In the Greater Middle East — that vast stretch of territory from the Maghreb to Pakistan – the once-mighty United States has been exposed as a paper tiger. It has failed to have the slightest impact on the tidal wave of popular protest that has engulfed the region.
This is one of the most striking features of the political tsunami that has already destroyed two Arab regimes and is shaking the foundations of several others.
America’s European allies have watched with growing anxiety Washington’s irrelevance in the face of the raw expression of ‘people power’ in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria — and who knows where next?
In recent days, in what looked like a vain attempt to catch up with events, Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made several public comments, seeming at times to encourage the protesters and at others to chide them. But no one took the slightest notice. They would have been well advised to keep silent.
Nothing has so vividly illustrated the decline of American power. The United States may still be the world’s greatest economic and military power but, in country after country, whether friend or foe, America’s ‘hard power’ is being challenged and its ‘soft power’ derided.
European leaders are busy taking note. But what are they to do? Is there any way they can help correct America’s mistakes or fill the current vacuum? The European Union has so far failed to grow into a coherent political power, but some individual leaders in major European countries are waking up to the challenge posed by American impotence.
Quite apart from the storm blowing through Arab societies, two related problems are of special concern. The first is Afghanistan, where the United States seems to be leading its allies into a bloody morass. Victory in the ten-year war seems far out of reach. In neighbouring Pakistan, hostility to the United States is at fever pitch.
Should a contact group of European nations propose to conduct an urgent negotiation with the Taliban, even with Mullah Omar himself? It may be the only way for the international coalition to escape a humiliating defeat.
The second burning problem is the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process. For decades, the United States monopolized the process on the grounds that it alone had the necessary influence with both sides. The Europeans agreed to play second-fiddle. They funded the hapless Palestinians but were denied any political input into the negotiations.
Today, America’s abject failure can no longer be disguised. As a result, there is a growing realisation that Europe must act, if only to protect itself. If Israel’s extremist government proceeds with its ‘Greater Israel’ agenda; if its dispossession of the Palestinians continues unchecked; if the two-state solution is truly dead; then, sooner or later, Arab and Islamic rage will erupt. Violence, in one form or another, is bound to overspill into the Western world. The precedents are there for all to see.
These are only the most obvious of America’s foreign policy failures. In Egypt, a revolution has overturned thirty years of American diplomacy. Lavish U.S. subsidies, paid to the Egyptian military, were intended to protect Israel by keeping Cairo out of the Arab mainstream. This outworn strategy may no longer work. In Tunisia, an American-backed ‘kleptocrat’ has been sent packing. In Yemen, Bahrain and Algeria, pro-American regimes are facing a swelling movement demanding change. The Libyan regime, recently reconciled with Washington, is proving to be the most blood-thirsty in slaughtering its own people.
In Lebanon, America’s allies have been routed in a constitutional process which has brought a Hizbullah-backed prime minister to power — to the dismay of the United States and its Israeli ally. In Iraq, America’s huge investment in men and treasure has failed to win it any lasting influence. On the contrary, the Iraq war — a criminal enterprise launched on the basis of fraudulent intelligence, largely fabricated by pro-Israeli neocons — has brought to power in Baghdad a Shia-dominated regime with close ties to Iran — an unforeseen outcome hardly to the liking of the United States.
Although Iran, too, has been profoundly unsettled by a surge of ‘people power’, it has remained defiant and unbowed in the face of American sanctions and the ever-present threat of military attack, either by Israel or by the U.S. itself.
Israel, America’s closest ally, has provided one of the most striking examples of the paralysis of American power. At the UN Security Council last Friday, the United States vetoed a draft Resolution, sponsored by no fewer than 120 countries, which proposed to condemn Israel’s West Bank settlements as illegal. With the sole exception of the United States, all the 14 other Council members voted in favour.
Rarely was there a more blatant illustration of the capture of American decision-making by pro-Israeli forces — whose influence extends, not only in the Congress, in the various lobbies, think-tanks and media outlets, but inside the U.S. administration itself.
Some months ago, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu felt able to reject Obama’s appeal to freeze West Bank settlements. Last Friday at the Security Council, he was able to secure America’s protection for Israel’s illegal practices. Obama’s humiliation was complete. He had set his heart on resolving the Arab-Israel conflict but was defeated by a small Mediterranean country of some seven million people — which is, moreover, totally dependent on American aid and support.
Will a group of European states now produce its own blueprint for a settlement – as Obama has so far failed to do? Will it dare warn Israel that it might risk a boycott, and even the exclusion of its exports from European markets, if it continues to trample on Palestinian rights?
Ideas of this sort are beginning to circulate in some European circles, where there is growing impatience with Israeli intransigence. Some would like to see Britain take the lead of such a movement, if only to redeem the catastrophic legacy of the Blair era, when Britain slavishly followed former US President George W. Bush and Washington’s neocons in making war on Iraq. There seems to be a move afoot for the UK to reassert its independent voice in foreign affairs.
Miracles, however, should not be expected. Prime Minister David Cameron is deeply preoccupied with the task of rescuing Britain from an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. Foreign Minister William Hague may not have the knowledge or the stuffing for such a bold move.
What is beyond dispute, however, is that European leaders are watching the unfolding Middle East drama with great anxiety. What will the emerging political landscape look like? What if the immense and angry energy of the Arab peoples were channelled into the Arab-Israeli conflict? Who could deal with an intifada on such a region-wide scale? Might it not be wise to act before the storm breaks?
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 21 February 2011
Word Count: 1,136
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