Scholar argues US influence waning in Middle East

"Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?" (Palgrave Macmillan), by Fawaz A. Gerges: In his new book, Middle East expert Fawaz A. Gerges argues that the United States is losing influence in the Middle East, and that President Barack Obama has failed to live up to the expectations of many in the Arab and Muslim worlds to improve relations.

Gerges, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is clearly a well-read academic with a solid ability to gather the information he needs to back up an argument. But much of what he writes is fairly obvious to anybody who closely follows news of the Middle East, and even then his analysis is not without flaws.

In "Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?" Gerges says U.S. influence is waning in the Middle East due to a host of reasons, from the invasion of Iraq, to ongoing alliances with autocrats, to the Arab Spring uprisings that Washington failed to foresee and properly capitalize upon. Obama's policies have in many cases exacerbated tensions instead of eased them, Gerges posits.

It's hard to argue with many of his points. The Arab Spring uprisings that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya and other nations do seem to have undermined America's strength. Once-reliable allies are no longer predictable American toadies, and only time, an election or two and an injection of Islamist political power will show if they will become outright enemies.

And Obama has been, if anything, a pragmatist who hasn't applied a broad-brush ideological approach to his foreign policy but instead approached each situation case by case. Sometimes, reality has vastly undercut the president's seemingly genuine aspirations. For instance, Gerges notes that Obama's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has effectively been neutered, not least because of resistance among members of Congress loath to anger Israeli supporters.

But there are some major weaknesses in Gerges' analysis.

On the Israeli-Palestinian feud, his bias in favor of the Palestinians is so obvious that it undercuts some very valid points he is trying to make. Gerges brushes aside or seems to simply ignore legitimate Israeli security concerns. There was no need to strive for false balance ? he has a right to his opinion ? but devoting a bit more space to explaining the Israeli psyche would have added much-needed nuance.

On the question of the al-Qaida terrorist network, Gerges seems utterly oblivious to some key aspects, to the point where it seems he's downplaying a still real and present danger.

For instance, he argues that the U.S. is too obsessed with al-Qaida, despite the fact that the terrorist group has largely been debilitated and is down to a few hundred surviving members. A strange argument, considering a major reason that al-Qaida is weakened is because the U.S. has been obsessed with it and acted on that obsession.

Gerges, understandably, questions the wisdom of the drone strike program, which has been ramped up under Obama and which many say is contributing to the radicalization of young Muslim men. But he doesn't give enough weight to arguments in favor of such strikes ? that they are often accurate and have taken out some top militants without requiring U.S. boots on the ground. If you think drones will radicalize people, think what a U.S. invasion of Pakistan would do.

And never mind that all it takes is a few terrorists to cause a lot of damage, Gerges even fails to pay enough attention to al-Qaida's greater impact: the way it has become a brand and inspired other movements, some of whom are even more vicious than the late Osama Bin Laden's bunch. The Pakistani Taliban, Somalia's al-Shabab movement, militants fighting in Yemen ? to some extent these are all part of al-Qaida's sphere of influence and its legacy. And they are still out there.

One could also quibble with Gerges' seeming disapproval of how Obama has handled Iran.

Gerges criticizes the president for not openly backing the 2009 protests in Iran known as the Green Movement, saying that it was because Obama was trying to engage the Iranian government. But he fails to point out that many Iranian reformers adamantly opposed any sort of public U.S. intervention ? even moral support ? because they insisted it would undermine their movement's claim to being homegrown. The White House was well aware of that sentiment.

Again, Gerges' broader point may be true: America's influence in the Middle East is eroding. Turkey, Iran and other nations are battling for regional supremacy, and their interests do not always align with those of the White House. But is this a good thing for the world? Is it a bad thing? Here, I find myself wishing Gerges had been more clear. It would have been nice ? OK, perhaps fanciful ? to see some predictions, even wild ones, about what the Middle East will look like 20 years from now.

Of course, if the Arab Spring taught us anything, it is that even for the most learned of experts, decoding the past is much easier than guessing what's next.

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Online:

http://fgerges.net/

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Follow Nahal Toosi at twitter.com/nahaltoosi.

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