America’s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East

Pankaj Mishra, 09/23/12

THE murder of four Americans in Libya and mob assaults on the United States’ embassies across the Muslim world this month have reminded many of 1979, when radical Islamists seized the American mission in Tehran. There, too, extremists running wild after the fall of a pro-American tyrant had found a cheap way of empowering themselves.

But the obsession with radical Islam misses a more meaningful analogy for the current state of siege in the Middle East and Afghanistan: the helicopters hovering above the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975 as North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the city.

That hasty departure ended America’s long and costly involvement in Indochina, which, like the Middle East today, the United States had inherited from defunct European empires. Of course, Southeast Asia had no natural resources to tempt the United States and no ally like Israel to defend. But it appeared to be at the front line of the worldwide battle against Communism, and American policy makers had unsuccessfully tried both proxy despots and military firepower to make the locals advance their strategic interests.

The violent protests provoked by the film “Innocence of Muslims” will soon subside, and American embassies will return to normal business. But the symbolic import of the violence, which included a Taliban assault on one of the most highly secured American bases in Afghanistan, is unmistakable. The drama of waning American power is being re-enacted in the Middle East and South Asia after two futile wars and the collapse or weakening of pro-American regimes.

In Afghanistan, local soldiers and policemen have killed their Western trainers, and demonstrations have erupted there and in Pakistan against American drone strikes and reported desecrations of the Koran. Amazingly, this surge in historically rooted hatred and distrust of powerful Western invaders, meddlers and remote controllers has come yet again as a shock to many American policy makers and commentators, who have promptly retreated into a lazy “they hate our freedoms” narrative.

It is as though the United States, lulled by such ideological foils as Nazism and Communism into an exalted notion of its moral power and mission, missed the central event of the 20th century: the steady, and often violent, political awakening of peoples who had been exposed for decades to the sharp edges of Western power. This strange oversight explains why American policy makers kept missing their chances for peaceful post-imperial settlements in Asia.

As early as 1919, Ho Chi Minh, dressed in a morning suit and armed with quotations from the Declaration of Independence, had tried to petition President Woodrow Wilson for an end to French rule over Indochina. Ho did not get anywhere with Wilson. Indian, Egyptian, Iranian and Turkish nationalists hoping for the liberal internationalist president to promulgate a new “morality” in global affairs were similarly disappointed.

None of these anti-imperialists would have bothered if they had known that Wilson, a Southerner fond of jokes about “darkies,” believed in maintaining “white civilization and its domination over the world.” Franklin D. Roosevelt was only slightly more conciliatory when, in 1940, he proposed mollifying dispossessed Palestinian Arabs with a “little baksheesh.”

Roosevelt changed his mind after meeting the Saudi leader Ibn Saud and learning of oil’s importance to the postwar American economy. But the cold war, and America’s obsession with the chimera of monolithic Communism, again obscured the unstoppable momentum of decolonization, which was fueled by an intense desire among humiliated peoples for equality and dignity in a world controlled by a small minority of white men.

Ho Chi Minh’s post-World War II appeals for assistance to another American president -- Harry S. Truman -- again went unanswered; and Ho, who had worked with American intelligence agents during the war, was ostracized as a dangerous Communist. But many people in Asia saw that it was only a matter of time before the Vietnamese ended foreign domination of their country.

For the world had entered a new “revolutionary age,” as the American critic Irving Howe wrote in 1954, in which the intense longing for change among millions of politicized people in Asia was the dominant force. “Whoever gains control of them,” Howe warned, “whether in legitimate or distorted forms, will triumph.” This mass longing for political transformation was repressed longer by cold war despotism in the Arab world; it has now exploded, profoundly damaging America’s ability to dictate events there.

Given its long history of complicity with dictators in the region, from the shah of Iran to Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak, the United States faces a huge deficit of trust. The belief that this deep-seated suspicion can be overcome by a few soothing presidential speeches betrays only more condescending ignorance of the so-called Arab mind, which until recently was believed to be receptive only to brute force.

It is not just extremist Salafis who think Americans always have malevolent intentions: the Egyptian anti-Islamist demonstrators who pelted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s motorcade in Alexandria with rotten eggs in July were convinced that America was making shady deals with the Muslim Brotherhood. And few people in the Muslim world have missed the Israeli prime minister’s blatant manipulation of American politics for the sake of a pre-emptive assault on Iran.

There is little doubt that years of disorder lie ahead in the Middle East as different factions try to gain control. The murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Libya, the one American success story of the Arab Spring, is an early sign of the chaos to come; it also points to the unpredictable consequences likely to follow any Western intervention in Syria -- or Iran.

As in Southeast Asia in 1975, the limits of both American firepower and diplomacy have been exposed. Financial leverage, or baksheesh, can work only up to a point with leaders struggling to control the bewilderingly diverse and ferocious energies unleashed by the Arab Spring.

Although it’s politically unpalatable to mention it during an election campaign, the case for a strategic American retreat from the Middle East and Afghanistan has rarely been more compelling. It’s especially strong as growing energy independence reduces America’s burden for policing the region, and its supposed ally, Israel, shows alarming signs of turning into a loose cannon.

All will not be lost if America scales back its politically volatile presence in the Muslim world. It could one day return, as it has with its former enemy, Vietnam, to a relationship of mutually assured dignity. (Although the recent military buildup in the Pacific -- part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” -- hints at fresh overestimations of American power in that region.)

Republicans calling for President Obama to “grow” a “big stick” seem to think they live in the world of Teddy Roosevelt. Liberal internationalists arguing for even deeper American engagement with the Middle East inhabit a similar time warp; and both have an exaggerated idea of America’s financial clout after the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s.

It is the world’s newly ascendant nations and awakened peoples that will increasingly shape events in the post-Western era. America’s retrenchment is inevitable. The only question is whether it will be as protracted and violent as Europe’s mid-20th century retreat from a newly assertive Asia and Africa.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/opinion/americas-inevitable-retreat-from-the-middle-east.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

哼!

還在那裡做民主茉莉花的美夢? 要日本, 越南, 菲律賓強佔炎黃子孫的土地?

死一個大使, 使館被攻擊, 只是開始.

美國的頭痛, 還長遠的很!

Our revolution was civil and pluralistic

Rami G. Khouri, 08/25/12

Mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square and street battles in Syria form the dramatic heart of the uprisings and revolutions that define many Arab lands these days, but the soul and the brain of the Arab world to come are being shaped in the epic battles now taking place to write new constitutions.As has happened regularly since December 2010, we must look back to Tunisia and Egypt for insights into this critical realm. The lessons to date are enlightening and heartening, as we see these days from passionate debates about issues like the status of women, the role of journalists, and the place of Islam and religion in state institutions and public life.

The fine points of writing new constitutions are often tedious and just slightly more captivating than Law of the Sea deliberations. So it is surprising perhaps to see street demonstrations and much political passion in Egypt and Tunisia over elements of the constitutional process, whether the composition of the bodies drafting the constitutions or the actual texts being formulated. This is not so surprising, though, in view of the widespread demands for constitutional reform across the entire Arab world, even in countries where no significant street demonstrations have taken place.

One of the telltale signs of the high importance that Arabs attach to this process is that calls for changing or reforming governments across the region have always been coupled with demands for new constitutions. These are important to the citizenry because they spell out in concrete and unambiguous terms the equal rights of every citizen, and they provide enforcement and accountability mechanisms to make sure that those rights are actually practiced. Arab constitutions for the past century (in fact since the first modern Arab constitution was promulgated in 1861 in ... Tunisia) have all promised a full range of rights and freedoms; but these rights were never fully enforced, leaving it to security-minded governments and narrow ruling elites to monopolize power in a manner that deeply disenfranchised most citizens.

So it is important to note that beyond Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, where lifelong autocratic leaders and their elites are being replaced by more legitimate elected governments, countries like Jordan, Morocco and Oman have started tinkering with their mechanisms of power and rule, in response to populist demands for constitutional reform and more egalitarian and participatory governance systems. The changes are limited and often superficial, but they do reflect both the nature of the populist demands for constitutional changes and the reality that long-serving regimes must respond to those demands in some manner.

These struggles for constitutional consensus are the most important of the many other contests that comprise the ongoing Arab transformations from national and personal humiliation to the rebirth and legitimacy of the state and its governing institutions, such as street demonstrations, media debates or presidential and parliamentary elections. The critical aspects of these constitutional processes are the composition of the bodies that draft them, and the substantive content of the texts. Publics have been closely monitoring both of these dimensions, and weighing in with their opinions when they felt strongly about developments.

The reason I find these processes heartening is that they indicate the Arab publics’ commitments to something far more important than merely overthrowing heavy-handed dictators, which is their insistence on living in societies that are governed by the rule of law and that actually respect values of equality, social justice and dignity. These constitutional deliberations also address foundational values that comprise issues such as the role of religion, the equal inclusion of citizens of all faiths and ethnicities, or the relationship of Arabism to other indigenous non-Arab identities.

The Tunisian deliberations are the most advanced, and have recently provoked heated debate and some lively demonstrations on three particular issues: the Arab and Islamic identities of state and society (is Tunisia an Arab/Islamic state or something broader than that?), and the role and status of women (are they fully equal to men or are they a “complement” or “associate” of men, as the current draft states?). Similar debates in Egypt address the status of Christians and other minorities, or the extent to which the government can curtail press freedoms to criticize official conduct.

Constitutional expert Iyadh Ben Achour, who presided over Tunisia’s High Authority for the Achievement of the Revolution’s Objectives, reflected the sentiments of hundreds of millions of Arabs who follow these constitutional dynamics when he told the Tunisia-live.net website this week that “Our revolution was civil, liberal, and pluralistic, and so should be the constitution.”

That seems to be a widely held view across the Arab world, and we shall discover in the year ahead whether this sentiment is translated into constitutional fact.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR, Lebanon News.

The Realist Prism: Tracing the Roots of the Arab Spring

Nikolas Gvosdev, 08/24/12

For the past year and a half, the Arab Spring has convulsed the Middle East. It has resulted in the overthrow of four leaders who only two years before seemed destined to rule for life, plunged another country into a fratricidal civil war and placed even long-established monarchies under renewed political and economic stress.

What triggered this tsunami of political upheaval? And is it localized to the Arab world, or could it spread? It is no secret that authorities in Beijing and Moscow are playing close attention, attempting to ferret out any indications that a prerevolutionary situation may be building up in their own societies.

Many have cited new social media technology as a key driver of the revolutions. But these devices and the software that powers them are tools. Certainly, they helped to facilitate the uprisings -- allowing people to circumvent traditional filters used to control information and to be able to organize without having to always physical assemble -- but their mere presence was not the cause. For those in the West enamored with the prospect of Facebook revolutions, airdropping iPhones is not a democracy promotion strategy on the cheap.

Others pointed to the role of Al Jazeera in focusing attention on the uprisings; its coverage of the revolution in Tunisia, it is argued, helped to "seed" the Arab Spring in other countries of the region. A proximate cause, to be sure -- but it is also important to keep in mind that Al Jazeera has been broadcasting since 1996.

Indeed, political unrest has long simmered in the Arab world, sometimes even flaring up into open revolt, without producing the convulsions we have witnessed. Why should the Benghazi revolt have turned out any differently from other failed rebellions against Moammar Gadhafi that originated in eastern Libya over the years? Why didn't the Tahrir Square protests fizzle like earlier so-called Facebook protests that had taken place in Egypt?

Several things have changed, and it is important to look beyond the headlines to examine other root factors.

To begin with, in countries like Egypt and Libya, there were growing disputes about political succession prior to the outbreak of protests. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's efforts to install his son Gamal as his heir apparent aroused significant opposition from different quarters in the Egyptian power structure, especially the military. In Libya, factions had been developing around Saif al-Islam and Mutassim Gadhafi, rivals to succeed their father as leader of Libya -- and in turn, the elder Gadhafi played these factions off against each other. Elites throughout the region have been fracturing as long-established regimes begin to falter, and it was those divisions among elites that gave revolutionary uprisings a chance for success in 2011 that they had not enjoyed in previous years. Some of the defectors from Gadhafi's regime to the interim government had been associated with the more liberalizing groups that were previously associated with Saif al-Islam -- including Musa Kusa, the former foreign minister and head of Libya's external intelligence organization, who broke with the government after it decided to used armed force to repress protesters. The regimes that had fallen were not monolithic nor, at the end, were they particularly united.

Rising corruption also played a role. There comes a point at which the expected rapaciousness of a leader and his entourage reaches the breaking point. When times are good, some degree of corruption can be overlooked. But the economic crisis of the last several years did not spare these countries, especially not Egypt and Tunisia. Crony capitalism blocked opportunities for members of the middle class. As Leila Bouazizi, the sister of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor whose December 2010 self-immolation triggered the Arab Spring, commented, "Those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live." In addition, all sectors of society, but particularly the poor, have been hard hit by major increases in the price of basic staples. Indeed, many have concluded that it was the astronomical rise in food prices over the last several years -- not simply the prevalence of mobile phones -- that provided the impetus for protests in Egypt, Tunisia and other areas.

The economic crisis also changed the calculations of a growing number of young, educated people who do not see any opportunity for advancement. In particular, young educated people, who felt they had nothing more to lose, were willing not simply to protest but to sustain their opposition to the old regimes in the face of initial repression conducted by the security forces. They did not choose to go home after the first incidents of violence.

This is what makes the current situation in Russia, in the aftermath of the verdict handed down in the Pussy Riot case, so interesting. The two-year sentence seems designed, in part, to send a clear message to Russia's young business class. In recent months, Russia’s young entrepreneurs have been favorably inclined toward the opposition protest movements, with some even treating it as almost fashionable. The punk band’s jailing is a signal to reconsider that support: Would they want to sacrifice the lifestyle and opportunities that they have grown accustomed to in order to take active measures against the Putin government? But that calculation only works if there is a growing economy that promises opportunity, highlighting a possible trigger for unrest in countries defined by soft authoritarian forms of governance: Any economic slowdown could produce more political unrest.

But even in more democratic systems, there are signs of brittleness. The massive power outages that plunged much of India into darkness, the ongoing labor unrest in South Africa and the growing frustration in various European countries with austerity measures are all symptoms of possible problems that could produce protest movements. One striking factor -- from Russia to the United States -- is the erosion of trust by ordinary people that current governments and politicians are capable of finding solutions. So while the Arab Spring may be unique in that actual governments are being overthrown, it seems part and parcel of a larger global trend -- the "days of shaking" -- that will be confronting regimes both autocratic and democratic all around the world.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government. His weekly WPR column, The Realist Prism, appears every Friday.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12290/the-realist-prism-tracing-the-roots-of-the-arab-spring

The false romance of revolution

The arguments, as between order and disorder, may be more finely balanced than the all-or-nothing view of the Arab Spring

Mary Dejevsky, 08/26/11

As the uprising in Libya evolved into a revolution, with a little help from Paris and London, there was no doubt which side "we" were on. For politicians, pundits and, yes, journalists, the "rebels" were the good guys and Libya's regular army the bad guys. And why not? As at each stage of the Arab Spring, the forces of progress have been pitted against the forces of reaction; freedom against tyranny; light against dark.

But taking sides has not been limited to the Arab Spring. After the riots in English cities this month, BBC news bulletins opened with lurid footage of burning streets, accompanied by calls for tougher policing and fierce condemnation of the rioters. Invariably the very next item was a dispatch from Syria or Libya, couched in the language of crackdowns, hero-protesters and villain-regimes. This was rarely a comfortable juxtaposition.

Occasionally, some analyst or other would feel the need to explain why "their" mostly youthful "protesters" were so very different from "our" mostly youthful "rioters". You see, "theirs" were idealists fighting for a just cause, while "ours" were "mindless hooligans" who would not know an ideal if it hit them with the thwack of a police truncheon. "Theirs" were young people looking to create a better society; "ours" were over-indulged juveniles with not enough to do.

Yet there is another distinction that was largely ignored. In condemning England's urban rioters – even when we conceded that they might have legitimate grievances – we were approaching things from the perspective of the established power. We were the people with something to lose, whose streets had been trashed, whose homes, in the most egregious instances, had been invaded. It was our generally stable lives that were threatened by the failure of police to prevent "disorder". In Syria and Libya, as in Tunisia and Egypt, we contemplated events from the other side: we aspired to be revolutionaries, too.

But in all the countries swept by the fresh breezes of the Arab Spring, it is not only tyranny that is being challenged. Much, if not the whole, of the existing order is under threat. And that order comprises not just misguided demagogues – "deluded", as our Foreign Secretary described Colonel Gaddafi – self-serving careerists and the corrupt elite. It includes the likes of you and me: professional people, the middle class, and those who work for them – all those with a stake, however modest, in the status quo.

The only place where Western coverage showed any measure of hesitation or analytical shading was Bahrain, a state where Western countries, particularly Britain and the United States, had their own (mainly defence) interests in preserving the existing regime. Here, it was just about possible to decry the repression and the deaths, while hazarding that the regime's overthrow might be a step too far.

Something similar can be discerned, for similar reasons, in discussion of Jordan. But it is not just in these two countries where the arguments, as between order and disorder, may be more finely balanced than the all-or-nothing, black-or-white presentation of the Arab Spring – or the British riots – may suggest. The point at which people start to believe they have a greater interest in change than in the status quo is not always easy to define.

It is oh so tempting to romanticise revolution: the injustices are so obvious; the images of statues toppling and flags burning so dramatic; the rebels' readiness for martyrdom so glorious; the liberation of prisoners so inspiring; the euphoria of the crowds so infectious. Revolutions provide all this and more – so long as they are someone else's.

In the real world, there are few more truly terrifying experiences than a complete breakdown of law and order – as some of those who suffered during the riots in London and elsewhere will testify. And this was just a few hours in a relatively few locations in a country where no one will have doubted that the law would once again be laid down and order restored.

There could be no such confidence eight years ago in Baghdad, where "stuff" just "happened", just as there must be doubts in Libya today whether the transitional council, even after so much intensive planning, will be able to exert its authority the length and breadth of the land. There are so many disgruntled groups and so many firearms now on the loose.

Few revolutions are either brief or bloodless. Changes of regime are more often chaotic, ruthless and deeply unjust affairs. The meek rarely inherit the Earth – still less the well-read intelligentsia or the nicely-mannered bourgeoisie. Contemporary accounts of France in 1789 or Russia in 1917-18 offer little, beyond leaders' rhetoric, that is uplifting. Rather, they depict extreme violence, vicious settling of scores, and a great deal of acquisitive opportunism on the part of those you and I might call "mindless thugs".

When Libyan television described British rioters as "revolutionaries" fighting against "Cameron's mercenaries and brigades", it was ridiculed, and rightly. But one person's revolution may well be someone else's riot or criminal coup, with a good many shades of grey in between.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-dejevsky/mary-dejevsky-the-false-romance-of-revolution-2343912.html

Overhauling U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Leon Hadar, 11/02/11

The prevailing American narrative about the political upheaval in the Middle East maintains that the collapse of authoritarian regimes in the region would lead to a collision between democratic forces and Islamist movements and that the United States and its allies -- including Israel -- have an interest in ensuring that the former gain the upper hand in this power struggle.

But the changes emerging from the so-called Arab Spring go beyond a clash between pro-Western movements and Islamist groups. The shifting balance of power in the Middle East -- triggered in part by eroding American influence in the region -- is bringing to the fore realpolitik concerns that likely will overcome ideological considerations in the new Middle East. The Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange, the U.S. role in Libya’s civil war and the end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq all point in that direction.

Let’s begin with the prisoner exchange. The interesting thing about the exchange of one Israeli soldier for more than 1,000 jailed Palestinians was not that it happened, but that it happened now, when Islamist influence seems to be on the rise in Egypt.

Israeli leaders, with the support of most of the public and the elites, have been negotiating a deal along these lines for the last five years with Egyptian security officials playing the main role as mediator.

But following the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s pro-American in Egypt, the conventional wisdom in Cairo and Jerusalem was that the Israeli-Hamas negotiations would collapse. Pundits were predicting that the fall of a pro-American leader committed to the peace accords between Israel and Egypt would make it difficult for any new government to embrace policies perceived as beneficial to Israel.

In fact, anti-Israel rhetoric and demonstrations emanating from Tahrir Square and elsewhere -- coupled with the growing diplomatic strains between the ruling Israeli Likud government and Islamist Turkish leaders and the continuing military tensions between the Jewish state and the Ayatollahs in Tehran -- seemed to play directly into Israeli fears of being surrounded by a hostile Muslim entity.

Yet this nightmare scenario assumed that the Muslims in the Middle East -- Egyptians, Turks, Iranians and Saudis as well as multiple tribes, sects and ethic groups -- were going to form a unified political and military front to confront Israel. This scenario is based in part on real fears about the policies of Iran and Turkey and the rhetoric emanating from the Arab Street. But such fears have been amplified by Israeli ultra-nationalists and American neoconservatives with an agenda: They want to resist any serious challenge to the Israeli-Palestinian status quo and mobilize Israelis and their Washington supporters into new confrontations in the Middle East.

That the current Egyptian military leaders have decided to help the Israelis gain the release of Sergeant Gilad Shalit was clearly not a reflection of dormant pro-Israeli inclinations in Cairo. Neither was the freedom of the Palestinian prisoners a reflection of any support for the Palestinian cause. Like Anwar Sadat and Mubarak, these leaders operate based on what they consider Egyptian national interests. And those interests include preserving the peace agreement with Israel and avoiding a military conflict with that country for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, contrary to what some Americans seem to believe, it is not the Egyptian-Israeli treaty agreement of 1979 or the billions of dollars in U.S. economic and military assistance to Egypt that have induced the Egyptians to refrain from going to war with Israel. The 1979 accord reflected the reality that the evolving power balance led both Israel and Egypt to conclude that a war between them would be too costly and detrimental to their interests.

The global and regional developments since 1979 have strengthened the determination of both sides to maintain peace. Egypt, economically bankrupt and unable to feed and educate its own people, is certainly not positioned to pursue military confrontation with Israel.

Moreover, the rise in power and influence of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood makes it more likely that future governments in in Cairo will have an interest in co-opting Gaza Strip Hamas leaders, whose movement is a political offshoot of the Islamist party founded in Egypt in 1928.

In a way, Hamas may be evolving into a client (mini)state of a more Islamist-oriented Egypt. In that context, Egypt’s interest would be in providing Hamas with enough support to prevent it from coming under the influence of the more radical players in the region, such as Iran. At the same time, driven by the kind of calculus that affects any relationship between leading powers and client states, Cairo would need to ensure that Hamas’s policies would not draw Egypt into a military conflict with Israel. Helping negotiate the Hamas-Israel deal fits nicely into such a strategy. It encourages Hamas to start reorienting its foreign policy from Syria, and by extension Iran, and more towards Egypt. That could create conditions for more pragmatic deals between Israel and Hamas, negotiated with Egyptian assistance. These wouldn’t likely bring about a peace accord between the two sides but might allow the ministate in the Gaza Strip to become an Egyptian protectorate of sorts that could coexist with Israel for some time to come.

That Turkey has also played an active role in negotiating the Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange is also an encouraging sign, notwithstanding the stresses in the relationship between Ankara and Jerusalem. The Turks have no interest in exacerbating tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors because that could destabilize the Middle East, Turkey’s new diplomatic and economic frontier.

It’s probably not realistic to expect the emergence of a diplomatic and military axis between Egypt and Turkey that would join with Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms to counter the influence of Iran and its satellites in Iraq and Lebanon and to manage the power transition in Syria. Turkey and Iran, after all, share common interests in curbing Kurdish irredentism inside their borders. Unlike the Saudis and the Israelis, Turkey wants to avoid a military confrontation between the United States and Iran.

But the reemergence of new cooperative and competing centers of power in the Middle East -- Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia -- provide the United States, the European Union (EU) and Israel with new strategic opportunities. Instead of wasting time and resources on fantastical freedom agendas and countering the imaginary or real influence of political Islam, a more effective policy would be to hedge one’s strategic bets by forming ad hoc partnerships with these players to advance concrete interests.

Hence, in the aftermath of the agreement with Hamas, Israel could improve its relationship with Cairo and Ankara and perhaps even create the conditions for some sort of coexistence with Hamas-ruled Gaza. This could, not coincidentally, put more diplomatic pressure on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Indeed, the Israeli-Egyptian-Turkish collaboration that led to the prisoner exchange is one example of such a creative strategic approach that seeks new opportunities rather than fixating on old threats.

What this suggests for the United States is that there may be cost-effective ways of securing American interests in the Middle East at a time of political change there and of diminishing American military and economic resources. Libya offers a better approach than Iraq. Rather than pursuing hegemonic and ideologically driven policies, the United States could provide incentives for other players to handle some of the heavy lifting.

Indeed, the Iraq War could provide a case study of how not to pursue U.S. interest in the Middle East. President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers disregarded the ethnic and sectarian realities in Iraq and the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Thus they helped shift power in Iraq from the Arab-Sunnis to the Arab-Shiites, all the while strengthening Iran.

That policy only harmed U.S. interests while failing to advance democratic values in Iraq, and it antagonized regional partners (Saudi Arabia; Turkey) as well as global players with interests to protect. The EU, for example, might have provided military and financial support to a more modest project aimed at containing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In Libya, on the other hand, it was the European powers that took the military lead in bringing about regime change. America encouraged Britain and France to do so while it accepted a supporting military role.

The Obama administration’s policy in Libya, coupled with the announcement on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by year’s end, may not signal that Washington is about to embrace a grand new strategy for the Middle East. But it is does suggest it is beginning to adapt its policies to the changing balance of power in the region.

Leon Hadar, a Washington-based journalist and global affairs analyst, is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/overhauling-us-policy-the-middle-east-6087

Arab Spring or Islamist Surge?

Benny Morris, 11/03/11

Rioting in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011 unleashed a tidal wave of unrest across the Arab world that was soon designated the "Arab Spring.” Enthusiasts in the West hailed a new birth of freedom for a giant slice of humanity that has been living in despotic darkness for centuries. But historians in fifty or a hundred years may well point to the 1979 events in Teheran -- the Islamist revolution that toppled the Shah -- as the real trigger of this so-called "spring" (which is looking more and more like a deep, forbidding winter). And the Islamist Hamas victory in the Palestinian general elections of 2006 and that organization's armed takeover of the Gaza Strip the following year probably signified further milestones on the same path.

For, if nothing else, the past weeks' developments have driven home one message: That the main result of the "Arab Spring" will be -- at least in the short and medium terms, and, I fear, in the long-term as well -- an accelerated Islamization of the Arab world. In the Mashreq -- the eastern Arab lands, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq -- the jury may still be out (though recent events in Palestine and Jordan are not encouraging). But in the Maghreb -- the western Arab lands, from Egypt to the Atlantic coast -- the direction of development is crystal clear.

In Tunisia the Islamist al-Nahda (Ennahda) Party won a clear victory in the country's first free elections, winning some 90 out of 217 seats in the special assembly which in the coming months is to chart the country's political future. Speculation about whether the party is genuinely "moderate" Islamist -- as its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, insists -- or fundamentally intent on imposing sharia religious law over Tunisia through a process of creeping Islamisation a la the Gaza Strip and Turkey is immaterial. The Islamists won, hands down and against all initial expectations -- and in a country that was thought to be the most secular and "Western" in the Arab world. Freedom of thought and religious freedom are not exactly foundations of Islamist thinking, and whether Tunisian "democracy" will survive this election is anyone's guess.

To the east, in the tribal wreckage that is Libya, the Islamist factions appear to be the major force emerging from the demise of the Qaddafi regime. In the coming weeks and months we are likely to see movement toward elections that will hammer down another Islamist victory.

And much the same appears to be emerging from the far more significant upheaval in Libya's eastern neighbor, Egypt, with its 90 million inhabitants -- the deomographic, cultural and political center of the Arab world and its weather vane. The recent crackdown, by a Muslim mob and then the ruling military, against Coptic Christian demonstrators (protesting the destruction of a church) was only, I fear, a taste of things to come. All opinion polls predict that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood -- which has long sought the imposition of strict sharia law and Israel's destruction -- will emerge from next month's parliamentary elections as the country's strongest political party, perhaps even with an outright majority. An Islamist may well win the presidential elections that are scheduled to follow, if the army allows them to go forward.

And the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip has become, following Mubarak’s fall, a lawless, Islamist-dominated territory. Egyptian writ runs (barely) only in the northeastern (El Arish-Rafah) and southeastern (Sharm a-Sheikh) fringes. The peninsula's interior is in the grip of Islamists and bedouin gunmen and smugglers and has become a major staging post for Iranian arms smuggling into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

For months now the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel (and Jordan) has been cut, the military unable to prevent continued incidents of Islamist-beduin sabotage. The severance of the gas export -- in effect, a continuing Egyptian violation of an international commercial agreement -- has meant that Israel has had to dole out hundreds of millions of additional dollars for liquid fuel to run its electricity grid.

And last week witnessed a further, violent aftereffect of the "Arab Spring" -- three Grad rockets (advanced Katyushas), launched from the Gaza Strip, landed 20-25 miles away in open fields outside the central Israeli cities of Ashdod and Rehovot. There were no casualties and air force jets hit what Israel called "terrorist" targets in the strip in retaliation (apparently also causing no casualties).

But the direction is clear. After the Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange, the region may be heading toward increased violence. If so, such violence would be part and parcel of the unfolding Islamisation of the region -- both in terms of the anti-Zionist Islamist ethos and attendant concrete developments on the ground, one of which is the giant arms smuggling operations that have followed the downfall of Gaddafi. Thus, the "Arab Spring" has brought both Islamization and chaos (and the Islamization will only benefit from this transitional chaos). Ordinary smugglers have collaborated with Islamists to plunder Qaddafi's armories, and the Middle East's clandestine arms bazaars are awash with Grads and relatively sophisticated shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles. Israeli intelligence says that many of these weapons have recently made their way into the Gaza Strip via the Sinai Peninsula. One anti-aircraft missile was fired at an Israeli helicopter in a recent skirmish on the Sinai-Israel border.

All these developments suggest an accelerating trend in the Middle East that is far different rom what many Western idealists anticipated when they coined the term “Arab Spring.” It’s a trend that could severely alter Muslim-Western relations across the board.

Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His most recent book is One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009).

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/arab-spring-or-islamist-surge-6108