Turkey's Not Messing Around Anymore

But does Prime Minister Erdogan have a plan for what comes next in Syria?

BY JUSTIN VELA from Istunbul


                                                                 Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan

On June 22, a stricken Turkish RF-4 Phantom reconnaissance aircraft splashed down in the Mediterranean, brought down by anti-aircraft fire from the Syrian military. The pilots have yet to be located, and are most likely dead. The incident has deepened the rift between Turkey and Syria, former allies whose partnership deteriorated along with President Bashar al-Assad's brutal 15-month crackdown on his own people. Although this incident alone will not push Turkey into direct military confrontation with the Syrian regime, it has put the country in a position where one more incident will force it to, in the words of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "teach those who dare to test the limits of its might."

Beyond the basic fact of a downed Turkish jet, Ankara and Damascus disagree over the essential details that led to the incident. Turkey insists that the plane was in international airspace when it was fired upon and had only crossed into Syrian airspace briefly, an event that President Abdullah Gul described as "routine." The Syrian regime, meanwhile, insists the Phantom was shot down well within Syrian territory -- a claim that backs up the regime's claim that the uprising, which the U.N. estimates has left more than 10,000 dead, is being guided by foreign powers.

Erdogan responded with typical anger over yet another Syrian provocation. In a June 26 address to a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara that was attended by Arab diplomats, he announced that any Syrian forces approaching the countries' 565-mile border would be considered a threat and that any infringement of the border would be met with force. The Syrian regime presented a "clear and present danger," Erdogan said.

Meanwhile, Erdogan's top aides publicly pushed the message that the rules of the game had changed. Ibrahim Kalin, one of the premier's top foreign-policy advisors, expanded on the statement on Twitter: "The rules of engagement for the Turkish armed forces have been changed and expanded," he wrote. "Any military element approaching Turkish borders from the Syrian side will be considered a direct military threat."

A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, backed up this newly aggressive rhetoric. With the continued bloodshed in Syria and, now the shooting down of the Turkish Phantom, Ankara is no longer playing "Mr. Nice Guy," the official said.

Erdogan's words immediately raised the question of whether a de facto safe zone -- a policy option long broached as one way Turkey could hasten the Assad regime's demise -- was being created to aid opposition forces, yet neither the prime minister nor his advisors specified what "approaching Turkish borders" meant.

Turkey's understanding of how the incident played out has its increased outrage at Assad. The Turkish official told me that the pilots accidently entered Syrian airspace for five minutes, most likely miscalculating their flight path by incorrectly identifying a pair of mountain ridges toward which they were supposed to fly. They were informed of their mistake by Turkish radar station operators and returned to Turkish airspace. The pilots were then asked to correctly repeat their maneuver, which was meant to test Turkey's domestic radar capabilities, the official said. They returned to international airspace, looping around and flying back toward Turkey, parallel to the Syrian coastline, when they were shot down near the Syrian city of Lattakia, according to the official.

Turkey intercepted the Syrian radio communications during the incident. There was "no panic" in the voices of Syrian forces, the Turkish official said. It appeared they had been previously instructed to take such actions and proved themselves aware it was a Turkish aircraft, referring to it as the "neighbors'" plane.

There is no denying that Turkey has emerged as a regional hub of anti-Assad activity in the Middle East. In the past year, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) has established an office in Istanbul, with a section dedicated to military coordination. The nominal leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), along with an estimated 33,000 Syrians who fled the spiraling violence inside their country, are based in 10 Turkish camps in the border region. The U.S. State Department has also established an office in Istanbul to help train activists and provide non-lethal equipment to the opposition.

In the past weeks, reports have also claimed that Turkey's National Security Organization (MIT), its intelligence agency, has transported multiple shipments of weapons to rebels along the border. Turkey's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Selcuk Unal denied the claims, but one Syrian activist involved in transferring the new weapons from MIT to the rebels along the Syrian-Turkish border confirmed the shipments. "For myself, it was not my aim," said the activist, who had previously told me he preferred nonviolent measures to bring down the Assad regime. "But it's generally what everyone wants. It's sort of a victory."

Turkey is arguably doing more than any other country to help the Syrian guerrillas. But if Erdogan wants to convince the world that now he really means business, he's going to have to overcome skepticism from Syrian rebels themselves -- not to mention his domestic political opponents.
Abo Nidal, a 39-year-old FSA fighter, is one such skeptic. I first met him last December on a muddy hilltop in the Syrian village of Ain al-Baida. His FSA unit had raised the Turkish flag next to the green, white, and black standard of the Syrian opposition -- but now he didn't sound sure that Erdogan would match his actions to his words.

"With all due respect for Mr. Erdogan, the Syrian Army has more than several times crossed the border with helicopters and shooting. They shot a Turkish police station, they shot it from a distance," he said. "If Erdogan will help us, all we need is anti-aircraft weapons and anti-tanks weapons. We will respond and we will revenge this airplane."

Abo Nidal said that since joining the FSA he had fought only with a Kalashnikov. However, his unit had recently received rocket-propelled grenade launchers from the FSA, he said.

Mahmoud Mosa, a Syrian activist from the northern Syrian town of Bdama, echoed the lukewarm response to Erdogan's speech: "We have heard stronger threats to Syria from Erdogan before. We know that the Syrian forces are less than 300 meters from the Turkish borders in Ain al-Baida. We need deeds, not words."

The polls are also against Erdogan if he pushes for a military confrontation with Syria. According to a recent survey from the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), a Turkish think tank, 56.2 percent of respondents oppose an intervention in Syria while 40 percent say they do not support any diplomatic or military intervention. Just over 11 percent would like to see Turkey invade Syria. And only 7.9 percent of respondents support arming the FSA.

Faruk Logoglu, the deputy chairman in charge of foreign relations for the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), has signaled that he would oppose more aggressive action against the Assad regime. "The Turkish government has taken sides in this crisis since the very beginning," he told me. Instead of engaging with the Assad regime and the opposition on equal footing, he said, the AKP had simply chosen the opposition as a favorite.

While Logoglu condemned the violence in Syria, which he described as mostly being carried out by regime forces, he faulted Erdogan for "not listen[ing] to the full spectrum of voices" in Turkey. He also implied Erdogan was positioning himself as a Sunni standard-bearer for Western efforts to roll back Shiite Iran's influence in the Middle East.

"I am not pointing the finger at Mr. Erdogan and saying he is crusading for the Sunni leadership in the region," he said. "But most of his actions add up to such quote-unquote accusations or allegations, as you like."

The Turkish government's conditions for unilateral intervention in Syria have also yet to be met. Since Syrian refugees began fleeing into southern Turkey, Turkish officials have has made clear that there are two possible scenarios in which they'd ponder military action: First, if there were a mass influx of thousands of refugees that threatened to overwhelm Turkey's capabilities. The second scenario is if there were a large-scale massacre of defenseless civilians by pro-Assad military forces in the border area.

Yet even more important than the change in rules of engagement, the jet incident has confirmed Ankara's belief that Assad is rapidly losing control of the country. "It's a matter of time," the Turkish official said. "This guy will go."

On that point, at least, Syria's rebel fighters are inclined to agree. "He is losing his believers and the people who trust him more and more," Abo Nidal said. "There are defections every day. We think that is why they shot the Turkish plane."

Whether Ankara is prepared to give the Assad regime a final push remains to be seen, however. Asked if Erdogan's warning the Syrian military away from the border was creating a de facto buffer zone, the Turkish official demurred. "As a responsible government we had to think of everything," he said. "But frankly we haven't decided on anything yet."

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 27/06/2012
-Justin Vela is an Istanbul-based journalist

Is Qatar's Foreign Policy Sustainable?

By Giorgio Cafiero

               President Obama praised Emir Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani for Qatar's support. Photograph: Getty Images

Qatar, home to only 225,000 natives and 1.7 million foreign workers, has emerged as an influential regional actor in recent years. Emir Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has ruled Qatar since 1995, when he replaced his father in a bloodless palace coup, and has pursued an ambitious foreign policy for his statelet. Natural resource wealth, ownership of Al Jazeera, and a carefully constructed web of foreign alliances have allowed Doha to project itself throughout the Middle East.

The nature of Qatar’s foreign policy is the subject of some debate. Certain analysts contend that Qatar conducts a foreign policy uninfluenced by any ideology and that its only concerns relate to geopolitical gains. Doha, they say, lacks a regional vision and is not guided by any loyalties or principles. However, others posit that Qatar’s foreign policy is guided by a form of Sunni Islamist ideology and actively seeks to empower its followers throughout the Muslim world.

The truth may lie somewhere in between. But as Qatar continues its delicate balancing act, it is increasingly evident that Doha’s interests will not always align with those of Washington.

Pygmy with the Punch of a Giant

The concentration of power in the Al Thani family led to the creation of the modern state of Qatar during the 1800s. Qatar fell under Ottoman rule from 1872 until 1913 then was a British protectorate from 1916 until achieving independence in 1971. When the British left the Persian Gulf in the early 1970s, Qatar was one of the poorest Gulf countries. In Blake Hounshell’s words, “for most of its short history, Qatar has been an afterthought of an afterthought in global politics, an impoverished backwater that had often fallen prey to the schemes of stronger powers.”

The discovery of vast oil and gas fields changed everything. In February 2010, the Middle East Economic Digest declared that “Qatar is enjoying a period of unparalleled prosperity.” Qatar’s 15.8-percent rate of growth surpassed China’s in 2011, and its GDP per capita ranks second only to Lichtenstein. In 2010, the country ranked 20th in oil production, sixth in natural gas production, and third in natural gas exports. After 2006, Qatar became the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Unquestionably, Qatar’s petrodollars have facilitated its status as a rising power.

However, oil and gas wealth alone do not explain Qatar’s expanding influence. Doha’s multidimensional alliances, its activist foreign policy as a peace-broker throughout the Islamic world, and the soft-power effects of Qatar’s own Al Jazeera news network are important forces behind the country’s rise. Since 2011, Qatar has been quick to seize the opportunity to play its unique hand of cards to spread its influence as political openings have occurred throughout the Arab world.

Multidimensional Alliances

With an economy driven by oil and gas exports, Qatar has a vital national interest in maintaining stability in the Persian Gulf as its exports must travel through the Strait of Hormuz to reach Qatar’s top export partners – Japan, South Korea, India, and Singapore. Given Qatar’s tiny population and small military (the second smallest in the Middle East), Doha has relied to a large extent on foreign cooperation and support to safeguard security interests. With its foreign policy similar to the “zero problems with neighbors” policy of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), Qatar has pursued diplomatic measures to foster positive relations with all regional actors, including opposing stakeholders.

Since the first Gulf War, Qatar has been a close military ally of the United States and currently hosts the headquarters of U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM). But Doha also maintains close ties with Tehran. In March 2010, Qatar and Iran signed a security agreement “to combat terrorism and promote security cooperation,” and Qatar was the only member of the United Nations Security Council to vote against UNSC resolution 1696, which condemned Iran for its nuclear activities in 2006. Sharing the large North Field/South Pars natural gas deposit, Qatar and Iran have deep economic interests in maintaining cooperative relations. Also, given Qatar’s comparatively small Shia population, the specter of a Khomeini-inspired Shia uprising has never created the tension between Qatar and Iran that it has between Iran and most other Gulf States.

Although relations between Qatar and its only bordering neighbor, Saudi Arabia, have been troubled for decades, diplomatic initiatives in 2007 and 2008 led to a rapprochement in Qatari-Saudi relations. And prior to Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown in Syria, Qatar and Syria enjoyed deep political and economic ties. Although Qatar and Israel have never had official diplomatic relations, Israel had a trade center in Doha until Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Commercial ties with Israel, moreover, did not prevent Qatar from developing amicable relations with Hamas and various Lebanese factions, including Hezbollah.

Qatar’s delicate balancing act and ample resource wealth have enabled its leaders to portray their country as a legitimate and impartial peace broker with the resources to finance extensive peace negotiations. In 2006, Qatar’s leaders began to mediate talks between warring Palestinian factions in Gaza following the 2006 parliamentary elections. Several years after civil war broke out in Yemen, Doha played a role in negotiating a ceasefire between Sana’a and the country’s Houthi rebels. Qatar’s biggest diplomatic success was its sponsorship of negotiations in Doha that ended the violence between Hezbollah and other Lebanese factions shortly after sectarian violence exploded throughout Lebanon in early 2008. Also in 2008, Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Ahmad bin Abdullah al-Mahmud, prepared his country to mediate talks between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur that began in 2009. In 2010, Qatar helped resolve a border dispute between Eritrea and Djibouti.

Qatar’s bids to resolve conflicts thousands of miles away from the Persian Gulf indicate a determination to become a respected peace broker throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. Where the United States and EU have failed to resolve conflicts in the region’s volatile areas, Qatar sees an opportunity to emerge as a stabilizing force. Although such diplomatic efforts are expensive, Doha views these peace negotiations as an investment in Qatar’s long-term interests.

Still, analysts including Barak Barfi and Blake Houshell suggest that Qatar’s foreign policy may be unsustainable due to inherent limits given Qatar’s size and the political realities of the region where it exists. Doha’s ties with Tehran and others have been a thorn in relations with Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states, as well as with United States  – in 2009, for example, Senator John Kerry declared that “Qatar … cannot continue to be an American ally on Monday that sends money to Hamas on Tuesday.” Likewise, Qatar’s support for the Syrian opposition and efforts to isolate and weaken the Assad regime has brought tension to its relationship with Iran. Certain developments, such as a U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear sites or the spillover of violence in Syria into other states, may compel Qatar to pick a side. Whether or not Qatar can continue to maintain cordial ties with opposing stakeholders in this turbulent region is an open question.

Independent News Source or Qatari Weapon?

The heavy hand that Arab governments have traditionally played in censoring the media, as well as the dearth of media independence, has given many on the Arab street much cynicism about available news sources. However, since the Qatari government launched Al Jazeera in 1996, the satellite channel has served as a reliable news source for millions of Arabs.

Although unfavorable coverage of Doha itself is rare, Al Jazeera’s critical coverage abroad has often shaken authoritarian regimes to their core. As University of Iowa Professor Ahmed E. Souaiaia notes, throughout recent years “the Tunisian, Moroccan, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian [governments] shut down Al Jazeera offices in reaction to what they deemed ‘libelous,’ ‘slanderous,’ and ‘poisonous’ news stories. The Arab regimes’ hostility toward Al Jazeera only increased its popularity among the Arab masses.”                  

Throughout the 2000s, in Marc Lynch’s words, “Al Jazeera played a decisive role, linking together disparate national struggles into a coherent narrative of popular Arab protests against both foreign intervention and domestic repression.” Al Jazeera covered the al-Aqsa intifada and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in a manner that brought unity to Arabs and enabled them to openly discuss their governments’ cordial relations with the United States and inaction on the Palestinian question. In early 2011, Lynch adds, when the Arab Spring began and Al Jazeera showed footage of the demonstrations, it became “the unquestioned home of the revolution on the airwaves.”

However, some were quick to accuse Al Jazeera as acting on behalf of Qatar’s interests rather than as a strictly journalistic outlet. Lynch notes, for example, that Egyptian officials railed fervently against the “Qatari vendetta against Mubarak.” More controversially, he adds, “there is some reason to believe that Al Jazeera’s success in Egypt went to the heads of its management, and that the Qatari royal family began to treat it more as a useful weapon in regional politics than as the prestigious independent symbol it had long valued.”

Suspicions were further stoked when on September 20, 2011, David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times reported a WikiLeaks disclosure that the network’s former director general, Wadah Khanfar, had modified Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war in Iraq under pressure from the U.S. government. According to the 2005 cable, Kirkpatrick reports, a U.S. embassy official “handed Mr. Khanfar copies of critical reports by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency on three months of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iraq war; Mr. Khanfar said that the Qatari Foreign Ministry had already provided him with two months of the American reports, according to the cable, suggesting a close three-way consultation involving the two governments and the network.”

Throughout the Arab Spring, charges have been levied against Al Jazeera that it has employed a double standard for covering the uprisings in Syria and Libya, compared to those in neighboring Bahrain, an ally of Qatar. Souaiaia concludes that “there is no doubt that Al Jazeera has become a powerful force and many governments wanted to either limit its influence or arrogate it for political purposes. The Qatari regime is very aware of this asset and they have been using it to raise their profile on the international stage.” To a large extent Qatar has relied on Al Jazeera to become a major player in the region and around the world.

Spreading Democracy or Qatari Imperialism? 

When the anti-Gaddafi uprisings began in Libya, Qatar was the first Arab state to endorse foreign military intervention and grant the rebels political legitimacy. Qatar’s support provided NATO with political cover as it began its military campaign against Gaddafi in March 2011. Doha also sent six Mirage fighter jets to the fight and trained Libyan rebels in Qatar. Blake Hounshell describes the close relationship between Libyan rebels and Qatar:

For months, Doha had teemed with Libyan exiles, not so secretly funded by Qatar, which put up the rebel leaders at expensive hotels and bankrolled their satellite channel. Qatari cargo jets ferried tens of millions dollars’ worth of humanitarian supplies, weapons, and special-operations troops to rebel headquarters in Benghazi on regular flights; nearly the entire Qatari air force helped enforce NATO’s no-fly zone. In August, when Libyan rebel fighters stormed Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya complex, they raised a Qatari flag in appreciation.

A similar situation seems to be playing out in Syria. When CBS News asked Qatar’s emir if he would support an Arab intervention in Syria, he responded, “I think for such a situation, to stop the killing, some troops should go to stop the killing.” Qatar played a leading role in the Arab League’s decision to suspend Syria in November 2011. Qatar’s support for the Syrian opposition is not solely diplomatic, as Doha has provided the anti-Assad forces with weapons, according to opposition figures.

Doha’s real motives behind its support for military intervention in Libya and Syria are complicated, and observers disagree over Qatar’s actual agenda. Some credit the regime with having a humanitarian agenda, while others perceive a campaign to spread Wahhabism. Indeed, the support that Qatar has given to Sunni Islamists in Libya, Tunisia, and Syria, both during and after their struggles against secular regimes, suggests that Qatar may be seeking to form an ideological alliance with new forces in the new Middle East. But whether Qatar’s support for these factions is driven by a fidelity to Islamist ideology or is merely opportunistic is unclear.

Doha’s Challenges

Several factors will challenge the sustainability of Doha’s foreign policy.

Qatar’s history of impartiality and neutrality in the region’s turmoil has advanced its image as a legitimate peace broker. However, Doha will inevitably create enemies if it continues to take sides in foreign civil wars. In fact, during recent months, reports have surfaced that Syria’s government has waged cyber warfare against Qatar in retaliation for its support for Syrian rebels.

Some Libyan voices have also expressed strong objections to Doha’s interference in Libya’s domestic politics. According to Steven Sotloff, “many Libyans are now complaining that Qatari aid has come at a price. They say Qatar provided a narrow clique of Islamists with arms and money, giving them great leverage over the political process.” General Khalifa Hiftar has stated, “[i]f aid comes through the front door, we like Qatar, but if it comes through the window to certain people [and] bypassing official channels, we don’t want Qatar.” As Qatar provides further aid to Islamist parties in North Africa and Syria, it may well be confronted by secular forces within these countries. With new enemies in the Middle East and North Africa, Qatar’s image as a neutral actor determined to promote regional peace and stability will be undermined.

Additionally, geopolitical tensions in the region may reach a point at which Qatar is forced to align itself with one side or the other. So far, Qatar has successfully balanced the larger states’ interests against each other without making any enemies. However, this delicate balancing act may become nearly impossible under certain circumstances, such as a military confrontation in the Persian Gulf between the United States and Iran. In the meantime, Qatar will likely use its influence to try to prevent such a scenario from unfolding.

Finally, Qatar’s rhetorical commitment to spreading “democracy,” “freedom,” and “dignity” in the Arab world is often met with skepticism, and for good reason. Qatar is governed by an unelected emirate regime. The position belonging to Qatar’s head of state and head of government is hereditary. Authoritative human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House have documented high levels of censorship, an anemic independent media, and a discriminatory legal system. Moreover, the labor rights of the 1.7 million foreign workers in Qatar are not respected. These workers are not allowed to unionize or strike, and they frequently sign contracts under coercion. Complaints about late or unpaid wages are widespread.

However, many argue that Qatar’s emir is attempting to reshape his country’s image as more democratic and modern. Doha recently announced that elections would be held in 2013 for the legislative Shura Council. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center has described this action as a bold move to ensure that the wave of protests across the region does not reach Qatar. With Qatar’s high GDP per capita, it is possible that the government can maintain its legitimacy and popularity by continuing to provide a high quality of life for Qatar’s citizens, preventing widespread protests. Whether such developments reflect a genuine commitment to democratic reforms remains to be seen, but the emir is clearly set on ensuring that an uprising like the one occurring in Bahrain does not break out in Qatar.                                                                                                                                     

Implications for U.S. Policy

As USCENTCOM’s host, Qatar has ultimately facilitated U.S. military dominance in the Middle East and West Asia. By hosting an Israeli commercial center before the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, it has proven to be more amenable to relations with the Jewish state than most Arab governments.

However, Qatar’s willingness to develop cordial relations with states and actors that proactively seek to undermine U.S. hegemony, as well as Islamist factions in North Africa, suggests that Qatar’s interests will not always align with those of Washington. Already, many in Washington are nervous about alleged connections between Qatar and anti-American militant groups in the region — one Wikileaks cable from the State Department even labeled Qatar as “the worst in the region” regarding counterterrorism efforts. This cable also stated that Qatar’s security services were “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals.” 

Nonetheless, no two states in the world possess the same interests at all times. And if U.S. hegemony in the region declines further, it is natural for other states, like Qatar, to attempt to fill the void. While doing so, Doha may feel less pressure to align with the agenda of a declining superpower when it does not serve its own national interests.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy In Focus on 25/06/2012
-Giorgio Cafiero is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus

The Fear Factor

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, met the Egyptian Military Council on Monday before taking office.  (AP)

If there is one thought that summarizes the strength and weakness of the Arab awakenings, it’s the one offered by Daniel Brumberg, a co-director of the democracy and governance studies program at Georgetown University, who observed that the Arab awakenings happened because the Arab peoples stopped fearing their leaders — but they stalled because the Arab peoples have not stopped fearing each other.

This dichotomy is no surprise. That culture of fear was exactly what the dictators fed off of and nurtured. Most of them ran their countries like Mafia dons operating “protection rackets.” They wanted their people to fear each other more than the leader, so that each dictator or monarch could sit atop the whole society, doling out patronage and protection, while ruling with an iron fist. But it will take more than just decapitating these regimes to overcome that legacy. It will take a culture of pluralism and citizenship. Until then, tribes will still fear tribes in Libya and Yemen, sects will still fear sects in Syria and Bahrain, the secular and the Christians will still fear the Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia and the philosophy of “rule or die” will remain a potent competitor to “one man, one vote.”

You would have to be very naïve to think that transitioning from primordial identities to “citizens” would be easy, or even likely. It took two centuries of struggle and compromise for America to get to a point where it could elect a black man with the middle name Hussein as president and then consider replacing him with a Mormon! And that is in a country of immigrants.

But you would also have to be blind and deaf to the deeply authentic voices and aspirations that triggered these Arab awakenings not to realize that, in all these countries, there is a longing — particularly among young Arabs — for real citizenship and accountable and participatory government. It is what many analysts are missing today. That energy is still there, and the Muslim Brotherhood, or whoever rules Egypt, will have to respond to it.

Precisely because Egypt is the opposite of Las Vegas — what happens there never stays there — the way in which the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, ultimately learns to work with the secular, liberal, Salafist and Christian elements of Egyptian society will have a huge impact on all the other Arab awakenings. If Egyptians can forge a workable social contract to govern themselves, it will set an example for the whole region. America midwifed that social contract-writing in Iraq, but Egypt will need a Nelson Mandela.

Can Morsi play that Mandela role? Does he have any surprise in him? The early indications are mixed at best. “As Mohamed Morsi prepares to become Egypt’s first democratically elected president,” Brumberg wrote on foreignpolicy.com, “he will have to decide who he really is: a political unifier who wants one ‘Egypt for all Egyptians’ as he said shortly after he was declared president, or an Islamist partisan devoted to the very proposition that he repeated during the first round of the election campaign, namely that ‘the Quran is our constitution.’

“This is not so much an intellectual choice as it is a political and practical one,” he added. “Morsi’s greatest challenge is to unite a political opposition that has suffered from fundamental divisions between Islamists and non-Islamists, and within each of these camps as well. If his call for a government of national unity merely represents a short-term tactic for confronting the military — rather than a strategic commitment to pluralism as a way of political life — the chances of resuscitating a transition that only days ago was on life support will be very slim indeed.”

It is incumbent on the Muslim Brotherhood to now authentically reach out to the other 50 percent of Egypt — the secular, liberal, Salafist and Christian elements — and assure them that not only will they not be harmed, but that their views and aspirations will be balanced alongside the Brotherhood’s. That is going to require, over time, a revolution in thinking by the Muslim Brotherhood leadership and rank-and-file to actually embrace religious and political pluralism as they move from opposition to governance. It will not happen overnight, but if it doesn’t happen at all, the Egyptian democracy experiment will fail and a terrible precedent will be set for the region.

The U.S. has some leverage in terms of foreign aid, military aid and foreign investment — and we should use it by making clear that we respect the vote of the Egyptian people, and we want to continue to help Egypt thrive, but our support will be conditioned on certain principles. What principles? Our principles?

No. The principles identified by the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report, which was written by and for Arabs. It said that for the Arab world to thrive it needs to overcome its deficit of freedom, its deficit of knowledge and its deficit of women’s empowerment. And, I would add, its deficit of religious and political pluralism. We should help any country whose government is working on that agenda — including an Egypt led by a Muslim Brotherhood president — and we should withhold our support from any that is not.

-This commentary was published first in the New York Times on 26/06/2012

Can Egypt Unite?

By Daniel Brumberg



As Mohammed Morsi prepares to become Egypt's first democratically elected president, he will have to decide who he really is: a political unifier who wants one "Egypt for all Egyptians" as he said shortly after he was declared president, or an Islamist partisan devoted to the very proposition that he repeated during the first round of the election campaign, namely that "the Quran is our constitution."

This is not so much an intellectual choice as it is a political and practical one. Morsi's greatest challenge is to unite a political opposition that has suffered from fundamental divisions between Islamists and non-Islamists, and within each of these camps as well. If his call for a government of national unity merely represents a short-term tactic for confronting the military -- rather than a strategic commitment to pluralism as a way of political life -- the chances of resuscitating a transition that only days ago was on life support will be very slim indeed.

Egypt's fractious political opposition has been an advantage to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to this point. If it fails to unite, the prospects for meaningful change will remain excruciatingly low. The record of transition from autocratic rule is fairly clear:  opposition solidarity is a necessary if insufficient condition for extricating militaries from the realm of civil political life. The record also shows, however, that such unity is hard to achieve when oppositions are divided by fundamental identity conflicts.

Such conflicts have long been a boon to the leaders of the Arab world's "liberalized autocracies." These semi-authoritarian systems survived not merely by brute force, but also by giving both Islamists and non-Islamists protection and patronage and then playing off one against the other. In Egypt, vestiges of this divide and rule strategy persisted well after Mubarak's downfall.  Hopes for defusing a long legacy of political fear mongering in Egypt rested on negotiating "credible guarantees" that assured all key groups that a democratic polity would protect individual and group rights.

While almost all Egyptian political forces have made mistakes, it is important to be clear: the strongest opposition forces had a special burden to reassure those who had the most to fear from a democratic outcome. Some Brotherhood leaders grasped this basic logic, some proved tone deaf, while still others -- such a Dr. Essam el-Erian -- promised political inclusion while asserting in the same breath that secular leaders are irrelevant to Egypt's future.

Such mixed messaging was to be expected. The Brotherhood sought to retain credibility with their base while reaching beyond it. Moreover, they had to pay special attention to the military since it held almost all the cards. Non-Islamists were quick to accuse Islamists of colluding with the SCAF, a behavior that they asserted was hardly new. But placating the military was a popular sport in Egypt's liberalized autocracy, where the line between opposition and collusion had always been blurred. Thus it was hardly surprising that well after Mubarak's fall both Islamist and non-Islamists turned first to the military and then only after that to themselves. Old habits not only die hard, they are sustained absent a significant incentive to jettison them.

The incentive to accommodate stemmed from the mutual perception of both the generals and the Brotherhood that their interests would be best served by avoiding conflict. Brotherhood leaders assumed -- as did many Western scholars -- that Islamists would never get the chance to mobilize an electoral majority sufficiently large to compel the military to cede authority to the parliament. Thus their best strategy was to seek modus vivendi with the SCAF and see where that would take them. However, this calculation only fed non-Islamists' suspicions, thus setting the stage for a series of collisions.

The first such occasion was in the March 2011 referendum on a package of constitutional amendments that defined the timetable for the transition. Predictably, the campaign quickly degenerated into a shouting match. Non-Islamists worried that holding parliamentary elections first and then writing the constitution would not only give electoral victors the means to impose an illiberal constitution, but would do so under the umbrella of the military. But because the referendum provided no alternative course of action in the event of its rejection, Islamists credibly argued that the only way forward was a yes vote. Determined to prevail, some Islamists accused their rivals of being anti-Islamic, while not a few non-Islamists warned that a yes vote would lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state. With neither side listening to the other, and in the wake of a 70% yes vote that some Islamists declared was victory for Islam itself, the seeds of massive distrust were planted and well watered.

This situation escalated after the SCAF issued a new constitutional declaration that went far beyond the few amendments voted for in the March 2011 referendum. Fearing an Islamist-SCAF deal, and dismayed by the courts' failure to hold military and security officials accountable for the violence during and after the January 2011 uprising, revolutionary groups remobilized in Tahrir Square. The ensuing repression of the protestors felt like Groundhog Day. Exposed to the bullets and blows of the security forces, non-Islamists bitterly recalled those early days of the January 2011 revolt, when MB activists joined the protestors only after their efforts seemed to be paying off.

For their part, Brotherhood leaders argued that the protestors were wasting valuable time and energy confronting a regime whose powers could only be attenuated by moving as quickly as possible to parliamentary elections. If this calculation offended young revolutionaries, it was not unreasonable. In the classic "moderate/radical" split that has figured in so many transitions, the Brotherhood played the role of opposition moderates. But in Egypt, the crucial missing element was coordination between the radicals seeking full scale revolution and the moderates trying to negotiate with elements of the old regime.

Splits within the Islamist and non-Islamist camps did little to heal the breach. While a positive sign of political diversification, efforts at ideological bridge building by secular and Islamist youth were not sufficient to create a "third alternative" capable of defusing the increasingly polarized atmosphere. No less than Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had long called for dialogue, warned that Islamists where "hijacking" the revolution. Responding to such claims, leftists such as Hossem El-Hamalawy held that while we should "not stop exposing the hypocrisy of...the Muslim Brethren leadership...we should not give up trying to attract...those (youth) in the Muslim Brethren who are sincerely pro-revolution."  Hamalawy's call for cooperation made sense. During the first nine months of the post-Mubarak period, young MB leaders -- as well as some veteran activists such as Dr. Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh -- were expelled from the organization or saw their efforts to create alternative Islamist groups undermined.

The further fragmenting that these struggles produced came at an especially inauspicious time: by November 2011 members of the SCAF were floating proposals for retaining the military's powers and prerogatives. But with parliamentary elections coming up, the MB mostly refrained from commenting and instead concentrated on the campaign rather than confronting the military.  The scale of the Islamists' victory in those elections redefined the entire stakes of the transition.  With the MB taking 45% and the Salafis 25% of the seats, the fears of both the military and the non-Islamists escalated. After all, both had assumed that elections would produce a fragmented parliament, one in which the Islamists would not have sufficient seats to control next crucial stage in the revolution: the formation of a 100-member constituent assembly charged with writing a new constitution.

It was precisely because this assumption proved incorrect that the struggle over the assembly became so heated. Confronting the possibility of an Islamist-controlled parliament, in late fall 2012 the SCAF created an "advisory council" comprised of leaders from the Islamist and non-Islamists camps. Most groups on both sides agreed to play ball. But when the election results were finalized, the SCAF pushed to have the council play a role in selecting the constituent assembly, thus bypassing the parliament. Sensing a clear bid to undercut them, Brotherhood leader El-Erian warned that "the military wants to delay or disturb  the composition of the assembly, " and that "no people can support this now."

At this point, the onus was on the MB to guarantee non-Islamists enough seats to reassure them that they would have a real say in the drafting of the constitution. El-Erian promised as much in early January 2012. But when the MB selected an assembly that gave Islamists a strong majority, it inflamed the fears of the other trends, and an Egyptian court suspended the newly constituted assembly. In the ensuing months Islamists and non-Islamists MPs pursued fierce negotiations, a contest that the SCAF tried to influence by holding meetings with non-Islamists to discuss their concerns. By April an agreement was reached to split the assembly 50/50. But when Islamists then proposed to include in the "non-Islamist" category groups such as the Wasat Party (which many non-Islamists asserted were Islamists) the agreement fell apart. The matter was not settled until the second week of June 2012. But by the time assembly finally met on June 18, the High Constitutional Court had moved to partly or completely dissolve the parliament. To add injury to insult, many non-Islamists members of the assembly boycotted its opening.

The High Court's decision entailed a last ditch effort by ancien regime apparatchiks to prevent Islamists from taking democratic control of both the presidency and the legislature. In retrospect, the Brotherhood might have been far better off avoiding such a complete -- and thus threatening -- victory by negotiating an agreement with non-Islamists to field a consensus presidential candidate such as Fattouh. But having expelled him from their ranks, and determined to court the Salafi vote, the Brotherhood pursued no such agreement. As for non-Islamists, they too were hardly in a mood for compromise. So, the non-MB vote split between Fattouh, Hamdeen Sibbahi and Ahmed Shafiq. Paradoxically, while the first round suggested that at least fifty percent of the voting electorate preferred an alternative to the Brotherhood, the splitting of the non-Islamist vote produced a Morsi-Shafiq run-off.

During the first round of elections Morsi did little to reassure non-Islamists. As a conservative by nature, he repeatedly proclaimed that the "Quran is our constitution and the Shariah is our Guide" during his nation-wide campaign. To be fair, Fotouh's courting of the Salafis only made matters worse by alienating non-Islamists. But even if he had resisted such populist maneuvers, it is unlikely that the outcome would have been different. By May 2012, the opposition was in tatters.

"Regrets, I have a few," goes the old Sinatra classic. In the second round of elections, Morsi tried to win over non-Islamists and thus repair some of the damage for which he himself was responsible. The impetus for such belated bridge-building multiplied ten fold with the High Court's June 14 decision, and even more so three days later, when SCAF issued supplementary constitutional amendments to protect its powers at the expense of the once powerful presidency.   His efforts, combined with the alienating prospect of a victory for Ahmed Shafik and the restoration of the former Mubarak regime, allowed the Brotherhood's candidate to win by a sufficiently large margin.

The key to the next phase will be whether Morsi learned the right lessons from this turbulent record. Morsi must now make a genuine and sustained effort to include those in the opposition who fear that he is either insincere or incapable of mobilizing his closest allies in the Muslim Brotherhood behind a pluralistic political agenda. The creation of a government of national unity will go some way toward reassuring non-Islamists, as will Morsi's decision to resign from the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice party. Seeking to reinforce this message, in his late night TV address he promised an "Egypt for all Eygptians," one in which "national unity is the only war forward."

He will need such unity in what promises to be a very long struggle. In the coming weeks Morsi will either have to push back against a military that refuses to rescind its recent proclamation or to endorse compromises such as leaving the current parliament intact and reelecting only a third of its members. And even if such an accommodation does become possible, Morsi will have to sell it to the wider populace without being accused of betraying the revolution. That very balancing act could split the opposition yet again. Finally, there is the question of the non-Islamist opposition, particularly its secular revolutionaries. Suspicious of a stronger rival that was not averse to reaching its own accommodations with the military, non-Islamists will have to overcome their deep social, economic and political divisions if they are to carve out an effective role in Egypt's evolving political arena.

That role will be to push for the very constitution for which prominent non-Islamists such as Mohamed El-Baradei once pleaded. The prospects for achieving real democracy will hinge on securing basic constitutional rights for all Egyptians. For this reason, the boycott of the Constituent Assembly must end, its members must get down to business, and the military should allow them to reach consensus without its guidance, interference or even its well-meaning assistance. That, and not simply the election of a new President, will help decide Egypt's fate.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy on 25/06/2012
-Daniel Brumberg is co-director of Democracy and Governance Studies at Georgetown University and senior advisor at the United States Institute of Peace

Morsi Named New Egyptian President

By Ernesto Londoño and Karin Brulliard from Cairo



Egypt’s electoral commission announced Sunday that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi would be sworn in as president, becoming the Arab world’s first elected Islamist head of state after more than a year of popular uprisings that ousted autocrats and fueled the rise of political Islam in the region.

Although Egypt’s ruling generals blunted the power of the presidency shortly after polls closed last weekend, Morsi’s victory represented a remarkable turn of fortunes. The organization was outlawed and systematically suppressed for decades, including under the three-decade regime of deposed former president Hosni Mubarak.

Election officials said Morsi beat former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, whom he had faced in a runoff. Presidential election commission chief Farouk Sultan said Morsi won by a slim margin, winning almost 52 percent of votes cast.

As soon as the news broke, Brotherhood supporters in Tahrir Square erupted in cheers and fired off a flurry of firecrackers.

A Morsi loss could have generated serious political instability; Brotherhood supporters had vowed to continue their demonstrations if that was the outcome, saying it would have amounted to electoral theft.

But the terms under which Morsi will hold office, and the sway his Islamist supporters will have, remain uncertain. The announcement capped a week of intrigue and rumors about whether the country’s ruling generals were seeking to broker a power-sharing deal with the Brotherhood before signing off on the 60-year-old group’s electoral victory.

Morsi, a U.S.-educated engineer, became the Brotherhood’s candidate after the group’s top choice was disqualified from the race. Morsi will immediately assume a role that was emasculated in a constitutional decree issued by the country’s military leaders shortly after the polls closed on June 17. The document made the incoming president subservient to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which will continue to operate without oversight.

Because the Brotherhood-dominated parliament was recently dissolved by the military after a court ruling, Morsi will remain in the short term the sole counterweight to the generals. Although the role of the presidency could be further altered once a new constitution is written in the coming months, Morsi is expected to have at least some significant powers in the short term. He will likely appoint a new cabinet that would dislodge stalwarts of Mubarak’s regime who have held on to powerful posts during the past 17 months of military rule.

Egyptians had awaited Sunday’s announcement with baited breath, fearing a victory for either candidate could spark unrest and violence. Both candidates have claimed they won and dueling rallies in recent days have been seen of harbingers of a potentially explosive reaction by the losing camp.

The Brotherhood had said Morsi won 53 percent of votes cast in last week’s runoff election against Shafiq. The election commission delayed announcing formal results until Sunday, fueling speculation that the results were being rigged.

In Cairo, public servants were dismissed from work early in the afternoon so they could be home before the announcement, which was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m., but was delayed Banks and several other businesses closed early. Some foreign-run organizations were asked by embassies to be on alert; a number had updated evacuation plans in the event the coming days turn violent.

Brotherhood supporters have been holding massive rallies in Cairo’s Tahrir Square this week. The events have had a celebratory vibe, but they have also been interpreted as a warning of the kind of street reaction the military could face if Shafiq is proclaimed winner.

Supporters of Shafiq, a former air force chief who served as Mubarak’s last prime minister, has also held victory rallies, most notably a large one Saturday night during which they exalted their candidate and criticized the Brotherhood.

-This article was published in The Washington Post on the 22/06/2012

Carnage In The Streets Of Iraq

By Daniel DePetris


                                                          Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

In the most violent day in Iraq since the United States pulled out its remaining troops  last December, a series of well-thought-out and coordinated terrorist strikes across the country killed approximately 80 Iraqis last Wednesday. As is usually the case in Iraq, members of the Shia community constituted most of the casualties, with some of the most powerfully built bombs detonated in neighborhoods jammed packed with Shia worshipers making their way to northern Baghdad on a religious commemoration ceremony. The BBC puts the death toll at 84, with police and security forces included in the number.  The British-based Independent placed the number in the seventies. Yet whatever the casualty count actually happens to be, the attacks this week demonstrated just how insecure life in Iraq still is, even if overall violence in the country is at an all-time low since 2003.
 
The assault is disturbingly familiar to the types of attacks that Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, has executed over the past decade.  Explosives-packed cars, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices along busy roadways, and mortar attacks on Shia neighborhoods have been, when taken together, Al-Qaeda’s preferred set of tactics. And indeed, Wednesday’s attack made use of many of these same devices—a car bomb explosion near a busy restaurant packed with Shia pilgrims one hour, and a targeted killing of an Iraqi government employee in the next.

The total of 130 Iraqi civilians killed last month will surely be surpassed in June, with more than a week to go before the month is finally over. As if to underscore how deadly the past week has been for Iraq’s Shia community, Sunni militants followed up their Wednesday attack with a pair of car bomb explosions last Saturday, on the final day of the religious commemoration, killing 26. An additional 22 Iraqis died two days later, when an unidentified suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt in a roomful of packed mourners for a high-level Shia tribal figure in the city of Baquba.

As usual, those responsible for the bombings this week were hardly original in either choosing their targets orjustifying the violence. The Iraqi government’s opponents, particularly those Sunni Islamist groups who have yet to lay down their weapons, have long marked Shia religious holidays as an opportunity to kill as many of that sect’s members as possible. In the first week of the year, militants from Al-Qaeda in Iraq quietly unleashed a suicide attacker disguised as a pilgrim into a crowd of Shia worshipers commemorating the Arbaeenholiday, a 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Over 50 pilgrims were killed in that breach of security, leading some Iraqis to fear that Al-Qaeda was regaining steam after years of being battered by U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Practically speaking, it would take a tremendous amount of sustainable violence to return to the dark days of 2006 and 2007. The impulse of revenge that Shia militias acted on after an Al-Qaeda attack is not as large as it once was, partly because the Shia are now in nominal control of the central government.

As long as Shia leaders feel that they have the upper hand, this dream is unlikely to come true.  However, the secondary affect of these bombings—contributing to a general sense of insecurity among the Iraqi people and less confidence in their government—may be just as important for militants like AQI in the long run. Every major act of violence feeds into a disturbing narrative that has become all too often normal in everyday Iraqi discourse; the Iraqi security forces are incapable of stopping or minimizing the costs and damage of terrorism.

It is unlikely that this year’s version of AQI will set off another round of sectarian clashes in the capital.  Nevertheless, if massive terrorist attacks continue to be a recurring problem, a large wedge may well be driven between the Iraqi people and their leaders. Coupled with the Iraqi government’s inability to pass key legislation (the only major law that has gotten through the parliament this year has been the national budget) and the internal deadlock within Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s governing coalition over power-sharing, the already poor legitimacy of the current political system could decline even further. Ultimately, itis mass resentment and a lack of faithin the political process that will prove to be more threatening to Iraq than the rekindling of a sectarian civil war.

The more frequently that terrorists are able to execute bold operations successfully, the more likely that the Iraqi people will continue to lose confidence in their politicians. Terrorism will not be eradicated from Iraq completely, but it can be diminished or contained at an acceptable level. Although it would surely be portrayed as a blow to Iraq’s newfound sense of national sovereignty and independence, it may be time for the prime minister to elicit additional assistance from the United States—a level of cooperation that has gone down since Washington withdrew its military last yearand redeployed some of its intelligence capability.

Yet even help from the United States on the counterterrorism front will not bridge the gap betweenthe people and their representatives in the long term. Only Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems, starting with an easing of the numerous political crises that are engulfing Baghdad, can begin to achieve that objective. There is no greater defeat for a young democratic system than if citizens turn away from the very same people they elected in the first place. Allowing thestatus quo to persist will virtually guarantee such a result for Iraq.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy In Focus on 22/06/2012
- Daniel R. DePetris is the senior associate editor of the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis.  He is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus

The Twisted Arc Of History

In the land of no-good-options, is Barack Obama doing enough to push the cause of human rights in the Middle East?

BY JAMES TRAUB



This has been a week, or two, to try men's souls. Egypt's military rulers, tiring of the flimsy trappings of democracy, dissolved the parliament, reinstated martial law, and promulgated a constitutional declaration arrogating virtually  all legislative power to themselves. That was the banner headline, but Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, not wishing to be outdone, instructed the "executive agencies" to take "the necessary legal measures" to deal with those who criticize the military, whose chief business over the last year had been beating and jailing protestors. And let's not forget the Libyan militia leaders who kidnapped and imprisoned officials from the International Criminal Court.

At such moments we must remind ourselves that the path to democracy is long and winding, the arc of history bends towards justice, and so forth. Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, worked in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, and he reminded me a few days ago that democratizing states which regress do, in the end, "fall back on the institutions they've had in the past." That's an encouraging thought for Chile or Hungary but not, as Posner acknowledges, for Libya, or for that matter any other Arab state. They have no such institutions to fall back on. Nor did Russia, or Ukraine, for example, which reverted to strongman rule after an unhappy spell with liberal reform. The arc of history bends in all sorts of directions.

Well, what then? How should the disheartening state of affairs in Egypt and elsewhere, and the recognition that things might not turn out well in the end, shape the behavior of the United States and other outside actors? There's a good case to be made that Washington should stand aside, let events play themselves out, and help whoever comes out on top pick up the pieces of the inevitable wreckage -- a case cogently, if brutally, made in a recent column by Les Gelb. Foreign Policy's own Aaron David Miller made a similar argument for a policy of benign neglect on Syria. There's an honorable  precedent to the realist case for restraint: As then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams famously declared in a July 4, 1821, oration: The United States "is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

There's a lot to be said for a prudent impartiality in the face of turmoil and profound uncertainty. But haven't we also learned about the costs of such prudence? Condoleezza Rice was quite right when she said in Cairo in 2005, "For 60 years my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we got neither." The United States not only got neither, it also got a well-deserved reputation for supporting friendly autocrats, a reputation which made the country feared and disliked across the region. That didn't matter much while the autocrats ran the show, but that era has come to an end. Even in Egypt, public opinion now matters; and it behooves Washington, even if only for reasons of self-interest, to align itself with people's aspirations.

The Obama administration has, if anything, erred on the side of this imprudent prudence. The administration was slow to criticize President Hosni Mubarak as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to protest his rule in January 2011, and even slower to criticize the regime in Bahrain as it met peaceful protestors with tear gas, live ammunition, prison, and torture. Prudence is Barack Obama's watchword. There are far worse guides to action, particularly the magical faith in American power which propelled President George W. Bush after 9/11; but silence, too, can have unexpected costs. A national-security official was recently quoted in the New Yorker confessing, of Obama's decision to soft-pedal criticism of the fraudulent 2009 elections in Iran, "It turned out that what we intended as caution, the Iranians saw as weakness."

Obama believed, with very good reason, that nothing he said would advance the cause of reform on Iran, and he was not about to belabor Tehran just to burnish his own democratic credentials. Right now, the Arab world feels equally impervious to American influence.

The administration has issued appropriate criticism of the rolling coup now occurring in Egypt, but nothing Washington says or does, almost certainly including threats to cut military aid, is likely to deflect the military from its apparent goal of keeping the Muslim Brotherhood from taking power, and of hanging on to its own preeminent role. Similarly, Washington has remonstrated Bahrain, including through public remarks by Michael Posner during a visit to Manama last week, but the king, a Sunni, seems determined not to yield an inch to demands for more equal treatment by the majority Shiite population. In Bahrain, too, the United States has substantial leverage in the form of the Fifth Fleet, which is quartered there, but the king and his hard-line advisors are convinced that the protests threaten their very survival, and are unlikely to be moved by American suasion or threats.

So why bother then? Why remonstrate, much less threaten, if Washington can't do much to produce the outcomes it wants? Because, put simply, the difference between a bad outcome and a not-so-bad outcome matters so much. "Boy, have we helped the Libyan people into a new, free and democratic life," Gelb writes sardonically of the bombing campaign which ended the Muammar al-Qaddafi regime. The country, as he observes, seems poised to dissolve into a series of militarized city-states. And yet the Libyan people themselves are almost unanimous in believing themselves better off without Qaddafi. They desperately want everything they have lost out on over the last four decades. What the United State -- and others -- can do to help Libya become a coherent, functional, and democratic state is modest, but it's not nothing either. Posner, who was also just in Libya, says that the Justice Department is helping to organize a criminal justice system there. If the government can prosecute a few of Qaddafi's henchmen, the militias now acting as private jailers might begin to turn over their prisoners. It's certainly worth a try.

Of course, the big question now is Syria. Just as it's possible that the NATO intervention in Libya will have helped create a country as violent and even unjust as the one that existed before, so to could Western intervention in Syria have undreamed-of consequences. That strikes me as one good reason -- I can think of others -- not to re-enact the NATO air war in Syria. But it's not a good reason for the United States to stand aside while President Bashar al-Assad slaughters his own citizens. The Obama administration cannot adopt a prudent neutrality between Assad and those he is killing.

Aaron David Miller writes that Barack Obama is rightly more concerned about his own political future than about the lives of Syrians. Is it naïve of me to hope, and believe, that that's not the case? I think Obama's hand has been stayed by the fact that there's just no good solution, and that Russia has blocked attempts at even modestly better options. The question now before the administration is whether it will accept that Russia can not be brought around, and instead work with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others to strengthen both the political and military capacity of the Syrian rebels. Recent news accounts imply that it is moving in that direction. In general, Obama has done the right thing during the Arab Spring, if not always exactly at the right time or with quite enough conviction.

Can we say for sure that this is the most effective way to advance American national security interests? No. The future of the Arab world really is impossible to predict from what feels like the eye of the hurricane. But sometimes -- and perhaps especially when things look most grim -- it's not enough to be the detached well-wisher of freedom.

-This commentary was published first in Foreign Policy in its July/August issue
-James Traub is a fellow of the Center on International Cooperation