Washington's Problem in the Middle East: Policy,
Not Personality

     Should President Obama hold Saudi Arabia's 
     King Abdullah's hand like George W. Bush did?

By Carl Bloice
Foreign Policy in Focus
September 28, 2012

http://www.fpif.org/blog/washingtons_problem_in_the_middle_east_policy_not_personality

A reference to "personal" relationship appears five
times in the headline story "In Arab Spring, Obama Finds
a Sharp Test" by Helene Cooper and Robert Worth in the
September 25 edition of the New York Times and there is
an additional reference to the President's alleged
"impersonal style." It seems, the report says, that much
of the quandary the U.S. finds itself in the Middle East
derives from the fact that Obama "has not built many
personal relationships with foreign leaders." One piece
of evidence cited is that he was not on good enough
terms with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Reading all this, my mind quickly went back to late
April 2005 when the Times reported, "Mr. Bush even held
the crown prince's hand, a traditional Saudi sign of
friendship, as he guided Abdullah up the steps through a
bed of bluebonnets to his office, the very picture of
Saudi-American interdependence."

The Cooper-Worth story cites an unnamed U.S. diplomat in
Bahrain as saying that had Obama cultivated a closer
relationship with the Saudi monarch "he might have
bought time for negotiations" between the Bahraini
authorities and the opposition. "Instead, the Saudis
gave virtually no warning when their forces rolled
across the causeway linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain,
and the ensuing crackdown destroyed all hopes for a
peaceful resolution."

I suspect the word "virtually" is important here because
Washington was warned in advance by Riyadh. In any case,
if U.S. intelligence agencies remained unaware as the
Saudis rounded up troops from other Gulf monarchies for
the invasion of Bahrain, their powers of observation are
woefully inadequate.

Can the success of the Saudis and their Bahrain cohorts
and much of the problems that have arisen in the region
be even remotely traced to Obama's alleged "character
trait" and "impersonal style"? A dubious proposition at
best. There is, however, another matter the Cooper-Worth
history reveals that is of great importance: the
inadequacies of major media reporting while events like
the brutal crackdown in the gulf was transpiring.

"On March 14, White House officials awoke to a nasty
surprise: the Saudis had led a military incursion into
Bahrain, followed by a crackdown in which the security
forces cleared Pearl Square in the capital, Manama, by
force," wrote Cooper-Worth. Sure. "The moves were widely
condemned, but Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton offered only
veiled criticisms, calling for 'calm and restraint on
all sides' and 'political dialogue'," they continued.

"The reasons for Mr. Obama's reticence were clear:
Bahrain sits just off the Saudi coast, and the Saudis
were never going to allow a sudden flowering of
democracy next door, especially in light of the island's
sectarian makeup," wrote Cooper-Worth. "Bahrain's people
are mostly Shiite, and they have long been seen as a
cat's paw for Iranian influence by the Sunni rulers of
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In addition, the United States
maintains a naval base in Bahrain that is seen as a
bulwark against Iran, crucial for maintaining the flow
of oil from the region."

"We realized that the possibility of anything happening
in Saudi Arabia was one that couldn't become a reality,"
William M. Daley, President Obama's chief of staff at
the time," told the Times reporters. "For the global
economy, this couldn't happen. Yes, it was treated
differently from Egypt. It was a different situation."

The problem is that neither the Times nor any of the
other Western mass media told the story that way at the
time. Why? Go back to the story about the hand- holding
stroll through the garden at Bush's Texas address.

The April 25, Times Story by Richard Stevenson noted
that while many things were discussed at the Crawford
ranch, "the focus was on oil prices."

"Officials from both sides emerged from the meeting to
say there was agreement on the value of Saudi Arabia's
signaling to global markets that it would push down
prices over the long run as demand for energy
increased," the report said. "American officials said
they hoped the Saudi policy might put immediate downward
pressure on oil prices, even though the expansion plan
has been public for weeks."

"The crown prince arrived at the Bush ranch late Monday
morning from Dallas, where he had met Sunday with Vice
President Dick Cheney, who was briefed on the Saudi
production plan," read  the Times story. "Reflecting the
importance of the meeting to the administration, Mr.
Bush was joined for the meeting here by Mr. Cheney;
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Mr. Hadley; Andrew
H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; and Fran
Townsend, the White House's homeland security adviser."

What the Saudis got or requested in return for the
never-stated-explicit promise to increase oil production
is unclear but the report said "the two sides cited
progress on a variety of fronts" and "Saudi officials
said only technicalities remained in negotiating a trade
deal with the United States, a big step toward Saudi
Arabia's goal of joining the World Trade Organization.
The two governments agreed to work toward making it
easier for Saudi students and military officers to study
and train in the United States."

Saudi Arabia became a full WTO member December 11, 2005.

Unnamed Arab officials told Cooper and Worth that Obama
is "a cool, cerebral man who discounts the importance of
personal chemistry in politics." "You can't fix these
problems by remote control," said one Arab diplomat with
long experience in Washington. "He doesn't have friends
who are world leaders. He doesn't believe in patting
anybody on the back, nicknames."

More likely what they really meant is that Obama doesn't
get it on too well with despots. He seems to have hit it
off quite well with the likes of Brazilian President
Luiz Inácio da Silva and German Chancellor Angela
Merkel.

As the UN General Assembly session was getting underway,
Cooper and Worth wrote, "In many ways, Mr. Obama's
remarks at the State Department two weeks ago - and the
ones he will make before the General Assembly on Tuesday
morning, when he addresses the anti-American protests -
reflected hard lessons the president had learned over
almost two years of political turmoil in the Arab world:
bold words and support for democratic aspirations are
not enough to engender good will in this region,
especially not when hampered by America's own national
security interests."

Or the price of oil.

For that U.S. Presidents have for decades shown a
willingness to hold hands with just about anyone.

President Obama is no anti-imperialist. And our
country's standing and reputation in the international
community is being ill-served by the continuing drone
attacks that take the lives of innocent women, men and
children. The same can be said for framing the one-sided
framing of the Israel-Palestine conflict the way the
President did in his UN address September 25. Ditto for
the continued suggestion that tyranny should be met with
stern outside interference in Libya or Syria but not
Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The cause of Washington's
problems in the Islamic world is not personality but
policy. ____________

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating
Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for
Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black
Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

___________________________________________

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