 | By Alan Melkman
February 1, 2011 | Share |
Has there ever been a more ignorant, arrogant and amateur US administration led by a brilliant law professor who even makes Jimmy Carter look like an insightful intellectual? Its response to events in Egypt will hopefully mark the low water mark in its foreign policy failures, although I fear it will attempt to plumb even more profound depths in the future.
If you haven’t yet got the message here’s what President Obama is sending to all of the West’s less savoury allies. We love you and treasure you; we’ll give you aid and turn a blind eye to your human rights abuses and corruption; we’ll allow you to accumulate vast wealth at the expense of your fellow citizens financed by our largesse. Of course, we’ll mouth some platitudes but you don’t need to take any notice of them. But, and there’s always ‘a but’, as soon as you really need our help and support, then we’ll drop you like a plague ridden rat.
So if you’re a leader of some poorish country who has hitched his wagon to the US you face a dilemma. The propaganda machine you control has been telling your citizens for years that their poverty and backwardness is not their fault and certainly not yours. No, it’s the fault of the colonialists, the US, the West in general and, for good measure, the Jews/Zionist/Israelis. Do you stick to your position and risk the same thing happening to you as is going to happen to Mubarak in Egypt.
The reality - Obama has left the Egyptian leader out to dry. Hilary Clinton has faithfully echoed the words of her boss. Who knows if she goes along with them? John Kerry has twisted the knife.
So if you’re the leader of a US ally you now know beyond a shadow of doubt that the Americans will not save you when you really need them. You also know that Obama has bent over backwards to appease those states who oppose the US and hate the West. You’ll look at leaders like Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, who allies himself with Iran, lectures visiting western leaders including Tony Blair, makes the right noises in English to reassure the US but consistently undermines them in Arabic, and as a result gets rewarded by Obama who re-establishes diplomatic relations. This is useful to Assad in the short term since it gives his regime some sort of legitimacy and increases the amount of foreign aid which may be used to advantage. For him, it’s a no lose situation. However, he now knows, even if he didn’t before, that the US is not a reliable long term ally. In contrast Iran is! No wonder Assad is smiling, he knows who his true friends are.
There seems little doubt that as events in Egypt unfold they will make the Middle East, and in turn the world, even more of a powder keg. In 1979 the Iranian popular revolution ended with the Mullahs rise to power and the Nazi Ahmadinejad strutting the UN stage. The Beirut Cedar revolution in 2005 for freedom resulted in Hezbollah seizing power, and the liberation of Gaza in the same year produced a Hamas government.
There will always be some who will make the case that this time it’s different and that Egypt will become an enlightened, democratic, free, open and fair society. I hope they are right, although history is against them.
There are a minimum of two years left of the Obama presidency. Enough time to do much damage. The nightmare is that he is re-elected and then, unbridled by the need to be elected again, he really unleashes his vision on the world. It is hard to imagine a more destabilising scenario, especially linked to a nuclear Iran.
mattpryor
1 February, 2011 - 18:23
Rate this:
I agree Alan, good essay.