One
of President Barack Obama’s main themes has
been to convince Middle Eastern Islamists and Arabs generally that
America is not their enemy. But the reason this strategy never works is
that the radicals, be they Islamists or nationalists, know better. They
see the United States as their enemy and they are right to do so.
No
amount of sympathy, empathy, economic aid, apology, or appeasement will
change this fact. Nor did such efforts succeed in making either Obama
or the United States popular in such circles and the tens of millions of
people influenced by them. The only thing surprising about all of this
is that so few “experts” and politicians seem to comprehend it.
There
are a number of reasons why this is true, though many people mistakenly
think they must find just one factor that explains this reality. The
causes of this enmity include:
--American
policies. True, the United States has supported Israel and also many
Arab regimes over the years—including countries like Morocco, Tunisia,
post-Qadhafi-Libya, Egypt, pre-Hizballah Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, post-Saddam Iraq, and the United Arab
Emirates. The Islamists are equally unhappy with the U.S. support for
the Palestinian Authority.
In short, U.S. support for any non-radical regime
makes radicals angry and will always do so.
So what if the United States is nice to radical or Islamist regimes? Will that help?
No.
The radicals still keep their goals—which include throwing U.S.
influence out of the region and overthrowing its allies—no matter what
Washington tries to do to please them. In the context of their ideology,
they interpret U.S. concessions as signs of weakness which thus invite
them to become even more militant and aggressive.
In
Libya and Iraq, the governments have been pretty much directly
installed by America. Thus, anyone who wants to overthrow those
governments has a strong vested interest in hating and attacking
Americans. The assassination of the ambassador to Libya wasn’t an
accident or the result of a video but the inevitable and logical outcome
of the political situation there.
As
for Israel, giving
that country less help would not change the radical view. Only if the
United States had the same policy as Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim
Brotherhood might it be forgiven. Merely putting more space between the
United States and
Israel, to paraphrase Obama’s stated intention, won’t do it. Even
brokering a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, which isn’t going to happen of course, won’t
help.
On
the contrary, the radicals—especially Hamas, its Egyptian backers, and
Iran—would go into a frenzy of denunciation and attempts to destroy the
arrangements, which would be blamed on America. In the Middle East,
peacemakers aren’t blessed, they’re assassinated.
The
ultimate attempt to do away with these problems would be if U.S. policy
would actually help Islamist regimes into power, give them money, and
whitewash their extremism. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And we can all
see the results have not been good, neither in terms of U.S. interests
nor even in terms of U.S. popularity.
--American
values and culture. While the mere fact that a highly secular, largely
hedonistic, and generally free lifestyle is practiced in the United
States raises the Islamists’ ire, there is far more involved here.
The
United States is the world’s leading exporter of culture regarding
everything from tee-shirts, films, and democratic ideas. As such, it
inevitably subverts traditional Islamic society and poses as a rival
alternative to the kind of system the Islamists want to impose. There is
simply no way around this conflict. It is not an imagined one and
remains in effect no matter what political policy a U.S. government
follows.
--America
as example to their own society. If the United States succeeds with a
“Satanic” standpoint, how can Islamists persuade
their people that Allah is on their side? America must be seen to fail,
either through propaganda or by its actual collapse, at least in terms
of the Middle East. Otherwise, the United States will remain an
attractive model for many, prompting everything from immigration to
political philosophy.
Obviously
a distinction can be drawn between, on one hand, winning over the
radicals and their supporters, and winning over ordinary Arabs. The
problem is that most of the latter group gets its worldview, news, and
spin from radical sources, be they Islamists, militant Arab
nationalists, or traditionalist clerics.
In
other words, no matter what the United States does it will not be
interpreted—especially by the masses--based on the U.S. government’s
statements or intentions but through the filter of a very different
culture and worldview that has a good deal of hostility in it and is
prone to xenophobia and conspiracy theories.
By
the same token, to be hated the United States doesn’t have to do
something wrong. It just has to be itself and
pursue its own legitimate interests. This is a point that many
Americans—including “experts” and leaders—seem to have great difficulty
in grasping. What you say is not what someone else hears; what you do is
not what someone else sees.
Finally,
the radicals—which include a large portion of governments, political
movements, teachers, clerics, and journalists—will deliberately do
everything they can to discredit the United States and foment popular
hatred against it. That includes using anything they can, be it a video,
the slaying of Usama bin Ladin, accusations of atrocities, and so on,
whether the specific accusations are true or false, consciously
misinterpreted or misunderstood on ideological grounds.
They
will never run out of reasons to hate America and ammunition for trying
to convince others to do so. One conclusion from this assessment is
that the traditional arsenal of diplomacy—credibility, deterrence,
power—is what’s important, not courting popularity. The same principle
applies to allies, of course, who must feel that their friend or patron
is strong and reliable.
Such
an approach has not been the one pursued during the last four years. As
for the next four years, the vote count is not in yet.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab
Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
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