Dilemmas for Obama: What’s to Be Done with Mubarak?
Published in Maariv
(Israel) on 31 January 2011
by Alon Pinkas (link to original)
Washington cherished the president of Egypt for years. At the moment, its foreign policy cannot ignore the demand of the masses to embrace democracy.
Lord Palmerston, prime minister of the United Kingdom during the 1850s, proclaimed that nations have no permanent friends and no permanent allies – they have only permanent interests. 120 years later, Henry Kissinger adopted the catchphrase as a part of the American concept of foreign policy and asserted that "America doesn't have friends; America only has interests."
Kissinger, with the use of this phrase, was greatly responsible for shaping the “realistic” school in American foreign policy. There is also another approach, interwoven with this one, that lives in perpetual tension with it: the idealistic school. This tension is the underlying basis of two dilemmas President Obama has been facing in the past few days — and will face in the days to come.
The first dilemma is the moral-strategic one. On the one hand, the United States has a clear interest in the inner stability of Egypt, regional stability (the derivative of Egyptian stability), the stability of the Israeli — Egyptian agreement, continuation of the political-military alliance with Hosni Mubarak, securing safe passage in the Suez Canal and Egyptian participation in the coalition for halting Iranian nuclearization.
Egypt is “the moderate, the pro-American, the stable” part of the Arab world, as generations of American strategists and diplomats have been reciting. Most of the high-ranking officers in the Egyptian army passed through academies and soldier schools of the United States Army. The Egyptian armed forces are equipped with a 1,000 Abrams tanks, produced in Egypt — and this is in addition to the annual assistance totaling $ 1.3 billion dollars.
The fact that all 19 terrorists who smashed four airplanes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in September 2001 were Saudis or Egyptians and that Saudi Arabia is not a classic example of a “moderate” country in any democratic aspect whatsoever does not change the American realpolitik.
On this side of dilemma, the United States prefers to see Mubarak carry on governing in Egypt, even if in a lower intensity and even as a puppet of the intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and defense minister Tantawi.
As of yesterday, the American administration is not speaking of Mubarak in the past tense, although it doesn’t back him at all. For decades, the United States has been paying a high price for this realpolitik: a significant and critical component of the anti-American sentiment in the Arab world originates from the massive support of the United States for the worst of the worst of the Arab dictators.
The Arabs hate the United States for many reasons, but the image of the spears of the U.S. Army upholding the rule of fortune and the decay of the tyrants in the Arab world is a very strong imprint.
Predictable Failure
The other side of the dilemma expresses a conceptual foundation in American foreign policy: the United States raises the banner, symbolizes and acts to promote democracy, political freedom and human and civil rights. Ostensibly, this is one of the reasons why former President Bush invaded Iraq, and, apparently, this is why the United States insisted on enabling Hamas’s participation in the elections for the Palestinian Authority in 2006.
The United States has an element of “soft power” in its foreign policy, of which democracy and the democratic culture are key parts. When the broader public — including the educated, the poor, the retailers, the civil rights activists and those who, from a socio-cultural standpoint, are left behind — are out on the streets in Poland, in Ukraine, in Hungary, in Tunisia or in Egypt, the United States has an ethical and moral obligation to stand behind them.
For a long period, American foreign policy attempted to combine both approaches — an effort that, just like any other that tries to reconcile opposites, cannot not fail, especially in countries lacking a tradition of democracy and a culture of restraint and centrality. We’ll sustain “the stable and pro-American” rule, but we will require that it enact constitutional changes, political freedom and openness.
Where has it worked? Nowhere. Is it supposed to be successful in Egypt? No. So the Secretary of State appeared yesterday on six Sunday talk-shows — on nearly every TV network — and issued razor-sharp words: The United States is committed to democracy and demands that the Egyptian government respond to public demands and carry out free elections.
Rather than thinking that Mubarak and Suleiman will do as she asks, Hillary Clinton is seeking to signal that, from the vantage point of the United States, Mubarak’s rule, as it has existed since 1981, can’t keep going on. Mubarak is not in the past tense, but he is definitely not spoken of in the future one.
No Ready Alternatives
The second dilemma Obama faces is tactical-political. How is the U.S. president to behave in extreme conditions of uncertainty and darkness concerning the development of the scenario?
It’s easy to say that the “United States is going to commit the same mistake as in Iran in 1979” or “in the demonstrations in Tehran in June 2009, the United States also stood aloof” or “the United States has a clear-cut interest in stability, which Obama embodies, and therefore it should stand by his side”. These are the idle words of an academic course on realism in international relations, not the practice of statecraft by a superpower bumping up against the limitations of its strength as the world watches.
Because American intelligence did not anticipate the events, there are no political alternatives and operational specs ready at hand. For the four past days, President Obama has not possessed tools to estimate whether Mubarak survives the demonstrations and whether government stability would be preserved without his presence — a situation where it’s doubtful whether Egypt turns into an exemplary democracy overnight or what the real degree of the Muslim Brotherhood involvement is.
Bolstering “the pro-American, moderate and stable” regimes was a part of the big-scale strategy of the Cold War and of the interest in ensuring a steady supply of oil.
The current front is against radical Islam and non-state Islamic terror. It is doubtful whether siding with those “moderate” autocrats is reasonable when considered along with the overall disgust this policy creates against the United States.
The author served as Israel’s Consul General in New York
Lord Palmerston, prime minister of the United Kingdom during the 1850s, proclaimed that nations have no permanent friends and no permanent allies – they have only permanent interests. 120 years later, Henry Kissinger adopted the catchphrase as a part of the American concept of foreign policy and asserted that "America doesn't have friends; America only has interests."
Kissinger, with the use of this phrase, was greatly responsible for shaping the “realistic” school in American foreign policy. There is also another approach, interwoven with this one, that lives in perpetual tension with it: the idealistic school. This tension is the underlying basis of two dilemmas President Obama has been facing in the past few days — and will face in the days to come.
The first dilemma is the moral-strategic one. On the one hand, the United States has a clear interest in the inner stability of Egypt, regional stability (the derivative of Egyptian stability), the stability of the Israeli — Egyptian agreement, continuation of the political-military alliance with Hosni Mubarak, securing safe passage in the Suez Canal and Egyptian participation in the coalition for halting Iranian nuclearization.
Egypt is “the moderate, the pro-American, the stable” part of the Arab world, as generations of American strategists and diplomats have been reciting. Most of the high-ranking officers in the Egyptian army passed through academies and soldier schools of the United States Army. The Egyptian armed forces are equipped with a 1,000 Abrams tanks, produced in Egypt — and this is in addition to the annual assistance totaling $ 1.3 billion dollars.
The fact that all 19 terrorists who smashed four airplanes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in September 2001 were Saudis or Egyptians and that Saudi Arabia is not a classic example of a “moderate” country in any democratic aspect whatsoever does not change the American realpolitik.
On this side of dilemma, the United States prefers to see Mubarak carry on governing in Egypt, even if in a lower intensity and even as a puppet of the intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and defense minister Tantawi.
As of yesterday, the American administration is not speaking of Mubarak in the past tense, although it doesn’t back him at all. For decades, the United States has been paying a high price for this realpolitik: a significant and critical component of the anti-American sentiment in the Arab world originates from the massive support of the United States for the worst of the worst of the Arab dictators.
The Arabs hate the United States for many reasons, but the image of the spears of the U.S. Army upholding the rule of fortune and the decay of the tyrants in the Arab world is a very strong imprint.
Predictable Failure
The other side of the dilemma expresses a conceptual foundation in American foreign policy: the United States raises the banner, symbolizes and acts to promote democracy, political freedom and human and civil rights. Ostensibly, this is one of the reasons why former President Bush invaded Iraq, and, apparently, this is why the United States insisted on enabling Hamas’s participation in the elections for the Palestinian Authority in 2006.
The United States has an element of “soft power” in its foreign policy, of which democracy and the democratic culture are key parts. When the broader public — including the educated, the poor, the retailers, the civil rights activists and those who, from a socio-cultural standpoint, are left behind — are out on the streets in Poland, in Ukraine, in Hungary, in Tunisia or in Egypt, the United States has an ethical and moral obligation to stand behind them.
For a long period, American foreign policy attempted to combine both approaches — an effort that, just like any other that tries to reconcile opposites, cannot not fail, especially in countries lacking a tradition of democracy and a culture of restraint and centrality. We’ll sustain “the stable and pro-American” rule, but we will require that it enact constitutional changes, political freedom and openness.
Where has it worked? Nowhere. Is it supposed to be successful in Egypt? No. So the Secretary of State appeared yesterday on six Sunday talk-shows — on nearly every TV network — and issued razor-sharp words: The United States is committed to democracy and demands that the Egyptian government respond to public demands and carry out free elections.
Rather than thinking that Mubarak and Suleiman will do as she asks, Hillary Clinton is seeking to signal that, from the vantage point of the United States, Mubarak’s rule, as it has existed since 1981, can’t keep going on. Mubarak is not in the past tense, but he is definitely not spoken of in the future one.
No Ready Alternatives
The second dilemma Obama faces is tactical-political. How is the U.S. president to behave in extreme conditions of uncertainty and darkness concerning the development of the scenario?
It’s easy to say that the “United States is going to commit the same mistake as in Iran in 1979” or “in the demonstrations in Tehran in June 2009, the United States also stood aloof” or “the United States has a clear-cut interest in stability, which Obama embodies, and therefore it should stand by his side”. These are the idle words of an academic course on realism in international relations, not the practice of statecraft by a superpower bumping up against the limitations of its strength as the world watches.
Because American intelligence did not anticipate the events, there are no political alternatives and operational specs ready at hand. For the four past days, President Obama has not possessed tools to estimate whether Mubarak survives the demonstrations and whether government stability would be preserved without his presence — a situation where it’s doubtful whether Egypt turns into an exemplary democracy overnight or what the real degree of the Muslim Brotherhood involvement is.
Bolstering “the pro-American, moderate and stable” regimes was a part of the big-scale strategy of the Cold War and of the interest in ensuring a steady supply of oil.
The current front is against radical Islam and non-state Islamic terror. It is doubtful whether siding with those “moderate” autocrats is reasonable when considered along with the overall disgust this policy creates against the United States.
The author served as Israel’s Consul General in New York