The United States’ public position on Egypt is “flexible.” That in and of itself is not surprising, given the ambiguities surrounding the Cairo uprising. Mubarak’s Egypt originally offered the United States a continuance of Anwar Sadat’s Cold War anti-Soviet alliance, and later provided a relatively stable strategic partner in the increasingly terror-ridden Middle East. Mubarak’s own escalating authoritarian tendencies were mostly ignored by successive administrations — at best, because he appeared less murderous than the usual Middle East authoritarians and postured as an opponent of the radical Islamists who would otherwise ostensibly rise to power, and, at worse, because realists worried only about how Egypt figured into U.S. strategic objectives, without much concern for the human rights of its citizenry. In any case, a cumulative $50 billion–plus in aid was felt to have given the United States some influence in Egyptian governance, should Mubarak have deteriorated into something akin to Saddam Hussein.
When the protests in Egypt followed the Tunisian unrest, it was hard to discern the breadth of support of the dissidents or exactly what their anti-Mubarak demands boded — anarchy, eventual secular constitutional government, Islamist democracy in the fashion of Turkey, the emergence of another strongman, or a pathway to theocracy in the manner of Iran. But it was easy to see that a return of Egypt to its hostile, anti-Western posture of 1952–1973 would be a strategic disaster to the United States and its allies.
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Moreover, the U.S. has always been aware of the disturbing contradiction that Arab authoritarians such as Mubarak were in some sense more liberal than the constituents whose rights they so shamefully abused — at least in matters of anti-Westernism, anti-Semitism, and adherence to sharia law. Plebiscites without true constitutional government and an independent judiciary most likely would lead to a Hamas-like one-vote, one-time climate of terror, not a society like Switzerland’s. Moreover, Westernized Arab elites who talked eloquently about human rights often did so from abroad, failed to represent a majority of their countrymen, or located their idealism in the easy landscape of anti-Americanism.
In other words, all that history and ambiguity might have prompted American officials to maintain a solidarity and uniformity in careful and guarded public commentary, and to consistently stress constitutional principles and legal processes — offering support for steady but careful transition to consensual government, and skepticism of the Muslim Brotherhood — rather than to give wildly erratic assessments of the main Egyptian players. But that was not to be.
If we were to collate all the pronouncements of Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, and President Obama, the administration believes that Mubarak is a dictator and not a dictator, a strategic ally and an embarrassing liability — and that he must leave immediately, soon, perhaps as soon as possible, but he should also transition Egypt into a constitutional state right now, this summer, next fall, but then should leave if he is somehow not already gone.
We can glean from all this that there is no official policy spokesperson. We can also conclude that the administration’s private conversations with Egyptian officials will be explained to the press in a way that makes Obama, Biden, and Clinton seem decisive, wise, and formidable — and increasingly unreliable to their Egyptian counterparts. And we will be told that the Obama administration — which on coming into office jettisoned the entire Bush approach to human rights in the Middle East (“reset”) as hopelessly neoconservative — was all along a strong promoter of freedom and consensual government and is in some way to be credited for the protests (but only if they do not descend into permanent chaos). What is going on here?
Mr. Hanson, thanks for the work. You write of POTUS BHO; VPOTUS J?B; and SOS HRC...
"They sound as confused and political as they did in 2007, but unfortunately, this time around they are no longer blustering senators with presidential ambitions and without responsibility for the implementation of U.S. foreign policy."
It is one thing when politicians play politics about minor domestic issue, but it is quite another when they do so about an international matter of life and death. This crew seemed unaware that what they said was being heard around the world and would be taken as real policy by enemies and friends. Fortunately, BO inherited some people like Petraeus and Gates, who managed to inject a bit of reality into Obama's dream world.
Don't forget the leader of the Senate Harry Reid (the Dingy One) openly said we had lost the war, not caring one bit how that would affect our military or help our enemy.
Our historic first Islamic apostate president and his administration are unrepentant in their use of opportunist political calculus to settle our foreign affairs because of the impossibility of the world’s citizens to vote in our elections.
Here at home, most of the public is deaf to this ritual cacophony in US foreign policy because there’s nothing to understand. Then when the unraveling of leftist policy chaos is smothered by the tribal media’s rationalizations, there is no more noise for the public hear.
All politics is local, and foreign affairs are, well, foreign.
No surprises here. The amateurism of our current leadership is astounding. It sickens me every time I hear about American casualties in Afghanistan. Where are the milestone "number of killed" headlines like the ones we had to endure during the Iraq war? Is it because it is Obama's "good" war?
The 2008 Presidential election should be our "teachable moment"; not beer summits. The disingenuous policy stances, the slips of the lip (spread the wealth around) and embarrasing gaffes (57 states) need the disinfecting sunshine of a responsible media.
While the Shah of Iran may have had some skeletons in his closet (like Mubarak), who among us feels that Iranians are better off with the Ayatollah and a seriously demented Ahmadinejad (sp?) who intends to arm himself with nukes, after which he will be extremely dangerous. We now know that the world is much WORSE off becasue we didn't support the Shah.
Then, why does this administration support the ouster of Mubarak when he WILL be replaced by a process beyond anyone's control? Egyptians, like Iranians, may very well be worse off under the rule of radial Islam or whoever takes over.
Why does President Obama feel that Mubarak should listen to the Egyptian protestors, most of whom are young, unemployed and don't really know what they want, many of them gang related, yet Obama completely ignored the PEACEFUL protestors (Tea Partiers) in his OWN capital when they gathered to register their discontent WITH HIM? Instead of listening to them, as he says Mubarak should do, he and his minions (with the help of the press), set out to cast aspersions on the Tea Partiers, calling them racists, homophobes, skin heads, and gun toting religous zealots. I have met Tea Partiers, and they are mostly older taxpayers, people who have paid into the system on a massive scale, without asking to draw from the system. Obama thinks their feelings and concerns don't matter, but he'll stick up for a bunch of crazies in Cairo who he has never met, whose intentions he doesn't know. What a hypocrite!!
It's not fair to blame the hirelings for the incoherence of this administration. The problem arises from the tension between sober analysis of a given situation, weighing the options and making the choices most likely to benefit our national interests, and the President's consistent knee-jerk default to lefty schoolboy blame America first posturing. The President's subordinates try to do the best they can, but the boss's unexamined dogmatism, in combination with his sense of infallibility, will always frustrate them.
180 Out thinks that "[i]t's not fair to blame the hirelings for the incoherence of this administration."
Actually, yes it is, especially when the "hirelings" were hired specifically for the task of advising the President on these exact types of problems. What else do you think the Secretary of State does? Do you think our chief diplomat merely takes a passive role and doesn't influence policy?
And wasn't Joe Biden's supposed "expertise" on foreign policy (never mind that he's been wrong on 100% of all foreign policy questions since he finished DEAD LAST in his class at SU Law) the very reason Obama nominated him in the first place as VP? Was he not the deliverer of "gravitas" to a presidential candidate with ZERO accomplishments?
And yet, we are told by an NRO reader that we cannot at all blame the president's two chief foreign policy advisers for a foreign policy we think is confused and wrong-headed. ????
Hey, 180 - I'm sure this is EXACTLY what you said about Don Rumsfeld, right?
Or, more likely, you chose your screen name - 180 - on the basis of the complete about-face your brain has performed to lead you to conclude that Biden and Clinton are mere innocent by-standers to Obama's foreign policy.
Not only can I attribute blame to Biden and Clinton for Obama's confusion, but I can identify them as the TWO CHIEF CAUSES FOR OBAMA'S CONFUSION!
Clinton and Biden are so purely political, and utterly confused about foreign policy, that their advice is the direct cause of Obama's drifting foreign policies.
In Obama's case, the hirelings are his primary problem. It's real real hard to find a dumber human being than Joe Biden, and one that's more narcissistic than anyone named Clinton.
180 Out - Joe Biden would not know a "sober analysis" if one was surgically implanted into his brain's neurotransmitters.
@Richard: For the dems, I'd also throw the Haiti experience of the 90s in (reinstalling a vehemently anti-US president) - look where that's got us today..
What I don't understand is the shock - we knew this was coming. Its "voting present" - waiting until the outcome is decided then coming down on the 'winning side". It's been displayed in both domestic and international policies since the Illinois Senate... avoid the thorny issues, avoid decisions by any means (including "above my pay grade") and stress fluff over substance. look good, sound good.
All that's left is a poseur, and folks are finally waking up to that.
Hey Madisonian,
Biden was only 76th out of 85 at SU Law. In undergrad at UD, he managed 2 A's in Phys Ed and an F in ROTC. So, I think he is qualified to be Veep in the Obama administration.
VDH hits the nail on the head again. Even with the general media reporting Obama's and his administration's foreign affairs missteps in the least critical light, it still comes through clearly that the three political animals named in the article are out of their depth in matters strategic and geopolitical - and, worse, that they do not care to learn.
VDH once again demonstrates wisdom and understanding that is totally missing from those now in charge of foreign policy.
It is a shame that it requires an historian to remind people of things done and said over the past four years, as opposed to prior decades and centuries. You would think that would be a chore performed by a media supposedly dedicated to coverage of CURRENT affairs. Instead, every new event and every new action is presented without context, perspective or any sense of reality; and those who stumble along making a muck of what is happening do so knowing that their own prior words and actions will never be used against them, or even surface again to serve as a reminder of their past folly.
At best, we should classify America's forced regime change in Iraq as a grand experiment, and leave it at that. Bush and his neoconservatives were always but one step removed from progressives, albeit with a somewhat different rationalization for their actions. As far as classically liberal democarcy goes, it now has been proven that neither Iraq nor any Islamic geopolitical entity such as Egypt will ever graduate beyond the "two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner" veneer of ballot-box, purple-thumbed democracy. The culture of Islam will simply not allow otherwise. Why we are enjoined to keep pretending otherwise is simply due to progressives' overwhelming power over the public dialogue that is permitted in the West, including its ostensibly alternative conservative punditry.
