Adrift on the Nile
By BILL KELLER, NYT
IN May 2011, when the promise of the Arab Spring was still fresh and exhilarating, President Obama went to the State Department to proclaim an important reorientation of American policy in the Middle East. For decades America had defined its interests in utilitarian terms: regional stability, countering terrorism and nuclear proliferation (and, in the cold war years, Soviet influence), defending Israel’s security, assuring the free flow of oil and other commerce. That often meant alliances of convenience with brutal authoritarians.
“But the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore,” the president said. The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya had affirmed “that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable.” Without renouncing our commitment to those old interests, the president embraced a supplementary set of “core principles”: supporting universal rights, encouraging political and economic reforms, opposing violence and oppression.
“Our support for these principles is not a secondary interest,” he insisted. “Today I want to make it clear that it is a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.”
In the excruciating test that Egypt has become, the president has largely failed to live up to his own eloquently articulated standard. In the two years since his speech — and most shamefully in the eight weeks since the army’s coup — America has seemed not just cautious (caution is good) but timid and indecisive, reactive and shortsighted, stranded between our professed commitment to change and our fear of chaos. One of the administration’s most acute critics, Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, goes so far as to suggest that United States policy is, whether by design or inertia, coming full circle: back to a pre-Arab Spring, Islamophobic, order-at-all-costs policy that puts us in the cynical company of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Is it any wonder that the generals in Egypt feel they can get away with murder — or, for that matter, that Syria’s Assad thinks he can call our bluff and poison his people with impunity?
(More here.)
IN May 2011, when the promise of the Arab Spring was still fresh and exhilarating, President Obama went to the State Department to proclaim an important reorientation of American policy in the Middle East. For decades America had defined its interests in utilitarian terms: regional stability, countering terrorism and nuclear proliferation (and, in the cold war years, Soviet influence), defending Israel’s security, assuring the free flow of oil and other commerce. That often meant alliances of convenience with brutal authoritarians.
“But the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore,” the president said. The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya had affirmed “that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable.” Without renouncing our commitment to those old interests, the president embraced a supplementary set of “core principles”: supporting universal rights, encouraging political and economic reforms, opposing violence and oppression.
“Our support for these principles is not a secondary interest,” he insisted. “Today I want to make it clear that it is a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.”
In the excruciating test that Egypt has become, the president has largely failed to live up to his own eloquently articulated standard. In the two years since his speech — and most shamefully in the eight weeks since the army’s coup — America has seemed not just cautious (caution is good) but timid and indecisive, reactive and shortsighted, stranded between our professed commitment to change and our fear of chaos. One of the administration’s most acute critics, Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, goes so far as to suggest that United States policy is, whether by design or inertia, coming full circle: back to a pre-Arab Spring, Islamophobic, order-at-all-costs policy that puts us in the cynical company of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Is it any wonder that the generals in Egypt feel they can get away with murder — or, for that matter, that Syria’s Assad thinks he can call our bluff and poison his people with impunity?
(More here.)
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