Well, one thing you can say for David Broder’s latest column is that at least he realizes that navigating the crisis in Egypt is beyond his pay grade. The problem is that he falsely assumes that it is beyond anyone’s pay grade. This is the kind of stuff we elect and pay our presidents to figure out and execute. If they screw it up, then they probably came up with the wrong answers. No, we can’t control everything, but knowing that is part of coming up with a proper strategy, not an excuse that removes any responsibility for taking tough decisions.
There is a feeling that is quite prevalent on the left, and which I sometimes feel quite strongly myself, that most of our problems in the world are the result of too much action, not too little. We could examine the ways in which this is true, and one can certainly construct a very robust critique of U.S. foreign policy along these lines. Yet, the truth is we cannot shrug off our position in the world. To understand our position, all you had to do was watch last week’s joint press conference between President Obama and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Here was the first question out of the box.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: All right, we’ve got time for a couple of questions. I’m going to start with Alister Bull.
Q Thank you very much, Mr. President. Is it conceivable to you that a genuine process of democratic reform can begin in Egypt while President Mubarak remains in power, or do you think his stepping aside is needed for reform even to begin?
And to Prime Minister Harper, on the energy issue, did you discuss Canada’s role as a secure source of oil for the United States, and in particular, did you receive any assurances the U.S. administration looks favorably on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone Pipeline to the Gulf Coast? Thank you.
What’s striking is that Harper’s opinion on Egypt was not solicited.
The next (Canadian) reporter also asked Harper about the proposed pipeline, and about privacy and sovereignty issues related to open borders and a more integrated economy. As an afterthought, he did ask Harper his opinion on Mubarak. His response? “On the question of Egypt, let me just agree fully with what President Obama has said.”
He went on to echo points Obama had already made.
In reality, we are the country who brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. We’re the ones give those two countries billions of dollars in aid annually. We are the ones who are in the center of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And, if a future Egyptian government is going to honor not only the commitments made at Camp David thirty-two years ago, but countless ongoing bilateral relations with our country, we’re the only ones who can facilitate that. We have leverage that Canada does not. We can choose to use that leverage, or not to use it, but we do have it.
And, that is both the problem with U.S. foreign policy and the reason why the world looks to us in many situations to take a leadership role. While we frequently get burned by our own hubris, our real error isn’t so much that we have a leadership role, but that we are too selfish, too inconsistent in applying our highest values, and sometimes, just too fearful to make good policy. In the present case, excessive fear of the Muslim Brotherhood is exactly the kind of brain malady that can lead us to make bad decisions.
We can see our leadership vacillating between what they know is right, and other stances that are more cautious and clearly based on fear. It’s not that we have no control over what happens in Egypt. We have tremendous control…too much control. The right answer is probably to relinquish some of that control. Ride the horse with a loose grip of the reins. Accept that there is a wider breadth of acceptable outcomes than the fearful would have us believe. Let events proceed on Egyptian lines, guided by little more than some basic outlines based, obviously, on our willingness to continue our generous aid package and bilateral arrangements.
I envy the Canadians that they don’t have these responsibilities, or the blowback that comes as a consequence. But, I don’t think things should be this way. America shouldn’t be in the position of guiding the fate of nations. Not like this. Our allies should bear more of the burden. And, at the same time, they should have more say so. Reporters should be just as interested in what the Canadian prime minister thinks as what the president of the United States thinks.
As for David Broder, if he thinks the United States can be understood by reference to the Chicago Cubs, he’s a defeatist. And his writing is getting more incoherent every day.
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“… if a future Egyptian government is going to honor not only the commitments made at Camp David thirty-two years ago…”
You and the Netanyahu place the burdon of responsibility on Egypt and its leader. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, coming from communist East-Europe and the 1989 turmoil, says it best: “Grab the opportunity and make peace with the Palestinians.” Israeli media and MK’s prefer to speak about tension and the need for security of its borders. It’s so much easier when you have made friends as neighbours instead of the attempt to bomb them into submission. As I said earlier, decades have gone by of lost opportunity. The bunker mentality of Israel and Zionist goals forced the wrong choices ever since President Sadat visited Jerusalem to extend his hand inpeace.
Israel has also failed the second part of the peace treaty with Egypt. This caused the cold shoulder from President Mubarak towards Israel. Wonder how the U.S./CIA managed to bribe him over the years.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I didn’t discuss Israel’s obligations, only our interests in Egypt.
Question: What interests does the US have in Egypt? Answer: Israel. Otherwise the US wouldn’t even give Egypt the time of day.
Israel is a big one to be sure, but a lot of oil (and other goods) moves through the Suez Canal, too.
Excellent post, Booman. Our responsibility and our capacity for appropriate engagement. Important to note that the Obama admin appears to be shifting the balance or center of gravity of our involvement from guiding the fate of nations towards carrying out USA engagement through consensus in international alliances. Not just that it drives the neocons mad (re: Iran, for example, the most salient instance), but the neocons (for one) actually have no theoretical framework from which to understand the shift the Obama admin is undertaking. The absence of theoretical framework is a problems for progressives as well, who to a great extent counter the “America should guide the fate of nations” with isolationism, which, as you explain well, just is not an option and is not what other nations expect of us.
My reading of the feeling of much of the left is that talk is action, that making statements constitutes action and that behind the scenes or open action without statements is not to be trusted.
That ignores the fact that the question, just as in domestic politics, is what possible actions are available to a US president. Post-W, those available actions are much fewer than existed previously.
A second question what constitutes the correct action for the US to take. Sometimes the correct action is restraint; other times it is more energetic engagement or the obvious use of power.
A third is who should ultimately be responsible for events.
The Obama administration is being blamed for 65 years, possibly longer, or narrow-sighted and now failed policies with respect to the Middle East, policies whose so national interests seemed to be either driven by conflicts elsewhere or by cynical commercial interests. This day of reckoning is long overdue; we had warnings in 1973 and 1979, but we persisted in failed policies. Now the question is what the new policy should be.
The left needs to start having those policy discussions internally instead of reciting the same old rhetoric about the same old things. The world post-W has definitively changed domestically and internationally. And seems poised to change yet again.
The press is pushing a narrative that the US is vacillating between what it knows as right and caution. Even Al Jazeera-English broadcast is pushing this narrative. My reading of events is that when the history of the events in Egypt are written, the US role will be seen to have been both minimal and helpful. And the US power to affect events will be seen as marginal.
The US in a budget deficit is no longer credible for the reliability of its foreign aid. And there are emerging alternatives for aid.
The US hyperpower has been shown to have been an illusion that actual war destroyed. US threats mean less than they used to.
As the recession drags on, the US argument that it is the essential economic market is becoming more hollow.
Those are the legacy of George W. Bush, and we have not escaped them because of the Republican Party’s desire at all costs not to be seen as having produced a disaster.
We still have allies, but the critical ally in this situation is not the European Union but Turkey. And Erdogan has clearly called for Mubarak to step down.
Reporters, including Al Jazeera English, need to stop talking to the leaders of North America and Europe and start talking to Erdogan, Amr Moussa of the Arab League, even King Abdullah of Jordan (who is under the same democratic pressure). Not for recommending what should happen in Egypt but to tell what they are doing to respond to the democratic movements.
David Broder is irrelevant, except to irritate progressives and create a diversion. More and more he is manifesting signs of senile dementia. It is way past time for “the Dean” to retire.
Bravo.
Obama is quietly not trying to weigh in with a heavy foot. This is a true change in foreign policy.
The TransCanada pipeline is a concern. It would go though an aquifer. That whole deal is a real mess. I hope it doesn’t go through.
Israel continues with their sense of exceptionalism and entitlement?
Even Bradley Burston has come around.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/as-an-israeli-i-want-the-egyptians-to-win-1.340
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You can’t separate the American financed dictators from the Palestinian issue.
Sure you can. Until 1973, American-financed dictators were “bulwarks against Communism”. They also happened to be in oil-rich countries for the most part. That did not include Gamal Abdul Nasser who tried to be non-aligned but was believed in the US to be a client of the Soviet Union; he didn’t have oil, but he had a canal that was a route for transporting oil.
Israel is not valuable to the US in and of itself; it is a foothold in the Middle East, a reliable one. Yasar Arafat and other Palestinian groups put the Palestinian issue back on the diplomatic table by hijacking airplanes. Black September put the issue on the table by killing Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. And exactly as the West was moving to negotiate the Palestinian issue after Camp David, Likud was moving to make sure that the issue would never be settled. A democratic Middle East much like Turkey weakens Israel’s claim to be a “source of stability” in the Middle East; indeed, it shows the falsity of that claim.
The day before Harper met with Obama, the Canadian foreign minister Lawrence Cannon said that the Canadian government believed that, contrary to the Obama administration position, Mubarak should stay on as Egypt’s leader. In Canada, this was widely seen as a pander to Israel.
Then in Washington, less than 24 hours later, Harper tells your press corps that he agrees with Obama about Mubarak leaving right away.
Wha???
It was this type of incoherent unprincipled pandering that caused our Conservative government to lose the UN vote last year for one of the temporary seats in the Security Council. Harper spent a million dollars trying to impress UN delegates with maple syrup and photos of Mounties. Then when the vote was announced, and we found out Canada had lost to Portugal, Cannon immediately blamed the loss on the Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff.
If you guys ever want to find out what your government would look like if Sarah Palin was elected president, just look at how the Harper Conservatives are running Canada.
“This is the kind of stuff we elect and pay our presidents to figure out and execute. “
Do you seriously not understand that this is exactly the kind of stuff that is so far beyond your presidents’ pay grade that they should not be allowed to touch it? Ever?!
I’m not sure that there is a pay grade for folks competent to touch it. Heads of state seem to be all we have. And generals. Take your choice.
BooMan, I grew up in the Chicago area and yes I am a Cubs fan to this day. But honestly, I read Mr. Broder’s piece twice and could not make any sense of it. Something about how Sheridan Road turns into Lake Shore Drive? I do truly hate to say this, but perhaps it is that time in David Broder’s life when he should seriously consider retirement. He no longer is making any sense.