The Limited Influence of the U.S. on Arab Countries

Barack Obama has defined the borders of a democratization policy in the Arab world. In doing so, he appears to be more modest than his neoconservative predecessor.

Obama delivered a keynote speech about the Arab revolutions — but once again, all people hear is “Middle East conflict.” In fact, the president had little new to say about this hot topic of international politics. This was not surprising, because the situation is in a deadlock and the open outcome of the revolutions in the Arab world involves many uncertainties for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. A solution to the conflict can only be found once the Middle East develops a clear accommodating policy again.

Obama’s redefinition of U.S. policy toward the Arab states was more effective. The president did indeed begin his presidency as a pragmatic realist who did not really feel inclined to help achieve democracy in other countries and cultures. He was anxious to come to terms with the world’s autocrats and dictators in order to solve problems. This was clearly an idea that countered his predecessor, George W. Bush, and his belief that the United States was the promoter of freedom and democracy in the world.

Late Acknowledgment for Bush

Now Bush is receiving late acknowledgment for the Arab revolutions. He and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, were the first to recognize that the problems in the Arab world are caused by decades of harshness under sclerotic dictatorship. Due to development in the region no longer being restricted, Obama has become slightly like Bush — as well as many statesmen and women in Europe, who, after having to bargain with these very autocrats for so long, have realized that dictatorships only appear to create stability. These politicians now recognize that societies that are only artificially developed are prone to turmoil.

Driven by the Arab revolutions, Obama is embracing the democratization agenda and making it a priority in American foreign policy again, but in a much more modest way than the American neoconservatives did. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught Obama humility and promoted the view that even the possibilities of a superpower’s influence on other societies are restricted.

Obama Also Highlights Limits and Dangers

Treating his listeners as adults is one of Obama’s strengths. Therefore, alongside the opportunities of a democratization policy, he also highlighted the dangers and limits of this approach. Ultimately, according to Obama, the West has a range of interests in the region: fighting terrorism, stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, ensuring the free flow of goods and security in the region, standing by Israel and promoting freedom in the Middle East. He also made it clear that it could definitely lead to conflicts with the principles of democracy. He said, “There will be times when our short-term interests do not align perfectly with our long-term vision of the region.” This is particularly evident in the examples of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and he criticized the latter more harshly than ever before.

Between Democratization and Strategic Interests

The conflict between democracy and strategic interests is often described as the opposite of moral and practical politics, but this is a dichotomy of the past. Actually, a policy that focuses on freedom, democracy and human rights in the Muslim world is also a type of policy that pursues the interests of the United States, as we had to see how the immovable societies of this region bore monsters who threatened the security of its citizens and whose anger was also directed at the West. Therefore, it is high time that the reform policy in the Middle East is at the top of the Western world’s interests.

The art of politics is to bring these interests into balance, and the big opportunity lies in the fact that this time Europe and America are on the same page. When Bush pushed his “Greater Middle East Initiative” in 2004, he was often rejected by the Arabs and Europeans because his reputation was ruined by the war in Iraq, but now the young Arabs are clearing the way for their own freedom, and even Europe wants to help get this movement on the right track. So there is no lack of goodwill this time. However, Europe should support the reform movement in the Middle East more resolutely, with specific projects and assistance so that the countries in revolution can become success stories.

Obama Lacks a Convincing Overall Strategy

The United States has reacted as a factor of power in the Arab world, but Obama continues to vacillate between reluctance and intervention.

This was the right time for Obama’s keynote address about U.S. strategy toward the revolutions in the Middle East. The killing of Osama bin Laden in a remarkable, precisely planned and executed commando mission has helped the ailing superpower to achieve new respect in the region, especially since many had already given up on the United States as an authoritative regulatory factor in the restructuring of the Arab states.

In the Arab world, outrage at and criticism of the elimination of the mass-murdering godfather of terror was conspicuously restricted. If anything, the people there can breathe a collective sigh of relief about the beginning of a new chapter in the relationship between Middle Eastern societies and the Western world after the destruction of the myth of bin Laden’s untouchability and the ideological beheading of al-Qaida that was connected to it.

The fact that the United States and its European allies are involved in the fight against the Libyan despot Moammar al-Gadhafi also sets a clear example: U.S. politics is fundamentally on the side of the anti-dictatorial uprisings in the Arab world, and it no longer wants its influence in the region to be dependent on the weal and woe of corrupt tyrants.

Economic Aid for Egypt and Tunisia

In his speech on Thursday, Obama was not yet able to develop these positive approaches and gestures further into a convincing overall approach. Not only does the announced promotion of economic reform in Egypt and — who have liberated themselves from their sole rulers by their own means — seem to be too halfhearted, these countries are now in an extremely critical transformation phase between restoration, politico-religious Islamification and genuine democratization.

The United States and Europe are still lacking a particular perspective, such as democratically secular political forces and civilian self-organization that can be systematically enforced and promoted in order to make them resistant enough to defy impending authoritarian relapse. In addition, the United States is not consistent in dealing with the various remaining Arab dictators.

In the NATO alliance, the United States is trying to protect the Libyan population from Gadhafi’s henchmen by military means, and they have successfully fought for an official U.N. mandate. However, until now, they have not opposed the suppression of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s democratic movement, which is just as brutal as the violence in Libya, with any comparable determination. In Jordan — but above all in Saudi Arabia — unshakeable strongholds of traditional Arab despotism are getting nothing more than general warnings about their need for reform from Washington; they are not getting any firm pressure to make actual changes.

Decisive U.S. Intervention Is Essential

Furthermore, Obama is basically hesitating between his original inclination toward reservation with domestic conflicts — which he had developed to contrast the intervening democratic exports of the Bush era — and the growing insight here and there that without an active exertion of forward-thinking influence, the United States could completely lose control of development in the Middle East.

In the past few months, Obama’s budding hopes of self-organized civil society movements that implement new scopes of freedom without foreign direction have risen to a certain degree. But this is exactly the reason why pressure is growing on him: because he realizes that a determined intervention by the United States in support of this movement is essential if they are not to be defeated in the obscure fight for power of nationalistic and religious forces.

A Fateful Error in Middle East Policy

On the other hand, Obama is making a possibly fateful error in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By admitting to being the first U.S. president to recognize the state of Palestine on the basis of its 1967 borders, he is repeating a mistake from the beginning of his time in office that is already believed to be fixed: on the one hand pushing Israel into a corner, and on the other hand still spurring on the Palestinians’ tendency to make untenable demands.

Israel would not be able to defend the boundaries as they existed before the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967. If Israel does not want to put its existence at risk, it can never agree to return to this frontier line — irrespective of the view of a re-establishment of the relationships of 1967 being absurd — because that would mean the reoccupation of the West Bank by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt. Just as real is the supposed solution that Jerusalem should be split into two halves again — real life with its many complex relationships has long gotten past similar fantasies of neat separation. This is evident not in the least because, according to recent polls, in the event that Palestine is declared its own state, a large majority of Arab residents of Jerusalem would prefer to stay in Israel.

Propaganda for the Palestinians

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the purpose of such abstract maximum demands, as much as they encourage Obama, is not to force Israel to the negotiating table. On the contrary, the demands are exhibiting propaganda for the Palestinians in order to cover up their own denial of talks. Instead of being focused on negotiations, the Palestinian leadership has long been particularly focused on the one-sided declaration of its own state that it wants to have recognized by the U.N. General Assembly in September.

The fact that the “moderate” Fatah has recently agreed with the militant Hamas, who were unwilling to compromise, on an interim government, emphasizes this departure from the peace process. A clear rejection of this path of confrontation was missing from Obama’s speech. By echoing the Palestinians as a signal of goodwill in the entire Arab world, he promotes a logic that will create new conflicts against his will, rather than the willingness for peace.