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.

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 *

???

“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

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.

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.

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

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.