When it came, President Barack Obama handled his 3 a.m. phone call from Cairo pretty well.
As political turbulence sweeps the Arab world, bringing challenges to the old order and uncertainties about the new, the president’s phone may be ringing a lot. Bahrain today. Jordan tomorrow?
At the heart of those calls will be the challenge of keeping up with, pre-empting and staying ahead of violent change. That could prove to be a mission impossible: Can we fashion a coherent policy when U.S. interests and values are at odds with its policies?
To succeed, the president would have to quickly alter some of those policies toward Israel, Iran and the Arab regimes. And that’s just not going to happen.
Obama can talk all day long about being on the wrong side of history —though perhaps, with our new freedom agenda, we can do a better job of being on the right side. But our investment in Arab autocrats, our fear of rapid change that undermines our national security interests and our exclusive relationship with the Israelis will likely alienate both Arab democrats and authoritarians. The fact is: We’re stuck. And that will make for some very messy times ahead.
Unless you were a fanatical Obama critic, you’d have to admit the president weathered his first foreign policy crisis well. He managed to juggle three balls without dropping any: identifying strongly with peaceful forces of change, pushing the Egyptian military to show restraint, and easing President Hosni Mubarak from office without publicly calling for his ouster.
Granted, Obama was rescued by the crisis’s Hollywood ending—courageous demonstrators risking life and limb to depose a cruel dictator in record time. But with the exception of too many White House statements, the president used his limited influence well in an extremely dangerous set of circumstances.
Still, the road ahead is likely to be rough. The current crisis in Bahrain is proof enough. But even responding to a slower, yet inexorable, process of change, some of it quite violent against Arab autocracies — many of which are closely identified with the United States — is likely to be very tricky.
As these autocrats are pressed by opposition movements, the contradictions in Washington’s traditional approach to the region will probably sharpen in two ways. There will be a growing gap between supporting regimes, who share our interests but not our values. And the divide between our interests and our policies will be more apparent — and increasingly challenged by Arab publics freed from the autocrat’s grasp.
Criticism of U.S. policies now tolerated by the autocratic regimes will grow; but the space available to Washington, on issues ranging from Israel to counter terrorism, will contract.
Meanwhile, the devil’s bargain that Washington cut with monarchs, princes and military elites is sure to come under greater pressure. In Bahrain, where Washington has important security interests, the regimes security forces have already cracked down — in direct challenge to an American call for restraint on demonstrators. Will we quietly try to ease King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa from power, as we did Mubarak?
And what happens in Egypt if the military doesn’t move as quickly as the opposition wants to reform. Is it ready to open up new political space and let go of its place of privilege in the economy?
Threatening to reduce or cut U.S. military aid is always an option. But it has a double-edged blade — again raising questions of how far we can push a military that remains key to the stability of Washington’s most important Arab ally.
We may be able to narrow the values-interests gap. But it could prove hard to bridge. We are dealing with political systems that must ultimately find their own balance. No matter what our own views of governance, we don’t have the power to impose it on others. And U.S. interests —naval access to Bahraini ports, selling the Saudis sophisticated military hardware to counter Iran, cooperating with Yemen on counter terrorism, maintaining the Egyptian-Israeli peace — will always limit how forceful and demanding we are prepared to be when it comes to pushing human rights and reform.
Second, our relationship with Israel and the range of policies that flow from it could increasingly be even more of a lightning rod in a newly liberated Arab world.
The Arab autocrats — particularly in Egypt and Jordan — tolerated and, at times, used our special relationship with Israel to their advantage. As opposition movements, both in and out of government, play a greater role in shaping their country’s policies, criticism of the U.S.-Israel policy—its approach on Gaza, Hamas and the defunct Arab-Israeli peace process — is only likely to increase.
Mubarak played the anti-Israel card plenty. But for 30 years, he also acquiesced in Israeli policies on settlements, Gaza and went along with any number of both sound and half-baked U.S. ideas on peacemaking. It’s remarkable how solid a supporter he was of the Palestinian Authority, how tough on Hamas and how willing he was to forge a relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Those days are gone. The treaty with Israel is likely to remain intact. But the new Egypt is likely to read the treaty’s fine print more carefully; and toughen policies on Israeli actions in Gaza and settlement activity.
Nor is our commitment to Israel likely to change. The US-Israeli relationship, driven by a powerful mix of shared value, security interests and domestic politics, may even grow closer.
As Arab criticism on the streets — and now in the corridors of power — intensifies, Washington’s tendency will be to support the Israelis and make them feel more, not less, secure. Promoting the peace process to build U.S. credibility may prove to be hard. Like investors in the stock market, Arab and Israeli leaders might be reluctant to make bold decisions in periods of great uncertainty and dislocation.
To imagine that Obama could substantially toughen U.S. policy toward Israel just to placate Arab opinion — without producing some breakthrough in Arab-Israeli peacemaking — strains credibility to the breaking point. Our likely veto of the current U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements is a case in point.
The possibility for the transformation of an Arab world frozen and sclerotic for decades is nothing short of remarkable. Arab democrats should rejoice. And we should too.
The long arc of history — now energized by powerful forces seeking political, social, and economic reform — may yet yield a more peaceful, democratic Middle East. But for now, and for the United States, this new Middle East may prove equally – if not more — troublesome than the old.
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