As a wildfire of revolt whips through the Middle East and North Africa, the White House is embracing pragmatism and shying away from embroidering a grand “Obama doctrine” for a region in turmoil.
For a politician as fond of the grand gesture as US President Barack Obama, the idea of an eponymous school of foreign policy thought might seem tempting.
After all, presidents have long etched their names in history with monumental doctrines or clear prescriptions of principles rationalizing the US’ posture to a treacherous world.
Former US president James Monroe’s 1823 doctrine, for instance, told Europe’s meddling colonial powers to keep out of the new US backyard in the Western hemisphere.
Meanwhile, former US president Harry Truman’s doctrine committed the US to a generational battle with communism.
However, analysts and officials say that while Obama has laid out general principles to deal with the “Arab spring,” he is eschewing a rigid US philosophy for a region in tumult.
His actions toward each -turmoil-wracked nation are different and do not adhere to a laid-down system of rules.
“The closest we have to a policy is to allow the different revolutions to take place at their own pace, based on the timing of the people involved and intervening only through general statements of support,” Princeton University’s Julian Zelizer said. “Other than that I don’t think there is any consistent principle.”
Asked for his Middle East “doctrine,” Obama replied on Thursday: “No. 1, no violence against citizens; No. 2, that we stand for freedom and democracy.”
While not ruling out military action, he said the US must not become a player in the Libyan — or any other — revolt, to avoid a backlash in a region that reviles the US invasion of Iraq and is stained by colonialism.
“One of the extraordinary successes of Egypt was the full ownership that the Egyptian people felt for that transformation,” Obama said. “We did not see anti--American sentiment arising out of that movement in Egypt precisely because they felt that we hadn’t tried to engineer or impose a particular outcome.”
The administration has often seemed to be making policy on the hoof during the Arab revolts, a factor reflected in its difficulty in framing a consistent message.
While Obama called for Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi to go and eventually sought to push former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak out, US pressure has been more subtle on allies like Bahrain and Yemen, stopping short of regime change.
However, at the same time the White House has openly taunted its foe Iran over demonstrations.
Obama aides argue that a “one size fits all” doctrine is inappropriate.
“Each country is different. Each situation that we have encountered in the region in the past number of weeks has been different,” Obama spokesman Jay Carney said.
Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama’s approach was rooted more in pragmatism than political dogma.
“You have a doctrine when you have an enduring policy that you’re constantly applying or you state,” Cordesman said, adding that Obama had not acted in such a way.
Obama’s insistence that the US can not engineer outcomes has exposed him to domestic political attacks.
Critics charge he was too slow to support uprisings in Iran following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009.
As Egypt erupted, Obama was accused of being “on the wrong side of history” as the masses demanded Mubarak’s ouster.
Now, with an apparent terror raging in Tripoli, Obama is again under pressure — as calls mount for a US-policed no-fly zone.
And while operating without a doctrine and keeping the US out of internal politics may turn out to be a good long-term bet, it gives an opening to critics who say Obama lacks coherence and foreign policy leadership skills.
The closest Obama has come to a “doctrine” for the Middle East came in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in 2009 which appears to explain his actions toward the Arab revolts.
“Let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other,” Obama said, breaking with former US president George W. Bush’s era of regime change policies. “That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people.”
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS