Obama has failed in the Middle East

In June 2009, President Barack Obama spoke at Cairo University addressing a broad range of Mideast problems and leaving the impression he would get to work on fixing them. It was not to be. In the view of Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution, “nowhere in Obama’s foreign policy has the gap been greater between promise and delivery than in the (peace process).”

The polls tell the story of how Arabs and Muslims reacted once their hopes for U.S. support of the Arab Spring were dashed. In the Arab world, Washington today has an approval rating of only about 20 per cent. In Egypt, Gallup reports approval dropped from 78 per cent in 2009 to 17 per cent in 2012. It has probably fallen still further with Egyptians accusing Washington of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, removed by the military on July 3.

In fact, the “Obama doctrine” never contemplated active U.S. involvement in the Arab world, or any other region. On the contrary, Washington fears involvement and is determined to avoid the U.S. becoming embroiled in conflicts which might require sending troops abroad. The last thing the Obamians want is “another war.” The Obama doctrine has no interest in looking beyond current crises, let alone in leading change. It is more interested in “stability” than in advancing the cause of reform and democratic development. “Stability” is code for supporting the status quo whatever it is, for caution in accepting change, and for “getting on the right side of history” once change seems inevitable. As Vali Nasr, a leading expert on Muslim affairs, has written, “The administration’s enthusiasm for democracy remained largely a matter of rhetoric.”

This has had tragic consequences. In 2011, the Middle East was on the cusp of one of the great historical transformations of our times, one as profound and hopeful for the future as the collapse of communism in 1989. There had been two previous Arab “awakenings” — in the 1920s and in the 1950s. But unlike these earlier nationalist uprisings, the Arab Spring was the product of spontaneous street-level protests against authoritarian regimes. It is impossible to tell what might have happened had the U.S., and its allies, engaged quickly and forcefully to help the countries of the region with their public institutions, security sectors, and integration into the global economy. Instead, the U.S. withheld or threatened to withhold existing aid “until the situation is clearer.”

U.S. hesitancy to involve itself was again in full view when Obama had to be publicly goaded by the leaders of France and Britain to support an intervention in Libya. Trying to spin the situation to U.S. advantage, an unnamed U.S. official called the U.S. involvement “leading from behind.”. When an even tougher situation arose in Syria when the Assad regime deployed its military to quell an “Arab Spring” uprising, Washington refused to consider any measure which would stop the slaughter of civilians. The death toll is now about 100,000.

There have been U.S. diplomatic failures on other fronts. On Afghanistan, Obama commissioned a “strategic review” which dealt almost entirely with military options. Neither Richard Holbrooke, a legendary diplomat serving as US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, nor Karl Eikenberry, a lieutenant-general serving as U.S. ambassador to Kabul, thought putting in more troops would make much difference — particularly if Washington didn’t pursue a parallel track to reach a political settlement. Obama nonetheless decided on a troop “surge” while also announcing the troops would be withdrawn within a year — undercutting any incentive for the Taliban to negotiate. Obama then announced a general withdrawal — effectively declaring that the war would be over in 2014 no matter what the Taliban thought. There were negotiations of a sort, but they were so mismanaged no progress of any kind has ever been reported. As Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal recently concluded, in Afghanistan the administration today finds itself with “no peace, no peace process, no ally, no leverage and no moral standing”.

Holbrooke favoured reconciliation in the largest sense, not just between the Karzai regime and the Taliban but also between Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran. It would be a difficult negotiation, but Holbrooke got the process started in July 2010 by getting Afghanistan and Pakistan to sign an agreement to open their borders to trade, the first treaty between the two countries in decades. Holbrooke received little support from the White House, however, and tragically died of a heart attack in December 2010.

Pakistan may be a large country (population: 180 million), armed with nuclear weapons, riven with ethnic and religious strife, and located in one of the most strategically important parts of the world. But Obama has left U.S. relations with Pakistan largely to the CIA and its preoccupation with preventing another terrorist attack on the U.S. The administration had an opportunity in 2011 to take a broader and ultimately more beneficial approach when then Senator John Kerry met secretly with Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to sketch out a path for improving relations between the two countries. But Washington never responded, instead berating Pakistan for its continued “tolerance” of terrorism. Kayani being Pakistani, Islamabad proceeded to close the supply routes into Afghanistan used by U.S. forces.

A heavy hand was certainly warranted with Iran, but Obama’s failure to balance sanctions with diplomacy predictably led nowhere. Iran under the ayatollahs is committed to defending its 1979 revolution, and no amount of economic sanctions will alter that. But combining sanctions with negotiations could reasonably be expected to convince Iran it might have something to gain by discussing a settlement of differences. To date, however, Washington has refused to negotiate with Tehran.

What this all amounts to is that adversaries across the globe have taken the measure of Obama. They have concluded that Washington has no stomach for diplomacy which might have to be backed up with military might and they have lost their fear of paying a price if they oppose the United States. This calculus affects the entire international agenda and presents an enormous obstacle to international peace and security. U.S. failures of diplomacy have left us all worse off.

Paul Chapin is the former director general for international security at the Department of Foreign Affairs and is currently a director at the Atlantic Council of Canada. The first part of this two-part series appeared on July 15.