Out Of Egyptian Protests A New Obama Doctrine Is Born

US president's decision to back revolt against Mubarak-led repression has implications for region's autocrats

By Simon Tisdall
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 11/02/2011

By backing the Egyptian protests, Barack Obama challenges not just Hosni Mubarak but the legitimacy of other autocrats in the region. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

 Hosni Mubarak has still not grasped how fundamentally the old political order is changing in Egypt and the Arab world – but it seems Barack Obama has.

In a forceful statement after the Egyptian president's latest exercise in reality denial, Obama came off the fence following a fortnight of humming and hawing. If the choice is revolution or repression, democratic ideals and values or hard-nosed self-interest, then the US is officially on the side of the angels.

This dramatic shift could in time have a bigger impact on the Middle East than the Egyptian uprising. In sharply criticising the Cairo government's prevarications, demanding it respect universal values, and stressing that his administration stands shoulder to shoulder with the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, the US president dramatically changed the way his country does business in the region. This was, to all intents and purposes, the proclamation of an Obama doctrine.

His statement was about Egypt but has a far broader application. He said, in part: "The United States has been clear that we stand for a set of core principles. We believe the universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected, and their aspirations must be met. We believe this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change, and a negotiated path to democracy.

"To that end, we believe that the emergency law should be lifted. We believe that meaningful negotiations with the broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions confronting Egypt's future: protecting the fundamental rights of all citizens; revising the constitution and other laws to demonstrate irreversible change; and jointly developing a clear roadmap to elections that are free and fair..."

He continued: "A new generation has emerged. They have made it clear that Egypt must reflect their hopes, fulfil their highest aspirations, and tap their boundless potential. In these difficult times, I know that the Egyptian people will persevere, and they must know that they will continue to have a friend in the United States of America."

The implications of this new doctrine, for that is how it must be viewed, are almost endless. The most obvious point is that since the US is backing the popular pro-democracy revolt in Egypt, it is bound in all conscience to do so elsewhere, as occasion demands.

This is a direct challenge not just to Mubarak and his old guard but to the legitimacy of the previously untouchable, US-allied autocrats of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Gulf. Universal values are universal after all. So what goes in Egypt will logically go, too, in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, to name just three countries where America has largely turned a blind eye to repression in pursuit of wider security and commercial interests.

The Obama doctrine implies readiness to intervene directly in a country's internal politics in support of broader principles. In this instance, his stinging criticism of Mubarak's failure to make "immediate, meaningful and sufficient" reforms was tantamount to a demand that he resign.

It also risks the alienation of regional rulers and the fracturing of old alliances that have sustained US and western European policy since the cold war. The Saudis had taken a dim view of the US president's undercutting of Mubarak; now they will wonder who might be next.

Israeli leaders, too, are alarmed. They never quite trusted Obama. And repression of the Arab masses by Arab autocrats suited them quite well for, by and large, the Arab street has always been more hostile to Israel than the Arab elites.

Israel, too, could hitherto pose as the region's only real democracy. But that moral advantage is slipping, along with long-held strategic and defensive preconceptions. This uncertainty might yet jolt Israeli leaders out of their obstructive complacency over Palestine. Obama just accelerated this uncharted process.

Events in Tunisia and then Egypt forced the US president down this road. But his speech in Cairo in 2009, about engaging and developing the Arab and Muslim spheres, showed he was not a reluctant traveller.

Halfway through his presidency, he is finally beginning to define his own distinctive and transformational approach, after initially accepting most of the old US foreign policy shibboleths. In Afghanistan, overly influenced by his generals, he bought into the old way of doing things. Now, burned by that experience, he is forging a different path.

This is not a return to the "liberal interventionism" of the Bush-Blair era. The Obama doctrine is not about brute force, but forceful beliefs. Even so, it is winning fans on the American right, as well as among Egyptians.

"We need a foreign policy that not only supports freedom in the abstract but is guided by long-range practical principles to achieve it," said columnist Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Thus the US should "use its influence to help democrats everywhere throw off dictatorial rule" and do more to build institutions and strong systems of law and media freedom in transitional democracies, he said.

The US should not intervene directly in other countries' affairs unless it was "to help protect them against totalitarians, foreign and domestic", as in the cold war days of the Truman doctrine. By totalitarian, Krauthammer and similar thinkers mean Islamists of all complexions – for them, Islam is the new "red peril".

Obama is unlikely to embrace this definition. But in beginning to enunciate a foreign policy doctrine guided by clearly established democratic values and mutual respect, he may not only avoid more Egypt-style dilemmas, he may also be on his way to bridging the gulf between pragmatism and principle.