Worldmaking (90 page)

The Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had been a steadfast ally of the United States for thirty years. The American ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Sobey, provided an astute appraisal of Mubarak in 2009, publicized by WikiLeaks: “He is a tried and true realist, innately cautious and conservative, and has little time for idealistic goals.” She added that he was not impressed by Obama's predecessor: “Mubarak viewed President Bush as naïve, controlled by subordinates and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran's regional influence.”
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A sharp analyst of America's geostrategic foibles, Mubarak also sat in gilded isolation atop a tinderbox. Inspired by events in Tunisia, tens of thousands of Egyptians began to congregate in towns and cities across the nation—Cairo's Tahrir Square was the movement's focal point—to protest policy brutality, endemic corruption, economic malaise, and the absence of democratic accountability. It was clear to seasoned observers that Mubarak would not be able to ride out this storm, particularly while the army was ambivalent about his fate. But he was certainly going to give it a try.

It fell to Joe Biden to provide the administration's initial response to events in Egypt. On January 27, 2011, on PBS's
NewsHour
, Jim Lehrer asked the vice president if Mubarak should stand down in the face of these nationwide protests. Biden replied with an unequivocal no, adding that the long-standing Egyptian president had been a “very responsible” ally in a volatile region—a statement that was essentially true. As Mubarak ratcheted up the brutality of the government response—tear gas and live ammunition were used in a failed attempt to subdue and break up the crowds—Hillary Clinton changed tack a few days later and called for “an orderly transition” in Egypt. But she did not specify when she thought Mubarak ought to depart. By February 1, the reality of hundreds of thousands of protestors in Tahrir Square began to force the issue. Obama had to make a clearer decision: support a long-standing secular ally or embrace the protesters and the uncertainty that would follow Mubarak's departure. A significant concern was the prominence that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood would likely assume in this new era.

The president felt he did not have much of a choice in the end. The revolution in Egypt was outside of American hands, its momentum near unstoppable. During a painful telephone conversation the following day, Obama advised Mubarak to step down immediately. The president was not convinced by Mubarak's assertion that the protesters would disperse given time: “With all due respect, we have a different analysis. We don't believe the protests are going to die down.”
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Mubarak continued to reject Obama's analysis, observing that he didn't understand Egyptian politics and that failure to support him would destabilize the region. Obama's reply was firm: “Mr. President, I always respect my elders. You've been in politics for a very long time. But there are moments in history when just because things have been the same in the past doesn't mean they'll be the same way in the future.”
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Obama's abandonment of Mubarak vexed many nations and individuals. Saudi Arabia was disappointed, as it set a dismaying precedent for similarly repressive regimes and it greatly strengthened Iran vis-à-vis its neighbors. Israel was nonplussed because Hosni Mubarak's Egypt had been a friend in an unfriendly region. The potential rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood was regarded with great trepidation in Tel Aviv. With Mubarak gone, Israel would likely have to add another enemy to an already long list.

For many of the same reasons, Henry Kissinger was alarmed by Mubarak's departure. Like Anwar Sadat, Mubarak had provided “an element of moderation in the region.” There was so much uncertainty as to what would come next that celebrations were both premature and unwise. “We shouldn't delude ourselves that a moment of exultation is a foreign policy,” Kissinger warned. The prospect of an Islamist-led coalition assuming power was chilling and momentous, “a fundamental change to the kind of world that we have known since the end of World War Two.” Nonetheless, Kissinger realized that Obama had been dealt a poor hand and played it reasonably well. There was little that Washington could have done to save Mubarak, and supporting a military crackdown was unthinkable. Obama could not run the risk of placing the United States on the wrong side of history. “I think that the American government has behaved skillfully and thoughtfully during this immediate period,” Kissinger observed, although he would have preferred that the Egyptian people had opted for evolution rather than revolution.
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Paul Wolfowitz claimed a degree of vindication for the Bush administration's democracy-promoting agenda. When asked whether the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt—part of a wider process of popular reform across the Middle East that had become known as the Arab Spring—could be connected to the Bush administration's toppling of Saddam Hussein, Wolfowitz replied cautiously, “It's a fascinating question, and one should probably simply … say it's in the category of the unknowable.” When pressed for elaboration, Wolfowitz duly obliged: “I think Iraq took so long and was so bloody and is still so uncertain that it would be hard to say that it has inspired people … [But] the last thing he'd [Saddam] want to see is democratic revolutions anywhere … [Because Saddam would likely be] actively supporting [fellow dictators,] we very likely would not be seeing what's happening … The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab World.”

It was a thoughtful answer to an unknowable question. But Wolfowitz's critique of Obama's handling of Mubarak's departure was not so nuanced: “Egypt we just bungled completely. I mean, our position was always three days behind whatever was actually going on.” Wolfowitz faulted Obama's caution toward the wave of reform rolling across the region. He called for the president to display more certainty in committing to the cause of democratization:

When you have freedom sweeping the Arab world, and you have people willing to risk their lives not as suicide bombers to kill innocent people, but to save lives and to gain freedom, the United States, first of all, should recognize generally speaking which side of the issue we're on … There are all kinds of ways it can end badly, but that would seem to me to be even more reason to be deeply engaged—to find people who want it to end the right way and to support those people, rather than holding back.

Wolfowitz believed that America's response to the Arab Spring could be reduced to a monotheory: embrace “the freedom sweeping the Arab world” and identify and support the “people who want it to end the right way.”
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Wolfowitz thought that forming a strategy toward the Arab Spring was simpler than it appeared—just as he had with Iraq.

Obama's policies toward Libya followed the gist of Wolfowitz's advice. Five days after Mubarak was forced from office in Egypt, protestors in Libya took to the streets—and to social media—demanding the release of the writer and political activist Jamal al-Hajji, who had called for Libya to afford greater rights to its citizens. As Muammar Gaddafi—whom Reagan had described as “this mad dog of the Middle East”—unleashed his security forces, the demonstrators proliferated in cause and number. It was not just al-Hajji they wanted freed, it was everyone—their goal was the toppling of Gaddafi's repressive regime. Within days, Libya slipped into full-scale civil war as the rebellion cohered and its forces began advancing on Tripoli. During a bellicose speech in late February, Gaddafi indicated that his security forces would hunt opponents “house by house.” His son Saif indicated that there would be “rivers of blood” if the uprisings continued: “We will take up arms, we will fight to the last bullet … fight until the last man, the last woman … the last bullet [to] destroy seditious elements.”
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Gaddafi chose a different path than Ben Ali and Mubarak, one that ended in a darker place.

Obama's advisers were deeply divided over how to proceed. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed that a U.S. military intervention in Libya—or indeed anywhere in the world beyond Europe and Latin America—was utter folly. In a widely reported speech at West Point on February 25, Gates said, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” During congressional testimony, Gates could not contain his contempt for the blasé way some of his colleagues were talking about instituting a no-fly zone: “Let's just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That's the way you do a no-fly zone.”
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Joe Biden agreed with Gates. Hillary Clinton was ambivalent on how to proceed.

The primary advocate for military intervention to assist the rebellion and oust Gaddafi was Samantha Power. But Obama was also under external pressure to do something—or at least help other nations do something. British prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy were both pushing strongly for American support to institute a no-fly zone—France and Britain possessed the will if not the resources to intervene alone. But the usual suspects were not all in agreement. In a remark that ran contrary to her reputation as an advocate of humanitarian intervention, but conformed with her reputation as a blunt talker, Susan Rice informed Gérard Araud, her French counterpart at the United Nations, “You are not going to drag us into your shitty war.”
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Yet there was one organization that did possess sufficient clout to persuade the United States to join the fray. On March 12, the Arab League—with twenty-two Middle Eastern and African member states—came out in favor of a no-fly zone, calling for the UN to provide the rebellion in Libya with “urgent help.”
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Enough was enough. During an NSC meeting on how to proceed on Libya, Obama was decisive. “If we don't act, if we put brakes on this thing,” the president said, “it will have consequences for U.S. credibility and leadership, consequences for the Arab Spring, and consequences for the international community.” Permitting Gaddafi to destroy the rebellion in Benghazi, its principal point of origin, was “just not who we are.” Instead of imposing a no-fly zone, however, Obama instructed Susan Rice to secure from the United Nations a resolution stipulating that “all necessary measures” may be used to protect and assist the rebellion.
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This went further than Cameron and Sarkozy had requested and “called a spade a spade,” to use Robert Gates's formulation, making clear that under no circumstances would the United States and its allies allow Gaddafi to prevail. UN Security Council resolution 1973 was passed quickly, with Russia and China abstaining. President Obama was delighted: “This is precisely how the international community should work, as more nations bear both the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law.”
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Obama attracted criticism at the time for his slowness in making a decision to support the rebels in Benghazi and for his preference for multilateralism. It was surely an embarrassment that Britain, France, and the Arab League were out in front. Kori Schake, who had positions on the NSC and in the State Department in the George W. Bush administration, observed, “Stepping back and letting others do the work certainly isn't a bold or brave moment for American foreign policy.”
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Following her two-year stint on the Policy Planning Staff, Anne-Marie Slaughter returned to Princeton in February 2011, unimpressed by what she had observed. “On issues like whether to intervene in Libya there's really not a compromise and a consensus,” she said. “You can't be a little bit realist and a little bit democratic when deciding whether or not to stop a massacre.”
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Critiques like these tend to underestimate how complicated the situation in Libya was and is. There were clearly positives. When Obama deemed circumstances propitious, he made a clear decision and followed through to conclusion. (He also failed to seek congressional approval for his action, which stirred considerable anger across the political divide.) Throughout March, the U.S. Air Force and NATO forces destroyed Gaddafi's air defenses, a pivotal act that protected the rebellion. At the end of March, Britain and France took control of the air campaign, though technical deficiencies required them to be propped up now and again. At the loss of no American lives and at a cost of $1.1 billion—a small sum as these things go—the United States helped remove a noxious dictator in the Middle East. It was a military action, furthermore, that won the imprimatur of the Arab League and the United Nations.
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At the time it appeared as if the military intervention in Libya was everything the Second Iraq War was not: successful, swift, and legitimate. But there exists a strong possibility that “victory” there may also be Pyrrhic. On September 11, 2012, heavily armed militias attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others. Embarrassment that the attack had been launched from the “friendliest” part of new Libya was one possible reason the Obama administration initially presented it as impromptu and provoked by an incendiary anti-Islamic video rather than a carefully planned operation. The instability and violence in Libya has got much worse since then, as militias—comprising many hundreds of different groups, including secessionists and Islamists—struggle for control. At the moment of writing, the nation is effectively lawless.

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The election of 2012 pitted Barack Obama against Mitt Romney, a centrist Republican forced to behave like an ultraconservative to secure his party's nomination. It was the GOP candidate's misfortune to run against an incumbent who—through a step change in the frequency, audacity, and lethality of drone attacks—was able to argue persuasively that he had waged war on al-Qaeda more effectively than his predecessor (and at a lower human and financial cost). The locating and killing of Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, was a priceless electoral advantage, armoring Obama against Republican attacks on his lack of fortitude. How could Romney communicate a greater desire to confront America's enemies without sounding like Barry Goldwater in 1964?