April 22, 2013
What is President
Barack Obama
doing in Middle East? What should his policy be? Three former U.S. policy
makers took a crack at those questions in “After
the Arab Spring,”
a forum held by AUC’s School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in February a
few week’s after Obama’s inauguration for a second term of office.
William B. Quandt, who served on the National
Security Council in the Nixon and Carter administrations, noted that in his
first term Obama focused on major domestic issues like the economy and health
care, and after grappling with Iraq and Afghanistan became more skeptical about
re-making the world. Nonetheless, Quandt observed, the Middle East—first, the
crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, and second, what to do about the bloodshed
in Syria—will inevitably be on Obama’s second-term agenda. His advice to the
White House: “Anyone who has watched the previous administrations must notice
that if you are to have a successful second term, you cannot wait to the last
year to make your moves.”
In
addressing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Obama faces two sides that are
internally divided and have not made a “definitive conclusion” that they want a
peaceful two-state solution, according to Daniel
C. Kurtzer, former
U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel. “Yet,” he said, “each time the Israelis
and Palestinians have sat down for negotiations, they’ve made substantial
progress.” If the parties can be persuaded to reach mutually agreeable
concessions rather than perpetuate conflict, Kurtzer added, “they might need
help in establishing a vision of what the outcome might be like. In this, the
U.S. can help.” Kurtzer and Quandt are co-authors of a new book, The
Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011.
Does
Obama have an overall philosophy that can be used to predict future actions?
“That is hard to pin down, because he is pragmatic rather than dogmatic,” said William
A. Rugh, former
American ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. But Rugh said Obama
clearly favors the use of diplomacy over force, direct engagement over
confrontation, and multilateralism over unilateralism. In Obama’s responses to
the uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen, Rugh argued, U.S. strategic interests—such
as a military base in the former, and the fight against Al-Qaeda in the
latter—trumped democracy promotion.