More On Cairo
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Having drawn attention to parts of the Cairo speech I found quite lacking, I wanted to address some of the more recent criticisms of it that I have seen. For instance, David Frum lodges a complaint that I have seen expressed several times in the last few days:
But whereas in Philadelphia and Notre Dame Obama was explaining two groups of Americans to each other, in Cairo he exhibited the amazing spectacle of an American president taking an equidistant position between the country he leads and its detractors and enemies. It is as if he saw himself as a judge in some legal dispute, People of the Islamic World v. United States. But the job to which he was elected was not that of impartial judge, but that of leader and champion of the American nation.
This fails to appreciate fully what Obama is trying to do in all three episodes. Describing any of these speeches simply as attempts to explain two groups to one another is correct as far as it goes, but it is insufficient. The speeches are organized this way, which creates the illusion of a dialogue that Obama is serving to mediate, but to perceive Obama as “detached” and “equidistant” between the two sides is to fall for each speech’s main conceit, which is that retreating behind phrases such as “fair-minded words” or “mutual respect” allows Obama to dodge the hardest questions. In this way, the status quo may be preserved with relatively little controversy. After all, it was not primarily to build a bridge between pro-life and pro-choice Americans that Obama spoke at Notre Dame, but to partake of Notre Dame’s reputation to legitimize his policy views and signal that a major Catholic institution deemed his views normal and acceptable. That Notre Dame willingly played its part in Obama’s maneuver is one reason why the university’s administration has appropriately come in for so much abuse. As ever, Obama puts on a display of respect for opponents to gain ground for his cause and, when necessary, to defuse controversy surrounding himself.
The approach that conservatives find infuriating when directed at them is the same one he was using on Thursday in Cairo: define the limits of the debate, establish one’s own views as the balanced, reasonable center of the debate, invite people from either side to join the ostensibly reasonable center, and thereby marginalize those who continue to ignore or oppose you. What critics such as Frum keep missing, much as many others missed it during Obama’s time at the Trinidad Summit of the Americas, is that Obama is making it much more difficult for other nations to oppose the United States without marginalizing themselves internationally. With respect to the Cairo speech, it does not legitimize or empower fanatics to acknowledge concerns that they have traditionally exploited to their advantage. On the contrary, acknowledging these concerns deprives the fanatics of their monopoly on paying attention and defining the appropriate responses to these concerns. Better still, acknowledging a past event, such as the U.S. role in ousting Mossadegh, steals the power from those who have made use of a real grievance for their own ends. More than this, though, simple acknowledgment of past error allows for a delay and deferral of any substantive change in present-day policy. Ironically, the more unequal the comparison between U.S. actions and those with which Obama compared them, the less substantive change in present policy there will be. Mild displays of humility make real concessions less urgent, and it makes it more likely that they can be avoided entirely. Those who are generally satisfied with establishment policies and the current status quo as usual have the least to fear from Obama, and so it is fitting that they are the ones making the loudest complaints.
While I still think the Cairo speech failed, it failed because significant numbers of persuadable Muslims are not going to be won over by an appeal that urges a sort of satyagraha for the Palestinians at the same time that the bombardment of Lebanon and strikes in Gaza go unmentioned. Obama could have made similar acknowledgments of the costs of these campaigns, and thereby deflected attention from the foursquare backing the U.S. gave to both. Even better, he could have recognized that these campaigns were damaging to American and Israeli interests and benefited no one except for Hizbullah and Hamas, but there was no way Obama was going to say that.
On the other hand, Obama was wise not to do what Frum would have him do, which was to play the blustering cheerleader. We have had years of self-congratulation and championing of the American cause in words, but these have invariably been matched with policies that do not aid or champion American interests. If we must suffer the damage from bad policies, we may as well try to limit the damage with conciliatory rhetoric and Obama’s characteristic nods that are and always have been head fakes designed to throw his opponents off balance.
Update: Given that Dueholm is “invested” in preserving America’s position in the world, it is no surprise that he sees “Obama’s rhetorical embrace of even-handedness and humility as a feature rather than a bug.” If preserving and extending the status quo is what one wants, this is not a bad way to go about it. What continues to puzzle me is why other people who seem to be even more invested in the same thing do not take Dueholm’s view.
Second Update: It was bound to happen. Damon Linker and I agree on something.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
It strikes me that Obama’s speech was really directed at a domestic audience. The people most impressed by what he had to say are Americans in the political center, offended by the belligerence of the previous administration. It hasn’t hurt the US with Muslims but as many have said in the aftermath, it will take actions, not words to convince the Islamic world that the US is not their enemy. Frum’s reaction is of course precisely what the President desires. What some Republicans seem incapable of understanding is that Obama believes (and there is considerable evidence in support of his view) that he will benefit from a debate between a bellicose and exceptionalist opposition and a calmer and ostensibly more internationalist Presidency.
Ah, the ricochet pander as applied to public diplomacy. Maybe. It’s not out of the question that he is attempting to marginalize both his domestic critics on foreign policy and extremely hostile anti-Americans abroad at the same time. The speech was more successful if he was concerned more with the former, as the mostly ridiculous reactions to his speech make clear.
“While I still think the Cairo speech failed, it failed because significant numbers of persuadable Muslims are not going to be won over by an appeal that urges a sort of satyagraha for the Palestinians at the same time that the bombardment of Lebanon and strikes in Gaza go unmentioned.”
Well, of course “significant numbers” of persuadable Muslims will be unpersuaded. Does anyone honestly expect all persuadable people will be persuaded by a single speech? And yet, a week later, the Lebanese elections, which had seemed to be going Hezbollah’s way, now seem to be going the way of the pro-American parties. I would say that enough of the persuadable people have been persuaded to make a difference. And that is what matters, not some ideal by which everyone gets persuaded. I think it’s hard to say the speech was a failure, simply because the skies did not open and the world was not made whole in a single stroke. This seems to be an example of deliberately setting expectations so high that Obama is guaranteed to fail to meet them. On the whole, by any ordinary standards, the speech was a well-received success. But, of course, it’s just one speech in a long series of diplomatic initiatives and gestures, and as an opening gambit, it seems to have worked rather well. It’s worth noting that if everyone had liked it, it would not serve any purpose at all.
I agree with Matt and conrad – the audience was an inverted pincer attack aimed at his critics abroad and at home, and that it is but one step in a progression.
Still, Daniel’s points are mostly well taken. However, I think we can see that Obama is not actually aiming for the status quo, but something different. Just how different is open to question.
Jake
I don’t want everyone to like the speech. If it had worked to reach the audience I’m talking about, it would have been more widely reviled over here. Of course one speech isn’t going to transform things. If you assume that the goal was to persuade the Muslims I’m talking about to be more favorably inclined to the United States, I don’t think it succeeded. Arguably, one of the biggest problems with it is that so many Americans of different political stripes had few objections to it, and most of these have amounted to nit-picking. Had there been more to it, it would have generated stronger reactions, both negative and positive.
I don’t buy for a minute that the Maronite Aoun’s party fared worse than expected in the Lebanese elections because of anything Obama has said or done. Reportedly, Aoun screwed up several times during the campaign and alienated swing Christian votes that might have made the difference in key areas. Had the opposition prevailed, most people now crediting Obama with success would be spinning away perceived failure, and the people trying to downplay the results would be citing this as evidence that Obama’s so-called “weakness” had brought down the March 14 movement. Since I am not committed to either fiction, I have no problem saying that Obama had nothing to do with the results. That’s not a criticism or a compliment–it’s just the reality.
More often than we care to think, other nations’ elections and political life really have nothing to do with us. The results seem to me to be a vote against empowering Aoun’s movement and Aoun himself, and this is driven in large part by internal Lebanese political rivalries. Where we go astray so often is in believing that their elections and political life are closely tied up with our policies and influence. What is bizarre in the Western reactions to the elections is the failure to notice that *the government reportedly lost seats* and the FPM/Hizbullah bloc gained seats (at least according to BBC estimates). In the best-case scenario, March 14 has held on to what it had, but that’s all. There is almost no mention that the March 14 victory was actively backed by Saudi money, which is otherwise not normally regarded as a particularly good thing. Any possible gains for the opposition are being treated as defeat because some pre-election hype made it seem as if it was going to take power, but in any country a reduced majority for the government is a vote against the status quo. If the opposition has made gains, this would make nonsense of any analysis that tries to set this up as some post-war repudiation of Hizbullah. If the numbers have remained more or less the same, what we can say is that the opposition has not profited from the war and its aftermath over the last few years.
Even if you argue that the Lebanese elections were not at all influenced by Obama, it still confirms that the kind of Muslims Obama is appealing to can win elections in Muslim countries and gain traction against the more radical, jihadist elements. Obama is aiming his speech at those types, and making an effort to win over those who might otherwise reflexively oppose what America/Bush want.
Regarding the elections themselves, what’s interesting is that last week it was widely assumed that Hizbullah would win. This week they lost, and something clearly changed. The tide changed. That’s more important than the actual vote totals. If Obama was appealing for an incremental tidal change, he got one. Whether he’s the cause of it, the prognositicator of it, or merely a weathervane, it bodes well. The whole point of Obama’s strategy on virtually everything is incremental changes that in any given moment don’t seem like much, but over time build up into something substantial. This should be taken into account when examining any step or speech Obama makes. People are fooled into thinking Obama doesn’t represent “change” because he doesn’t take sudden, huge steps. He’s figured out that if he does, he’s more easily opposed. Whereas eating away at something slowly ends up being more productive than trying to win it all in one fell swoop of theatrical brilliance.
As for Hizbullah’s future, I think they just peaked. That’s the real message there. They gained a lot in recent years, and they needed to maintain that momentum to keep on the roll. They remind me of the Nazis in 1932, when they peaked also, and were on the decline, but managed to get control of the government anyway, and that was the end of elections. The difference here is that Hizbullah won’t be able to control the government, and will likely decline from here on out. I think their historical moment has passed, and Obama is one of the signs of it.
On the same note, let’s see what happens in the upcoming Iranian elections. If the moderate/reformist parties win, and Ahmadinejad loses, it’s another sin of a shift going on. And it plays into Obama’s hand. One can say it’s not due to this speech alone, but it’s hard to say it’s not due to Obama being the new face of the American/western block. One has to take into account that the most important element of Obama’s speech is not in the text, but in the fact that it was Obama who delivered it, and that Obama is seen differently in the muslim world than every other previous western world leader. Whether or not he is actually radically different isn’t nearly as important as that he is perceived as different, in that the failure to bring about changes in the region have had a lot to do with a certain continuity of bad impressions that Obama has the opportunity to break from.
Regarding the elections themselves, what’s interesting is that last week it was widely assumed that Hizbullah would win. This week they lost, and something clearly changed.
???
“There were no surprises in this regard on Sunday. Hezbollah and Amal candidates captured all 27 seats allocated to the Shi’ites. The Saad al-Hariri bloc took the majority of the 27 seats allocated for Sunnis. The real tipping point was the Christian vote, divided between former army commander Michel Aoun on one front, and a coalition of Christian leaders, headed by ex-president Amin Gemayel and ex-warlord Samir Gagega, on the other. The Christian vote emerged as more united behind March 14 than it was around Michel Aoun, explaining the 20-seat difference between the camps.”
“Hezbollah, campaigning directly with 11 candidates, won all of its allocated seats, taking the towns of Nabatiyeh, Marjeyoun, Hasbaya, Tyre and Bin Jbeil. None of its candidates lost. Its ally, former minister Suleiman Franjiyeh, took his native town of Zghorta, a leading Christian stronghold. The Free Patriotic Movement of Aoun took Christian strongholds such as Kesrouan, Jbeil, Baabda and Jezzine.”
source
[Hizbullah] lost, and something clearly changed. The tide changed.
Whoops!
Hezbollah [...] candidates captured all 27 seats allocated to the Shi’ites. None of [Hizbullah's] candidates lost.
Haha, that’s rich. It’s really the perfect Obama-geist:
“A new day has dawned in America! We have turned a tide in Iraq er.. Lebanon! Hizbullah’s on the run because of a brave, thoughtful American leader!”
* things go on more or less as they always have *
It’s dangerous to presume that other people’s internal elections have anything to do with our actions, atleast in situations that aren’t obvious (such as overt interference on the part of us, or a recent disagreement bilaterally between us and some other country). The truth is much of politics is still intensely local, and in many developing countries focuses around basic competency; who can deliver the goods on time. It is partially why Hamas won its only elections in Gaza, and partially why other coalitions often win in other countries, which may or may not be “pro-western”.
Its this kind of myopia of searching for perfect governing coalitions in other countries that puts our foreign policy appratuses foot in its mouth; by signalling intentions for one side or the other, or involving ourselves in what may be distinctly regional disputes, we sour everyone involved and often-times come out losing at the other end. You never hear anyone suggest that the election of a specific party in a Western European country will result in the collapse of bilateral relationships, though there may be significant differences in policy and tone. There’s no reason we can’t maintain that sort of balance with developing countries as well and the obsession with reading the tea leaves is myopic.
Speaking of which I was miffed today by the fact that two of the questions that Clinton got today while holding a press conference with the Indonesian foreign minister were unrelated to anything dealing with his country, which seems keenly relevant considering its size and weight in the Islamic world of Southeast Asia. Moreover, some journalist actually thought he was going to get an answer when asking her who she thought the US was looking for to win, as if she’s going to say it right there with the current governments representative standing.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13808801
In the recent June elections, Hizbullah retained its direct control of the shiite seats, but it’s overall alliance lost out, whereas the mainstream pro-American alliance gained, at least in relation to the March elections. Hizbullah cannot possibly rule only by retaining dedicated shiite representation. They have to cross over and gain support from other seats, and allied parties. That’s where they were expected to win, and where they fell short. Not comprehending how multi-party parliamentary election alliances work leads to false conclusions about election results. The Hizbullah-backed alliance fell short, even if their own seats were retained. In short, they lost.
And who exactly was predicting that a Hezbollah-dominated alliance would defeat the March 14 alliance? Just because Hezbollah did not accomplish this (and it would be nice to show from their own words that this is what they wanted to do) does not mean that the party is not losing ground or becoming weaker.