US Policies after the Arab Spring and the Islamist Movement’s Stance on Them

The discussion of the United States’ role in the revolutions and their aftermath has taken up a great deal of space in the discourse of Arab media. The various related topics, especially the United States’ dialogues with the Islamist movement’s representatives such Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s al-Nahda Movement, have been dominated by analyses, rumors and leaks, and this transformation is important for both the region’s administration and its position in the international community. Considering this importance, it is useful to recall and examine U.S. policies in light of the Arab revolutions should we wish to develop a mature dialogue. The scope and depth of such a dialogue ought to be enlarged with the contributions of Arab researchers, politicians, media professionals and experts. As a result, such analysis has become a central concern at this time. This analysis deals with the particularities of U.S. policy, the challenges posed in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the problematic nature of U.S. behavior in the Arab region, the ever-changing threats to U.S. interests in the region (and the true sources of such threats) and, finally, the choices available to the United States for dealing with the region after the Arab Spring.

The Particularities of U.S. Policy

Generally speaking, U.S. policy has special characteristics that are based on theories derived from the geostrategic reality, as well as from the vital interests in specific regions. The single most important of these characteristics is that the U.S. relies on regional allies to secure its interests and then betrays these very allies when they turn become recalcitrant cases and burdens to U.S. policy, either as a result of losing their central role or becoming vulnerable and, potentially, toppled, as has happened! The United States quickly abandons its allies in favor of their new and stronger replacements as soon as these replacements are able to secure America’s current interests, if only for a limited period. This is because the most important thing for the United States is its local and regional interests. America doesn’t cry over the loss of any ally, no matter what the duration and extent of services that ally provided. The United States also plants cells inside the territory of its allies as a reserve force to be used upon the collapse of those countries’ current regimes. Furthermore, it relies on a policy of sole leadership of the world, domination of global business and the possession of global military power. The United States guarantees Europe’s alliance and support of American international policy, even if the details and economic policies between them occasionally diverge.

The most prominent of the challenges facing U.S. policy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring is the decline of its hegemonic theory of stability and one-sided gains.

The transformations in the Middle East do not correspond with dominant political theories that advocate supporting dictatorships as long as they continue to serve the United States’ interests.

The greatest force in these transformations is the strength of political Islam as a movement – a movement whose positions and policies conflict with a number of the United States’ policies in the region.

The increase of security risks for the Zionist entity is due to the growth of political currents that hold a fundamental ideological position toward the Zionist project. These movements are leading the campaign against Zionism in the region by supporting the Palestinian resistance and the rights of the Palestinian people.

Concerning the political transformations in the Arab countries, whether with regard to the popular revolutions — both the toppling of regimes and the pressure of protests and demonstrations — or the process of political reform, U.S. policy and its strategic vision took a major blow. The upheaval went far beyond the calculations of the think tanks and intelligence agencies. Observations of the initial U.S. reaction to such changes, as well as American academic analyses, gave the impression that the U.S. administration suffered a major shock. It seems that the administration is searching for a way to intervene in the transformational process – or, at least, in the transitional stages – in order to preserve its vital interests in the region post-revolution. U.S. policy differs in each Arab country, and the decisive factors that inform such divergences are, largely, local. Such factors include the amount of time available for carrying out actions, the ability of allies to organize a response and their willingness to participate in the process of transformation – or whatever comes after it. Other local factors include how crucial the country is to American strategic interests and how much country influences U.S. policy and interests. The U.S. administration, despite the setbacks that have crippled the institutions and individuals who rely on the funding of European allies, has hastened to adopt an initiative that would spread support for any democratic transformation. The American initiative’s tactics include pressuring its allies (among the countries in which the winds of changed have not reached) to change, for fear of their being toppled or uprooted. However, the United States hardly managed to control the course of change in most of those countries. Instead, it charged its allies — European and otherwise — with playing the major role. That is, until the security risks for the Israeli entity increased as a result of increase in political currents that have taken a fundamental ideological position towards the Zionist project, leading the campaign against Zionism in the region.

The Transformations that Constitute a Threat to Previous U.S. Policies in the Region

The Western-supported and financed cells that carry out social and humanitarian work in Arab societies have seen their capabilities decline, leading to a compromised ability to carry out programs that would serve Western ideas and policies. The failure of these institutions has been established, despite all their attempts to attribute the recent transformations to their own efforts.

Although conditions in Syria have shaken the opposition to its core, the influence of the opposition’s philosophy will, ultimately, widen in the region. This will occur under the auspice of collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia and Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, as well as the splintering and subsequent weakening of the moderate bloc.

There is an increasing need for a new conception: new rules for the game of politics, of democracy and of foreign relations. These rules must fit with U.S. interests.

The Problem of U.S. Behavior in the Arab Region:

1. Its vulnerability to successive surprises in the Arab Spring.

2. Its insistence on the same interests in the same order.

3. Its negative, ideological view of the region and its Islamist forces.

4. Its toleration of the consequences of the Israel’s behavior, which has been hostile and provocative to the region’s peoples.

5. The weakness of its ability to gather accurate information about the nature of the transformations and dynamics in the Arab constituent. This has been demonstrated by the experiences of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.

Choices for U.S. Cooperation with the New Reality

The United States has been confronted with difficulties in working out a policy for dealing with the “new.” These difficulties revolve around four major tendencies:

1. U.S. policy has no choice but to deal with yesterday’s alleged enemy: political Islam’s movements in both the countries of revolution and of reform.

2. The United States is no longer capable of preventing history from moving toward regional change, which has caused it to consider programs of coexistence and cooperation instead of clashing with the new governments and their political forces.

3. The liberal, secular forces that were bound to the United States by major interests no longer enjoy popularity or major influence in these countries, especially those forces connected to the period of dictatorships and corruption in the Arab systems of government. Therefore, these countries can no longer be relied upon in the defense and protection of U.S. policies and interests.

Indeed, the new governments represent the people who elected them. Therefore, they cannot risk their political futures with “special understandings” with the United States that would disregard the interest of their people and spurn the goal of transparency. This should lead the U.S. decision maker to alter his manner of dealing and negotiating with the new leaders. Any understanding must be between the people and not between the leaders.

U.S. behavior can be interpreted as an attempt at mutual understanding with the popular Islamist movements in the Arab world. Such an attempt precedes the adoption of policies that might cause lasting damage to American interests. And, despite the difficulty of negotiating ideological disparities, the Islamist movement has seemed to move from thinking like opposition parties to thinking like national leaders, which, for its part, is what will clear the path for mutual understanding with the international community. All this while the United States is still trying to maintain its former positions and policies and is not yet responding to the pressures from these forces to modify or alter some these. This has slowed and complicated all attempts at dialogue and communication. Today, American and European think-tanks are attempting to deconstruct the situation and arrive at an equilibrium, a number of whose elements and procedures will, inevitably, respect the new political transformation and will fulfill the interests of the Arab region’s peoples – if it wants to fulfill either its non-hostile interests or those interests that deal with both sides on equal footing.