Arab Society in Revolt: The West's Mediterranean Challenge

7. Midwife or Spectator? U.S. Policies toward North Africa in the Twenty-First Century

American policymakers, academics, and pundits did not wait long to begin deconstructing the decade of events leading to 2011’s revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and to reflect upon the collective failure to predict the imminence of regional political instability.1 Unlike other recent “intelligence failures”—say, the discovery of nuclear proliferation or terrorist networks —the absence of prediction did not mean observers were taken by surprise. Many of the same North Africa experts and responsible officials during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies were convinced the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes’ days were numbered because political and economic reform had not kept up with major social changes, from new demographic trends to the politicization of religion. The American foreign policy establishment’s collective dilemma was to know that the internal status quo was unsustainable while nonetheless sustaining it through a combination of inertia and fear of the unknown consequences of regime change.2 The blunt talk of kleptocratic and autocratic tendencies that could be read in leaked diplomatic memorandums in 2010 exposed some of the pragmatic cynicism that lay behind American support for those regimes. The exact formula of preconditions that induce political revolution is unknowable, but social changes in the last decade of North African life made political reform inevitable. The difficulties encountered with the project of Iraqi democracy did not dampen American enthusiasm for spreading democracy in the region. This placed the United States on the side of demonstrators during the spasm of political action by the Kefaya (“Enough”) movement 147 7 Midwife or Spectator? U.S. Policies toward North Africa in the Twenty-First Century jonathan laurence from 2003 to 2005, which helped set Egyptian politics down a path of confrontation . It was Kefaya’s demonstrations that contributed to a “domino effect” that led to political prisoners and “sham democracy.”3 Among the civil society organizations to emerge in opposition to the regimes, Islamist political factions stand out for their articulation of the impact of social changes. Their early influence in the postrevolutionary constituent assemblies and parliaments of North Africa is not happenstance. Under the ancien régime, mosques were often the only political and social outlet available in the context of otherwise repressive regimes, which led in effect to the Islamization of dissent.4 The lack of good governance, democratic politics, and free elections helped make Islam the most common avenue for expressing dissent. In the absence of truly free political parties, freedom of association, and freedom of expression, mosques became the only place where the disenfranchised masses could gather and engage in political “participation .” While official politics remained the realm of the wealthy and corrupt elite, religion was the realm of the silent majority. That recent history helps explain the sweep of Islamist parties in the first postrevolution election results from Tunisia (41 percent), Morocco (27 percent ), and Egypt (a combined 70 percent, including the hard-line Salafist alNour Party). The Tunisian al-Nadha Party received 14.5 percent of the vote back in 1989, and the Moroccan Justice and Development Party won nearly 13 percent of parliamentary seats in 2002. Political Islamists—of more or less moderate stripes—formed a parallel social network through places of worship and were in far better communion with a changing society than an out-oftouch ruling elite. President Barack Obama’s presidency has been punctuated by the regime changes that his predecessor hoped to hasten. Convinced that the prerevolutionary political stability could not last, the administration of George W. Bush tried to force the hand of several Arab and North African governments with a clear message: democratize or risk extinction. The current administration consistently approached the same brink with similar expectations but a different strategy for reaching the outcome. From the“New Beginnings”address in Cairo right through the brief speech welcoming post-Qaddafi Libya in October 2011, the Obama administration has consistently avoided the inflammatory rhetoric of a democratization “agenda” and focused instead on helping establish the conditions for democracy. Whereas Bush acted within a predictable rule-bound regional environment—albeit in the twilight of an authoritarian era—Obama has been dealt his hand from a deck of wild cards. 148 jonathan laurence Seeking to lead by example, the previous administration created incentives to reform and provided autocracies a graphic illustration of what democracy might look like in the Middle East. Since taking office in 2009, however, Obama officials have shifted American...