By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers –
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s handling of the Arab Spring is likely to crop up when he debates foreign policy Monday night with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But what the United States could have done differently as longtime allies were knocked from power in one country after another is far from clear, foreign policy analysts say.
The rise of conservative Islamists in countries once considered staunch U.S. allies undoubtedly undercut American interests in the region, the analysts agree. The United States, however, could have done little to stop those revolts, and the long-term impact of the changes is still unclear.
What is clear, the experts say, is that whoever serves the next four years as president must realize that there’s no appetite for the United States’ old paternalistic stance toward Arab nations; new leaders demand a more respectful and balanced relationship similar to what Turkey or European nations enjoy.
“One thing that has sunken in is that American leverage is limited,” said Nathan Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University who has written extensively about the Arab transitions, with a focus on Egypt. “So many Arab societies have turned inward, so the priorities are inherently domestic.”
There were high-stakes moments in each revolt in which the Obama administration had to pick sides, and in all but the failed uprising in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based, the United States allied itself with Arab protesters, although the endorsement came faster in some places than in others because of political sensitivities.
One place where support came very quickly was Syria, with the memorable scene of then-Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford taking a risky — critics say provocative — ride into the flashpoint city of Hama, where protesters greeted him with flowers. The embattled regime of President Bashar Assad called it meddling.
That scene unfolded 15 months ago, long before the Syrian death toll was in the tens of thousands. As the conflict grinds on and Syrian public opinion of the United States sours, according to news reports, the Obama administration appears hamstrung.
The loose weapons, outlaw militias and extremist organizing in Libya offers a cautionary tale in arming rebel movements or leading a foreign military intervention. The elections in Tunisia and Egypt that swept the Muslim Brotherhood to power similarly give pause as the United States determines whom to back among the Syrian opposition.
Facing such grim options, Obama and Romney offer similar plans for the U.S. role in the Syrian crisis: continue nonlethal and humanitarian assistance, lean on opposition forces to form a transitional government, weaken the regime through sanctions and allow Arab allies to arm the rebels.
Neither campaign speaks about the United States directly arming the rebels now; that move is deemed too risky because of the proliferation of Islamist extremists among opposition fighters. Romney has said the U.S. should identify fighters who “share our values.”
Egypt is another key laboratory for U.S. policy.
After some wavering in the beginning, the Obama administration sided with the protesters who turned downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square into an international symbol of the Arab protest movements. But Egyptians, who promptly voted the conservative Muslim Brotherhood to power, clearly haven’t forgiven the United States for backing autocrat Hosni Mubarak for nearly three decades.
Protesters lobbed tomatoes and insults at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a recent visit, and polls show that a majority of Egyptians reject financial aid from the U.S. government — a dramatic shift for a country that successive administrations viewed as the United States’ most reliable Arab ally.
“Egypt is no longer the president,” said Brown, the GWU professor, on how the U.S. must now perceive the country. “It’s a state with institutions, and they’re going to deal with the Parliament, the military and the Cabinet.”
In a particularly bitter irony for the Obama administration, Libya, the Arab nation where U.S. popularity was highest, is now its Achilles’ heel on foreign policy. It was just this spring that a Gallup poll found that 54 percent of Libyans approved of U.S. leadership — the highest rating of any Arab country and higher than even Canada’s. They were also open to U.S. aid and U.S. help in building a civil society — assistance that many other nations view with suspicion.
A few months, later, the death of the U.S. ambassador in the September attacks on U.S. posts only shined a light on the worst of Libya since the fall of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi: weak central government, little in the way of law enforcement, and wide-open space for jihadists to plot and carry out attacks.
