The test of Obama’s soft diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa

Mar 28, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I want to revisit some ideas I presented in previous writings that have some relevance to the Western allies’ pounding of Libya.
Some time ago in a written piece, I surmised that World War II brought the initial stages of more overt U.S. dominance in world politics; arrival of ‘Pax Americana’. Professor Jerry Kloby believed that the Soviet-U.S. face-off in the Cold War really mobilized patronage for American policy in the developing world.
Against this background, Noam Chomsky noted: “The cold war framework was scarcely more than a pretext to conceal the standard refusal to tolerate third world independence.” In the 20th century, we saw overtly aggressive American influence in several colonial countries, including Guyana, as these countries struggled to rid themselves from the imperialist stranglehold.
Just that we should know, the paradigm to secure world dominance has been the nucleus of American foreign policy for a long time. Senator Albert Beveridge in 1898, and President Woodrow Wilson expressed the rationale for this brand of U.S. imperialism; and President Harry Truman reinforced this paradigm, thus: “…the whole world should adopt the American system…the American system could survive in America only if it became a World system…”
And in this century, there is Chalmers Johnson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, with a Blowback Trilogy featuring his books: Blowback (2000); The Sorrows of Empire (2004); and Nemesis (2006); all detailing American atrocities globally; and how such atrocities are recurring to bother America.
Furthermore, in a campaign speech in 1960, former President John Kennedy admonished the U.S. for poor conditions in Cuba; President Kennedy noted: “We refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress…. [W]e used the influence of our government to advance the interests and increase the profits of the private American companies which dominated the island’s economy….[A]dministration spokesmen publicly hailed Batista…as a staunch ally and a good friend at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people….[T]hus it was our own policies, not those of Castro, that first began to turn our former neighbour against us.”
So we come now to Libya. And at this time, how is the archaic American paradigm of external dominance faring in the wake of unrest in Libya? But, first, what are some indicators of human progress in Libya under Col. Muammar Gaddafi. The New York Times (March 10, 2011) reported that the Colonel accumulated a huge fortune through oil wealth; The Economist (March 12, 2011) and Simons (1993) indicated that he used his wealth to sponsor global terrorism and to give leverage to his dictatorship in his current battle against revolutionaries; notwithstanding this huge oil wealth, vast sections of east Libya show total economic devastation; perpetration of random terror against ‘stray dogs’, really the dissidents against the Colonel; its Corruption Perception Index was 2.2, less than those of recently-toppled dictatorships of Egypt and Tunisia; in 2010, its Freedom of the Press Index showed Libya to be the most censored country in the Middle East and North Africa; then there are serious human rights violations, including the 1996 alleged Abu Salim massacre of 1,270  prisoners. These are only a few indicators that attracted the wrath and action of the pro-democracy movement.
Well, how is the American paradigm of external dominance faring? Clearly, Western allies including the U.S. could not and should not militarily occupy Libya only by virtue of these horrible indicators; and they did not. But the February 17 pro-democracy movement initiated peaceful protests against the 42-year dictatorship of Col. Muammar Gaddafi; and to which Gaddafi countered and is still countering with military violence.
Circa February 23, and prior to international military action, over 200 civilian protesters already were killed; today, the number of civilian protesters killed would run into a few thousands. And now for more than a week, the Western allies’ military action, with NATO at the helm, is now executing UN Resolution 1973; the U.S. is playing a huge role in degrading Libya’s air defence systems, radar, and communication systems; only the U.S among its Western allies has this capability.
Nonetheless, Leslie Gelb of The Daily Beast expressed skepticism on the Western allies’ military action because he believes that the U.S., France, and Britain have no vital interests in the outcomes in Libya; and perhaps, there was no need to be there. Well, if the U.S. and the other main partners have no overriding interests, why did they intervene?
At least, U.S. President Barack Obama intervened because there is “an international mandate from the Security Council that specifically focuses on the humanitarian threat posed by Col. Gaddafi to his own people.” And Obama further noted: “the way that the United States took leadership and managed this process ensures international legitimacy.”
Obama, in his article ‘Renewing American Leadership’ in Foreign Affairs, noted that America’s leadership needs mobilizing teamwork and alliances from the rest of the world; to win over governments into partnerships, so as to support changes rather than securing such changes vis-à-vis military interventions; nonetheless, engaging in military adventures has been
the U.S. practice during President George W. Bush’s eight years in office.
And, indeed, Obama’s stance against Yemen and Bahrain, pillars of U.S. Middle East policy, calls for dialogue, notwithstanding both countries are using military violence against civilian protesters, quite the same as the Colonel in Libya is doing. We must consider that Obama inherited a very inhumane Middle East policy which consolidated and advanced U.S. vital interests vis-à-vis dominance of other countries’ resources.
I believe that the U.S. paradigm of external dominance is on the wane. Obama has a calculated foreign policy approach that is beginning to modify the existing Middle East policy. We saw this policy unfolding in Egypt, long-time partner with the U.S., where Obama, again, needing some degree of reticence for adjusting the brutal inherited American Middle East policy, emphasised the need for an orderly transition of government; the protesters in Egypt are gradually obtaining their desired outcomes.
And Obama and America are entering a new, humanitarian phase in American foreign policy. Incidentally, you also could see these adjustments in Obama’s foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. The test of Obama’s soft diplomacy awaits his move, as civilian protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria challenge their respective dictatorships.
Prem Misir

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