA tried for the longest time to pin its hopes on amenability, if not from Mubarak himself, then from someone else in the regime with similar ties to the USA — for example, the CIA-trained Vice President Omar Suleiman. Several million people in a square in central Cairo, on live TV broadcasts all over the world, also scrutinized the cards, with the consequence that the U.S. was once again forced to ponder its declining ability to demand amenability in the Middle East.

Amenability before independence has been the coldly calculated foundation of American interests in the Middle East, ever since 1953, when the CIA overthrew democratically-elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq, who had been recalcitrant enough to nationalize Iran’s oil assets. Twenty-six years later, in February 1979, America paid the price for its calculation, with an Islamic seizure of power and a historic loss of amenability.

Since then, the USA’s position in the Middle East has slowly but surely weakened. The support for Iraq during the long and bloody war against Iran only strengthened the mullahs in Iran and gave birth to a political monster in Iraq. The overthrow of the monster did not beget a wave of democracy as planned, but a wave of sectarian violence and decay. The war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have been protracted exhibitions of American powerlessness; no one cares what Americans say since they lack the ability to enforce what they say.

From this perspective, America’s panicky self-contradiction and ambivalence in the face of the insurgency in Egypt may be seen as the moment when the world discovered that the emperor was naked — or, at least, without the ability to command the respect and compliance due to an emperor. The symbolic significance of the popular and peaceful overthrow of America’s most important allies in the Arab world cannot, under any circumstances, be underestimated. A new era has commenced in the Middle East. Before and after Tahrir Square.

After Tahrir Square, it is neither a wise nor possible strategy for America to rely on compliant, oppressive regimes.

After Tahrir Square, it is unpredictability and insecurity that applies to the U.S. in the Middle East, not pliability.

To a greater extent this also applies to Israel, which seemed to imagine that the Arab world would, for the foreseeable future, be dominated by amenable repressive regimes with full control over their capricious populations. In any case, it seemed that no one in the Israeli government concerned themselves with the day when this may longer be the case. For the time being, there are no signs of a reassessment of the notion that Israel’s security is mainly guaranteed by the country’s ability to win wars (also a war against Iran that sometimes is openly advocated). Or of the notion that Israel’s security demands the continued subjugation of four million Palestinians. Or that, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed in the Israeli Parliament the week before the battle in Tahrir Square was concluded, “The basis of our stability, for our future, for the preservation and expansion of peace, is the strengthening of the state of Israel’s power.”

If these notions were unrealistic before Tahrir Square, then they are even more so now. Regardless of which type of governance may ultimately crystallize after the revolt in Egypt, careful renovation or radical new building, Israel’s security has become even more dependent on power relations that Israel has decreasing capability to influence, particularly since the state has relied on the ideas that America would forever dominate the Middle East, that Israel would always be militarily superior to its neighbors, that the neighboring nations would forever be kept in check by pliable repressive regimes, and that the Palestinians would always be occupied and stateless.

In short, it is high time that Israel sought a new foundation for its security. In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the columnist Yoel Marcus suggested that Israel now ought to help America to stabilize the Middle East by entering into peace talks with Syrians and Palestinians “because stabilization of the region, starting with Egypt, first and foremost lies in our own interest.”

The question after Tahrir Square is if the new era will also apply in Israel.