Obama 2.0

Did anybody read Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech? The American president surely read it, having written it with his adviser Ben Rhodes. Indeed, Obama knows the text so well that he apparently felt it was time to write another iconic speech directed at the Arab and Islamic world. Perhaps Cairo 2.0, or more provisionally, Cairo 1.5, as suggested by James Traub in “Foreign Policy.”

Either way, it is obvious that a new speech is needed. Obama understands that his Middle East policy, unveiled two years ago in Cairo, has failed. It is a scenario for the most part anticipated by democratic leaders, from Ayman Nour to Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

In the past few days, some American journalists have been wondering why the Obama administration has been so slow to find its voice with respect to the national uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The Washington Post and The New York Times went as far as to applaud European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi, for their timely response, in contrast to the Obama administration’s failure to speak up, firstly on Egypt and secondly on Libya.

Eventually, the White House reluctantly sided with the democratic movements. Those familiar with the contents of the Cairo speech, however, were not surprised by Obama’s initial reluctance.

This caution regarding events in North Africa is of the same sort he exhibited in the summer of 2009, when the American president was the last Western leader to condemn the practices of the theocratic regime in Tehran and the violence used by the ayatollahs against the Iranian opposition. An explanation for this timidity can be found in the Cairo speech.

Obama, in contrast to what has been said in Italian newspapers and media, did not speak to the Muslim world, to the Arabs on the streets or the Iranians in the bazaars, inviting them to embrace freedom and democracy. Instead, Obama spoke to the theocrats, the despots and the ayatollahs. In fact, he addressed the very regimes which have been in power for the past 60 years. He addressed above all America’s enemies, not its allies.

Obama described Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, his host at the time, as a force for stability in the region. He actually went to Cairo to assure the Arab leaders that there would be no regime change, and that America would not force them to conduct liberal reforms, which George W. Bush insisted on after 9/11.

In turn, Obama asked the autocrats in the Arabic and Islamic world to no longer support terrorism and spread religious hatred, and in the case of Iran, to stop its nuclear program. This was the political sense of the Cairo speech.

Obama did not criticize these autocratic regimes. He did not support change in the Islamic world, nor did he encourage democratic forces. On the contrary, he cut aid for democratic Egyptian and Iranian movements by 50 percent, as well as 70 percent of the aid for Egyptian civil society. Meanwhile, aid totaling $1.3 billion for Mubarak’s military remained untouched.

In Cairo Obama criticized those who banned the hijab in the Western world, while enumerating America’s errors in the region. He did not, however, mention that the Obama administration supported dictators, who have now been ousted. Like all American presidents Obama did invoke democracy, but only in the abstract.

With words reminiscent of former President Bush’s rhetoric, he said that no nation can impose its form of government on another nation, even if democratic regimes are certainly more stable and secure. American newspapers defined the “democratic” part of his speech as “Bush light,” an attenuated version of his predecessor's pro-democracy agenda.

Conservative forces were especially delighted by one line referring to Iraq, a line most probably forgotten by those who remember the speech admiringly: “I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.”

Obama, therefore, went to Cairo to make it clear that he would not act like Bush, that the Iraq invasion was a mistake not to be repeated, that the U.S. would not interfere in the internal affairs of the Arab and Islamic world on behalf of strategic change, and that his would be a thoughtful, pragmatic and realistic foreign policy.

The project failed in a very spectacular way just a few weeks later. Taking Obama’s offer seriously, the regime in Tehran decided to bloodily repress opposition demands to recount disputed votes in the presidential election. The ayatollahs essentially got away with it, since the White House made clear that it would not interfere.

The people on the streets of Tehran, in the meantime, chanted: “Obama, you're either with us or against us.” Ultimately, the president concluded that it was pointless trying to make people understand concepts which they were not inclined to understand.

Slowly but surely the White House changed its approach toward Iran, putting the initially applied realpolitik to rest. The North African uprising was further proof of the strategic errors committed in Cairo.

Now, American newspapers are describing meetings at the White House that are trying to hammer out strategies adapted to the transformed environment in the Middle East. In reality, this strategic change has already materialized. The only thing missing is an ideological rationale, a solution that does not remind us of Bush, and a coherent line of communication with the outside world.

Obama will abandon the neo-Kissinger politics he brought with him when he took office, but he will be careful not to repeat the idealistic errors of Jimmy Carter, who in the name of human rights handed Iran over to the ayatollahs.

The new Obama doctrine, anticipated by The Wall Street Journal, represents a middle way, and the only pragmatic and realistic solution available: to put democratic pressure on friendly regimes and help dissidents overthrow unfriendly ones.

That is not new. Even more so than the script of the 2009 Cairo speech, Bush’s second inauguration speech from January 2005 should be read again. Therein lies the new Obama doctrine, and the script for his next Cairo speech.