Standing Beside the “Street”: On Obama’s Policy

The U.S. President interferes only where he has a chance to exert influence and is confident that the “street” would win. The Middle East rulers are not content, but the American public is.

Nobody is happy with Obama’s foreign policy. Nobody except for the American voters.

The Pakistani foreign minister made a phone call yesterday to her counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to protest NATO forces’ attack within Pakistan; the Saudis and Turks run a foreign policy of their own while maintaining a reasonable level of communication, however not coordination, with the American administration; Obama’s ex-ambassador to China, who today is also a (chanceless) presidential candidate on behalf of the rival party, said a week ago that the president “can’t lead.” In October, King Abdullah of Jordan noted: “Looking at how quickly people turned their backs on Mubarak” — that is, how Obama abandoned the Egyptian president deposed when the Arab Spring was still a spring — “I would say that most people are going to try and go their own way.”

As it was mentioned, almost no one is pleased except for those who really matter to Obama: the voters. A little more than a year before the elections, only 35 percent of Americans (a month ago it was closer to 25 percent) are opining that Obama takes a good care of economic problems — and that is the decisive issue in the eyes of the large majority of voters.

But, and this is an important “but,” under the current political circumstances, 49 percent of them are satisfied with what Obama is doing in international policy, compared to only 43 percent who are not. Should the chieftains of the Egyptian regime, or the Israeli prime minister, or the Saudi king have complaints, the Americans do not show particular empathy to those criticisms.

Image Rehab that Didn’t Go Well

At the beginning of the summer, Obama delivered the “Arab Spring” speech, where he adopted, in practice, the policy of permanently siding with the demands of the Arab “street” for freedom from tyranny, and he is steady in his support of this — if not in deeds, then at least in words. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu elaborated a week ago in the Knesset on the lack of enthusiasm he showed toward the Arab spring: “They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history,” he said and then questioned: “I ask today, who here didn’t understand reality? Who here didn’t understand history?”

Even if he’d deny this, Netanyahu turned his questions to President Obama; one who after quite a short hesitation decided to turn his back on President Hosni Mubarak and bolster the Egyptian street; who already in the early spring of last year made a strategic decision, having as its basis an ideological, but also a very practical, assumption: The street is going to win. It’s better to stand by it.

This is the second time that Obama has endeavored to get closer to the Arab street or in the least, to try to lessen the friction with it. The president entered the White House with the faith that American interests required the neutralization of hostility in U.S.-Arab relations, and already in his first months in office he set off for a long campaign of image rehabilitation that did not work nicely.

Obama went to Cairo and Turkey, ignited anew the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks through his special envoy, George Mitchell, and started a long term plan of reducing the military presence in Iraq. All of that didn’t help much. The political results have been poor, and the image has not been rebuilt either. The polls proved that the Arab public keeps treating America suspiciously.

The regional leadership ignored his advice — the Saudis when they sent troops to Bahrain in order to aid in the suppression of the protests; the Turks when they expanded the front of the conflict with Israel; of course, the Palestinian leaders as well, when they concluded that there was no longer a benefit, from their standpoint, in American mediation of the negotiations and applied to the U.N. over Obama’s head.

Successful without Paying a Price

Obama does not have a grand strategy to furnish an explanation for why he decided to assist in bringing down Gadhafi, and, on the contrary, not to intervene in Syria; why he decided to jettison Mubarak, and nevertheless, not suggest, or even hint, a similar move in Bahrain. In this sense, he is truly a president who seeks to get involved only where he’s got a chance to influence. He can hold back the Palestinians in the U.N. without being charged a heavy diplomatic or political price. Perhaps, there’s even a certain profit to come out.

In order to halt Assad, on the other hand, he’s going to need to invest pricy resources: money, manpower, possibly human lives, and time that should be dedicated to handling the economy. So he is just a bystander here. The Yemeni president’s downfall will not necessarily bring stability to his country, but in the short run, it won’t cost the U.S. essential damage.

On the other hand, undermining the regime in Bahrain, which controls oil fields and hosts a vital American army base, will immediately carry a hefty price tag that would make restoration of America’s economy even more difficult. In other words: Obama is acting where it is possible to act, and even to succeed, without paying dearly.

And yes, he is still positive that he, and not Netanyahu, is on the right side of history. This is an interesting role reversal, however not entirely unexpected. The one who is considered a disciple of the American neo-conservatives, Netanyahu, displays a cold, realistic approach devoid of great sympathy to mobs storming with bare breasts the muzzles of guns and tanks. In contrast to him, we have Obama: someone who rose to power as the most uncompromising opponent of the neo-conservatives, who established his standing as a vocal opponent to the Iraq War and followed President Bush in espousing democratization of the Middle East.

Like Bush, who took off to topple Saddam Hussein without fully clarifying the direct connection between his overthrow and the American national interest, so too did Obama head to take down Gadhafi in Libya.This course of action does not have a thing or a half in common with the American national interest. And just as Bush refrained from attempts at dictating to Saudis specific reforms, despite his belief in a need for the implementation of such reforms throughout the Middle East, so too has Obama avoided trying to dictate to Saudis or Bahrainis what exactly they are to do and what rights precisely they are to promote.

The Public Demands Innocence

Is Obama naive? All the American leaders are a little naive or have to pretend that they are like this. The American public demands of them such naivete. It demands of them to stand for the principles of liberty and equality — that’s one of its prominent weaknesses and also one of the secrets of its power.

Anyway, sometimes Obama is ingenuous too, as one could discern from the futile effort he invested, and maybe will still invest, in his vision of dismantling nuclear weapons around the world. He is also calculated at times, as one might get from his response to the goings-on in the Arab world.

And still, he is different from Bush. The intensive use of targeted assassinations indeed proves that Obama does not flinch from the necessity of employing institutional violence in the service of American security. Yet unlike Bush, Obama believes far less in the ability of the demonstration of American might to shape events and trends worldwide.

As stated above, it’s actually all right with his voters now; and so it is with the Middle East chiefs who feel more free to do as they please, and disregard Obama.