Amid Arab protests, U.S. influence has waned

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/03/AR2011020306882_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011020302787

Amid Arab protests, U.S. influence has waned

By Liz Sly
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 4, 2011; 4:04 AM

BAGHDAD - In days gone by, it was pretty much guaranteed that any  
demonstration in the Arab world would feature burning American flags  
and a blazing effigy or two of the U.S. president.

At the pro-democracy demonstrations on the streets of Cairo and  
elsewhere, references to the United States have been conspicuously  
absent, a sign of what some analysts are already calling a "post- 
American Middle East" of diminished U.S. influence and far greater  
uncertainty about America's role.

For just as burning flags are not part of the current repertoire,  
neither are demonstrators carrying around models of the Statue of  
Liberty, as Chinese activists brought to Tiananmen Square in 1989.  
Middle East activists say they avoid references to the United States  
as a political role model for fear of alienating potential supporters,  
said Toujan Faisal, a veteran democracy campaigner in Jordan who has  
been advising young protesters in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

"I don't think America appeals to the younger generation," she said.  
"I'm cautious not to present them with the American example because  
there's a negative attitude to America, a disappointment."

No one yet knows what kind of Middle East will emerge from Cairo's  
embattled streets: a newly democratic one, an increasingly radicalized  
one, or perhaps one in which authoritarian regimes tighten their grip.  
Events in Cairo are unfolding too rapidly to predict, but one possible  
outcome could be a more visibly anti-American drift.

Still, it is notable that even the most rabid protests against  
President Hosni Mubarak have focused on his reign, rather than on the  
American role in enabling it.

Reform of a particular sort could actually bolster U.S. interests if  
it allows more open commerce and development of a strong middle class  
in societies often split today between a connected rich and a  
dispossessed poor.

Yet America's role could also be greatly diminished in an area that  
remains vital to its national interests, but where the perception has  
grown of a superpower with few friends beyond Israel and a coterie of  
authoritarian Arab rulers.




The Obama administration's initial, tepid response to the crisis, with  
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling Mubarak's regime  
"stable" and Vice President Biden declaring that he didn't regard  
Mubarak as a dictator, did little to endear Washington to a region  
that has long yearned for political reform.

President Obama has since adopted a tougher stance, but his language  
has not gone far enough to convince Arabs puzzled by America's seeming  
inability to embrace a revolt that they think coincides with America's  
own ideals, said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings  
Doha Center in Qatar.

"No one in the region is pro-American anymore. The only hope is if  
Obama uses this opportunity to re-orientate U.S. policy in a  
fundamental way,'' he said. "Otherwise, I think we're losing the Arab  
world."

The trend became apparent well before Tunisians toppled their U.S.- 
backed dictator on Jan. 14, inspiring Egyptians to try to oust Mubarak  
and triggering waves of unrest in Jordan and Yemen.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, undertaken ostensibly to spread democracy  
in a region of the world where it has failed to take root, has  
produced an elected government. But the latest one, installed in  
December, was formed only after Iran intervened to break months of  
deadlock, confirming its role as a major player in Iraq. The last  
50,000 U.S. troops are due to leave by the end of the year, and it  
seems unlikely the Iraqi government will allow the U.S. military to  
retain even a small long-term presence.

In Lebanon, the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah movement wrested control  
last month from the pro-Western government propelled to power by the  
2005 Cedar Revolution, in which 1 million Lebanese took to the streets  
to force the departure of occupying Syrian troops, with the strong  
backing of the George W. Bush administration.

To some extent, other regional powers are already filling the vacuum,  
including an increasingly assertive, confident Turkey, as well as tiny  
Qatar, determined to punch above its weight.

America has had its Mideast moments, not the least when Obama took  
office in 2009, pledging a new era in U.S. relations with the Muslim  
world. But the administration's failure to sustain a viable Israeli- 
Palestinian peace process or to persuade Israel to stop building  
settlements on land claimed by Palestinians has bitterly disappointed  
those who had hoped Obama would bring change, said Rami Khouri,  
director of the Fares Institute of Public Policy and International  
Affairs at the American University of Beirut.

Another moment of hope came in 2005, when then-U.S. Secretary of State  
Condoleezza Rice delivered a stirring call for democratization on the  
leafy campus of the American University in Cairo, just steps from the  
center of the Egyptian revolt now underway in the city's Tahrir Square.

"The day is coming when the promise of a fully free and democratic  
world, once thought impossible, will also seem inevitable," she said,  
in a speech that triggered a brief but transitory scramble by regional  
leaders to implement political reforms. "The people of Egypt should be  
at the forefront of this great journey, just as you have led this  
region through the great journeys of the past."

That Egyptians are now at the head of the region's long-suppressed  
demand for democratization comes in spite of, not because of, the  
United States, Khouri said.



"Nobody's listening to America anymore," he said. "It's become  
irrelevant."

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