U.S. Middle East Policy In Crisis.Tunisia, Egypt, Who's
Next?

By Rob Prince
blog
January 28, 2011

http://robertjprince.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/u-s-middle-east-policy-in-crisis/

It is not just the governments of different Arab
countries that are in crisis as the media would have us
believe. U.S. and European Middle East Policy is also
suffering from the events. For Washington, London,
Paris and Berlin, the current upsurge of regionwide
protests in the Middle East is something between a
setback and a debacle, the extent of which remains to
be seen.

And right now the Obama Administration is scrambling to
scratch together a policy to keep up with events, that
change daily.

Protests that began in Tunisia with the immolation of
Mohammed Bouazizi, a university graduate reduced to
selling fruit and vegetables in Tunisia's interior city
of Sidi Bouzid, have now spread like wildfire
throughout the Middle East.

As I write:

- demonstrations are taking place for the third
consecutive Friday in Jordan demanding the prime
minister, Samir Rafai to step down; a slogan emerging
from the street is `Rafai go away; prices are on fire
and so are the Jordanians in Yemen's capitol, Sana'a, 
for the second time in a week thousands are protesting 
against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, demanding an end 
to his rule of three
decades

- and in Egypt, the government of Hosni Mubarek has
called out the army to quell angry demonstrations that
the NY Times describes in a headline as `a fury that
has smoldered beneath the surface for decades. Building
on the unprecedented Tunisian protest movement,
Egyptians are calling for Mubarek's removal from power;
they are also opposed to his son taking over the
presidency in his stead. Some news reports suggest that
already thousands of people have been arrested

 In Algeria and Libya protests erupted targeting
socio-economic conditions - promises for public housing
made a long time ago There were even protests in Saudi
Arabia against the presence of deposed Tunisian
president Zine Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi

Obama Rides.and tries to shape the democratic wave

In the past few days, U.S. President Barack Obama has
made several statements praising the Tunisian
democratic upsurge, including a few sentences in his
state of the union message, giving the impression that
the protests are in line with calls for greater
democratization throughout the region made over the
past ten years from different U.S. administrations.

Tonight (Friday, January 28), he continued along these
lines making remarks suggesting that the U.S. supports
the democratic wave and making mild criticisms of
Egypt's president Hosni Mubarek.

But one senses an American malaise and the mood in
Washington is far from joyous as this `democratic wave'
extends throughout the region. Whatever Obama's public
pronouncements, under the surface, it is not just
Middle Eastern geriatric authoritarian regional leaders
who are nervous, - nay, besides themselves - but policy
makers in Washington DC as well.

Tunisia, Egypt, a setback for U.S. foreign policy

While many here in the United States greeted Obama's
blessing of the Tunisian events as evidence of the
administration's backing for democratic change,
actually, the Tunisian protests represent nothing short
of a set back for U.S. foreign security and economic
policy. Once again,as in Iran in 1979, U.S. policy
makers have been caught off guard, comple tely unaware
of how this crisis developed, or how to address it. It
is both an intelligence and policy failure of the
greatest magnitude.

His Tunisia remarks could be interpreted as little more
than Obama's Mayaguez speech, a form of  `damage
control', his attempt to spin economic and political
rejection of U.S. policies into some kind of victory.
Facing defeat, declare victory and move on as fast as
possible. Blame it on our geriatric Middle East allies
rather than on policies that emanate from Washington.
One notes, to date, very little sense of self criticism
of Washington's partial responsibility for the current
mess.

What is it in U.S. foreign policy that is being
rejected from Tunis to San'aa?

    - Economically, the whole region is rejecting the
    results of nearly 30 years of U.S. supported World
    Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs that have
    not produced growth but social polarization,
    growing impoverishment, bankruptcy of domestic
    economic enterprises and now higher prices for
    basic goods. It was rather amusing and pathetic to
    see both Ben Ali in Tunisia and now Mubarek in
    Egypt offering their people `reverse structural
    adjustment policies' (re-instituting subsidies on
    basic foods, government jobs programs) in an effort
    to retain power

    - While singing democracy's song, U.S. policy in
    the Middle East as in fact supported authoritarian
    regimes, autocracy and has done so consistently
    since World War II. It is only changing gears now,
    ever so gingerly, due to unprecedented mass
    pressure from below, that it has always essentially
    ignored or downplayed.

    - The United States has long opposed all
    manifestations of Arab Nationalism, which it first
    mistakenly interpreted as "pro-Communist" and now
    confuses with radical Islamic fundamentalism

    - Because its analysis of the crisis in the region
    is off base - exaggerating the breath of Islamic
    fundamentalism, the United States did not see or
    appreciate either the scope or nature of the crisis
    until Washington got hit square in the face with it

    - The United States anticipated an Islamic
    fundamentalist led uprising that would call for the
    institution of shari'a. This Washington was
    preparing to crush with the aid of the same local
    allies it is now criticizing and abandoning left
    and right. Instead it is facing essentially secular
    movements against high unemployment, inflation,
    corruption and repression.

    - The United States has ignored, almost completely,
    or written off  as irrelevant those few critical
    voices here in the United States and elsewhere who
    `saw what was coming' and now Washington is paying
    the price.

Real Change or Make Up On A Corpse?

Obama's support for the democratic upsurge cannot wipe
away with yet another fine speech that has no teeth 65
years of a policy that went in the opposite direction
and that contributed greatly to the crisis that has
exploded in its face.

The path now taken appears to one of damage control.
Obama has decided simply to face reality - to ride the 
democratic wave sweeping the region but at the same time 
try to maintain U.S. strategic and economic interests in
the region to the degree possible. Change might be in the
offing, but perhaps the changes can be tailored to suit
U.S. policy? That appears to be the approach taken in
Tunisia, and it seems also now in Egypt.

But is it supporting the kind of deep-going needed
changes that can lead to both greater development and
more democracy.or rather is simply an exercise of
putting make up on the corpse that has been 65 years of
post World War II foreign policy?

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