Weak in a Changing World

Our world is in a state of constant conflict, which adapts to any climate and situation with more ease than the options of stability and concordance. Such is the nature of life, a fact that we have attempted to disguised without understanding that, in almost any case, chaos can easily overrule order. Today it’s Egypt; who knows what it will be tomorrow? The changes in world order with the rise of developing countries, especially China, have symbolically coincided with Obama’s ascension to the White House. His doubts and ambiguities concerning situations such as the one in Egypt are confused with his personality, when actually they are a result of our time. A time in which the United States continues to be a great power, but without full hegemony. No country is a hegemony, especially not a Europe that is demilitarizing and absorbed in its own economic problems, without enough will to act as a power. What used to be known as the West is weak in a changing world.

In the past, Obama’s discourse about the Arab world was idealistic, but now he has to be realistic with Egypt. In fact, Obama is more of a realist than he seems and he has always been explicit in his consideration for the thoughts of Reinhold Niebuhr, the protestant theologian who coined a type of realism about the Cold War. It is a line of thought based on the idea that man’s ability for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. Acknowledging history’s tragedy does not keep us from attempting to wield justice in an ambiguous world in which clarity is generally a remote feature. It is a world without final or decisive solutions.

Humans are fallible. Our incapacity to foresee even the immediate is a profuse lesson. Egypt is just another test until the next one comes along with its heaps of violence, creating advantages for al-Qaida. Most probably, the West no longer has any real power to actively influence the course of recent events, or at least its capacities are notably limited. This is how we came to the conclusion that ideologies are useless, even counterproductive. Deprived of those systematic references that aspired to survive the Berlin Wall, all that is left now is the historical experience with its pragmatic lessons, facing a horizon without security or certainty.

Suddenly, the storming of the Bastille is being organized by cell phones and is directly broadcast through global television channels. It has already happened, and is now happening again in Tunisia and in Egypt. Mubarak’s regime tried unsuccessfully to black out internet and mobile phone communications. In Egypt, there are 20 million internet users. Eight out of every ten Tunisians have a cell phone. While the Middle East is boiling, the West is formulating lukewarm suggestions and vague notions of support, unable to decide between stability, emptiness or Egyptian liberalization. There is a fear of more chaos instead of more democracy. There is a risk of nuclear proliferation in the region. Apart from the ancient saying about the lesser evil, the precedent that everything could worsen also exists. Mubarak still is vice-president of the Mediterranean Union, which, according to European strategy, was meant to solve everything.

We are witnessing the destabilization of the old Arab world. Something is going to change in the Middle East, but for now we only know that the West has lost influence in the world, without being able to quantify it or reinstate it. Meanwhile, NATO, the great winner of the Cold War without firing a shot, is crumbling in Afghanistan. There is little the U.S. and the E.U. can do in Egypt, except to wait, send out vague messages and hide their growing weakness. Is the legacy of the Jewish-Christian enlightenment to be found in the cell phone? If that were the case, the United States would at least still preserve its technological supremacy.

Who knows how far a new Arab era will go? How the turbulence will settle is something we do not yet know. At the same time, adopting democracy requires that a society strives for maturity, articulates a consistent public opinion and works hard on economic prosperity. After the fall of the Berlin Wall came the implosion of the Balkans. Further back in time, after the First World War came the Second. We cannot predict the philosophy of history. This is the beginning of a century not comparable with the ’80s and the reinstated freedom in half of Europe — the other Europe.

The West should rethink its policies in the Middle East, but these things are usually called for too late and lack methods or solutions. The only method at hand at the moment is to avoid that the contradictions blow up by Western diplomacy in the Arab world. It seems like a small thing, but it is not the easiest thing to carry out. The accelerator and the break are now in someone else’s hands.