The American Window Has Closed

All understand already that anyone who dreams of Washington imposing “Pax Americana” in the world is captured by old-fashioned myths — all except Israel.

Everybody’s disappointed with the United States, and there are none as disappointed with it as we are here. Since the winds of revolution began to breathe in the Arab world, the question “Where is America?” has been blowing in the commentary columns: How could it be that Mubarak is falling, Saudi Arabia is rocking and Washington is not doing a thing? Where is George W. Bush, the man who set out to two wars that already overshadow World War II in their duration, when he’s needed?

In Israel, another dimension has been added to this disappointment — one publicly admitted only by blogs and talkbacks: a suspicion of Barack Hussein Obama. No wonder Israeli sites and web surfers are especially active participants in spreading rumors apropos to Obama’s origin and the legitimacy of his election to the presidency. And here, all the fears symbolized in the name of the U.S. president are coming true.

What exactly are the Americans supposed to do? Land commandos in Tahrir Square? Unleash “shock and awe” against the Shiite protesters in Bahrain? Send the CIA to overthrow regimes, like it did to Musadak in Iran, or fight revolutionaries, like it did in South or Central America? Whoever was hoping for any of these is no different from those leftists waiting for years by now for American assertive measures which would compel Israel to get out of the territories.

It makes an impression that at our side, more than in most places in the world, people have difficulties acclimating to the idea that both the Cold War and the epoch of sole American power that came afterward have expired. They have a hard time understanding that Obama received into his hands a superpower with a sick economy (a result of unrestrained spending in Bush’s days), with its armed forces stretched in two campaigns that refuse to end; and mainly, the era when the United States could do whatever it wanted has passed from the world.

The Erstwhile Landlord

It’s not by accident that in the Libyan affair, the American president is being led and not leading, “allowing” and not initiating: Who knows better than him what damage has been inflicted on the United States by the unbridled and unjustifiable initiative of his predecessor? In 1990, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (who was later Bush’s vice president) launched a competition inside of the American administration for formulation of the new strategy of the United States.

Two documents were contending with each other: The first one was written by Chief of Staff (later Secretary of State) Colin Powell, Vietnam graduate. Never ever, wrote Powell, should we enter a war without an “exit strategy.” We are to ask ourselves whether the goal is clear enough and whether American interest is in jeopardy. Will we be able to mobilize enough resources, and for long enough? Is there support in the Congress and the people? Have we exhausted all the other options? Only if the answer to all those questions is yes can we go out to a war and finish it as quickly as possible.

The second paper was written by two of the people who guided the Bush Jr. administration ideologically: Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby. They did not turn away from unilateral action, not necessarily out of domestic or international consensus — everything in order to encourage countries to adopt para-American models or models convenient to the United States. Their rationale was ideological — America being in their eyes a paragon for the world — and primarily practical: We have a window of opportunity after the downfall of the Soviet Union and before the emergence of a new global power.

Even the zealots among the American neo-conservatives know that the window has already closed, but before it had Bush used it for the wrong target in Iraq. Even they get that Obama cannot proceed in any way but this, and that anybody dreaming about Washington imposing the “American Peace” over the world is a captive to outdated myths. Even they know that it’s impossible to send aircrafts over unless in the name of an urgent humanitarian operation, like in Libya, and it’s impossible to send ground forces much of anywhere. Even they know what is understood today everywhere — except for a frightened little town on the shore of the Mediterranean, where some keep on looking forward to the landlord of the old time.