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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Jan 27 2011 - 00:47:16 EST
A Region’s Unrest Scrambles U.S. Foreign Policy By MARK
LANDLER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/mark_landler/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration confronts the spectacle of angry
protesters and baton-wielding riot police officers from
Tunisia<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/tunisia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>to
Egypt<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>to
Lebanon<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/lebanon/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>,
it is groping for a plan to deal with an always-vexing region that is now
suddenly spinning in dangerous directions.
In Egypt, where a staunch ally, President Hosni
Mubarak<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/hosni_mubarak/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
faced the fiercest protests in years on Tuesday, and Lebanon, where a
Hezbollah<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/hezbollah/index.html?inline=nyt-org>-backed
government is taking shape, the administration is grappling with volatile,
potentially hostile forces that have already realigned the region’s
political landscape.
These were surprising turns. But even the administration’s signature project
in the region — Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations — became even more
intractable this week, with the publication of confidential documents
detailing Palestinian<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>concessions
offered in talks with
Israel<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/israel/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>.
The disclosure makes it less likely that the Palestinians will agree to any
further concessions.
In interviews in recent days, officials acknowledged that the United States
had limited influence over many actors in the region, and that the upheaval
in Egypt, in particular, could scramble its foreign-policy agenda.
So it is proceeding gingerly, balancing the democratic aspirations of young
Arabs with cold-eyed strategic and commercial interests. That sometimes
involves supporting autocratic and unpopular governments — which has turned
many of those young people against the United States.
President Obama<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>called
Mr. Mubarak last week, after the uprising in Tunisia, to talk about
joint projects like the Middle East peace process, even as he emphasized the
need to meet the democratic aspirations of the Tunisian protesters.
Mr. Obama repeated this point during his State of the Union
address<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/state_of_the_union_message_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>on
Tuesday, saying, “Tonight, let us be clear: the United States of
America
stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations
of all people,” a reference, a White House official said, to the protesters
in Egypt.
The White House warned Hezbollah against coercion and intimidation, and
officials said the United States might go as far as pulling hundreds of
millions of dollars of aid from Lebanon. The administration sent a senior
diplomat, Jeffrey D. Feltman, to Tunisia to express support for
pro-democracy forces as they prepared for elections after the ouster of
President Zine el-Abidine Ben
Ali<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/zine_elabidine_ben_ali/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.
While there are important differences between North Africa and Lebanon, the
two situations pose similar challenges.
Some analysts argue that the United States should seize on Tunisia to
advance democracy across the Middle East — reprising the “freedom agenda” of
the Bush administration and providing Mr. Obama a rare opportunity to
deliver on pledges to build bridges to the Muslim world.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>came
closest to doing that in Qatar two weeks ago, when she bluntly
criticized Arab leaders for their autocratic ways, a mere 24 hours before
Mr. Ben Ali was driven from office. But Mrs. Clinton’s speech does not augur
a return to the Bush approach, officials said.
For one thing, clamoring for democracy did not work so well for
President George
W. Bush<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
administration officials said. More important, a wave of upheaval could
uproot valuable allies. An uprising in Tunisia, a peripheral player in the
region, is not the same as one in Egypt, a linchpin. The Egyptian government
is a crucial ally to Washington, but the population is very suspicious of
American motives, and the potential for Islamic extremism lurks. “These
countries are going to go at a different pace,” said Daniel B. Shapiro, a
senior Middle East adviser on the National Security
Council<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
“One couldn’t, or shouldn’t try, to come up with a cookie-cutter ideal of
how to approach it.”
The administration has tried to balance its ties to Mr. Mubarak with
expressions of concern about rigged elections and jailed dissidents in his
country. But it may find it harder to avoid singling him out if the crowds
keep building in Cairo, as separate statements of concern about the protests
in Egypt, released by the White House and State Department late Tuesday,
suggested.
“The challenge for the administration is to find the right balance between
identifying the U.S. too closely with these changes, and thereby undermining
them; and not finding ways to nurture them enough,” said Aaron David Miller,
a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars.
“They don’t yet know how to do that,” he said.
Some critics say the administration erred by putting the peace process at
the center of its strategy for the region, overlooking a restive Arab
population. “They put U.S.-Egyptian relations within the prism of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Elliott
Abrams<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/elliott_abrams/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a Middle East adviser in the Bush administration. “But what happens in Egypt
originates in Egypt.”
Mr. Obama came into office determined to play down the Bush administration’s
Iraq-centered “freedom agenda,” the very public push for democratic change.
In his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo in June 2009, Mr. Obama said
each country should chart its own path to democracy and rejected military
intervention as a way to accelerate the process.
Instead, the administration has worked with pro-democracy groups to advocate
for freer media and assembly. It has pushed for outside monitors to
scrutinize elections in Jordan and Egypt. And it has encouraged social
networks like Twitter<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html?inline=nyt-org>and
Facebook<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org>to
spread the word about pro-democracy movements — the very networks that
helped spread word of demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt.
“In giving us guidance as we develop our policies in the region, the
president was adamant that we take stock of the brittleness and hidden risks
of the status quo,” said Samantha
Power<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/samantha_power/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a senior director at the National Security Council who handles human rights
issues.
But critics say bottom-up efforts have failed to open up political space in
Arab countries. Despite the push for monitors in Egypt, its recent
parliamentary elections were judged less honest than elections in 2005.
Steven Heydemann, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace,
argued in a blog post this week that the time had come for the United States
to confront Arab leaders more forcefully, demanding that they repeal
emergency laws and scrap state security courts, which they use to exercise
arbitrary power.
Administration officials said they pressed Mr. Mubarak repeatedly not to
reinstate Egypt’s emergency law, which has been in place since 1981. He did
so anyway, but officials said he released virtually all the political
prisoners that were on a list compiled by Human Rights
Watch<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/human_rights_watch/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
In his call with Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Obama also linked the bombing of a Coptic
Christian church to the rights of religious minorities.
Still, critics say the pressure has been mostly in private, which does
little to build support among impatient young Arabs. Some analysts say the
big question is whether the administration should seize on Tunisia as a
lever to push for change elsewhere.
“If Tunisia works out, that could be much more of an inspiration to Arab
countries than Iraq ever was,” said Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for
Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/council_on_foreign_relations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
“It is an unexpected windfall. That’s why they should be making the most of
it.”
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Tunis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/world/26diplo.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print