Lee Smith: Obama's Middle East Policy a Legacy of the Collapse of European Colonial Empires
Last week President Barack Obama’s administration announced that it was going to engage Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. As the White House explained, American officials from previous administrations have already met with members of the prominent Islamist party—a party that, it’s worth noting, has been resolutely anti-Western and viciously anti-Zionist since its founding in 1928. Obama administration officials said that they wish to expand contacts with the Brotherhood because they perceive, correctly, that the movement is likely to become an even bigger factor in regional politics.
The Arab Spring surely has something to do with Obama’s new approach, but it is hardly the sole or even the main cause of a shift that has turned U.S. Middle East policy on its head. So, what is?...
Perhaps, as some right-wing critics claim, Obama’s policy is the product of something worse, or more sinister, like a blueprint to weaken America on behalf of its enemies? Except this doesn’t fly either. Obama’s no Manchurian candidate, brainwashed by U.S. enemies during his schooldays in Indonesia to ruin the country. Instead, what all these theories miss is that Obama is simply a representative man of the post-World War II American Ivy League intelligentsia, which came to see the United States in a context shaped by the collapse of the European colonial empires under the weight of greed and barbarity....
Obama has locked in Washington’s losses in the Middle East while ignoring opportunities to hurt U.S. adversaries like Syria and Iran. But sooner or later he will have to act there, too. It cost Obama nothing to ditch Mubarak, alienate the Israelis and the Saudis, or even wage a thoughtless war against Qadaffi. But if he crosses the line with the Iranians, as they rush to build a nuclear bomb, they have the power to retaliate by causing regional havoc and raising the price of oil to $150 a barrel—making the current global economic mess seem like a profitable holiday season and ensuring a Republican victory in 2012. The fact is that letting the Iranians get the bomb is a much worse outcome. Even if it has little effect on the president’s re-election chances, Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf would spell long-term disaster and shape Obama’s historical legacy. The lesson that the president needs to learn from his mistakes is that the status quo is worth preserving because change is dangerous in the Middle East, where things can always get worse. So far, that’s exactly what has been happening.