Realism Is Hard

On a similar subject David Ignatius approves of cozying up to Egypt’s military government:

If Obama has indeed decided that a strong Egypt is essential, he shouldn’t try to play both sides of the street. The Egyptian people, traumatized by four years of revolution and counterrevolution, need to know that the United States is truly an ally. Criticisms of human rights abuses should continue, but Washington should make clear that they come from a friendly nation that wants Egypt to succeed.

Contrary to what some of his supporters believe, I don’t think that President Obama is a foreign policy realist even though he plays one on TV. I think he’s a liberal interventionist who sometimes veers into being a transnational progressive. Throwing Mubarak under the bus was not the act of a realist. Our attitude towards Assad in Syria is not realpolitik. Neither is what we’ve been saying and doing with respect to Ukraine.

Realism does not mean basing your foreign policy moves on what will shore up your domestic political base. Sometimes it means doing things your supporters will hate because you must to further national interests and cleaning up the political fallout later.

15 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    ” Throwing Mubarak under the bus”

    This continues to strike me as kind of dumb, but I guess it makes a good soundbite. I don’t think we had the ability to stop or control what was happening in Egypt. I don’t remember the US polling as all that popular in Egypt. One of the problems inherent with realism is the lack of a real good end game. You can support a dictator when he is willing to play ball with you, but what happens when the dictator gets overthrown, which is what usually happens? Makes for a sloppy transition in the best of circumstances.
    Steve

  • TastyBits Link

    To the extent that President Obama has any cohesive foreign policy, it is silly and childish. He and his acolytes seem to believe that if they just buy the world a Coke, all will be well.

    Egypt was and should be an important and strategic client state. They are as important as Israel and should be given the same level of treatment. The alternative is for Egypt to become a Russian client state, and Putin has been pushing this.

    I find it quaint that Stephen Hadley clings to the notion that the Tahrir Square revolution was a get together of Facebook and Twitter users. Apparently, he is another child that cannot accept that coups are engineered by serious people with serious goals.

    Flash mobs trashing stores and malls are the result of Facebook and Twitter hookups not government coups. Grow up people.

  • Andy Link

    “You can support a dictator when he is willing to play ball with you, but what happens when the dictator gets overthrown, which is what usually happens?”

    Well, the Obama Administration pressured Mubarak to step down. That is a pretty well established fact, although his days were likely numbered. Egypt has one stable institution in the Egyptian military and the US had a lot of influence with them. We used that leverage and made it impossible for Mubarak to continue.

    That wasn’t the major mistake though – we thought Mubarak was standing in the way of democracy in Egypt, a country with no history of that form of government and a country lacking the institutions to support it. And several years later we are left with what is a military dictatorship.

  • Well, the Obama Administration pressured Mubarak to step down. That is a pretty well established fact, although his days were likely numbered.

    And we offered at least verbal support for the Muslim Brotherhood of all people. That’s a tough one to figure. IMO we shouldn’t be giving overt support to Islamists anywhere for any reason. We can do it reluctantly for reasons of state but we shouldn’t be happy about it.

    My point wasn’t whether our actions in withdrawing our support from Mubarak was good or bad but whether it was based in foreign policy realism. It wasn’t. We squandered some of what little good will we have in Egypt, were complicit in getting a bunch of people killed, and made the Egyptian military more wary of us than they already were for no particularly good reason, IMO for domestic political reasons.

  • steve Link

    “And we offered at least verbal support for the Muslim Brotherhood of all people. ”

    Interests over ideology is one of the hallmarks of realism. Neocons might care about working with the MB. Once the Egyptian military had decided to not fight to keep Mubarak in power, he was done for. Once the dictator that realists have worked with begins to fall, they always face a tough choice. Work with the new power or try to reinstall the old one. Trying to decide which one will best further interests is not easy.

    Steve

  • Rule by the Muslim Brotherhood was not, is not, and will not be in the U. S. interest. Not in Egypt. Not anywhere. To believe it might be is willful blindness.

    Realism dictates there are circumstances where we might quietly support it. The same realism dictates it should be silently, preferably covertly, or at least with open reluctance. That’s not what the Obama Administration did and what they did was not realism.

  • TastyBits Link

    The US aid to the Egyptian military buys a lot of influence. When they had enough of the Muslim Brotherhood, they were able to quickly round up them and their families. Anybody still clinging to the fantasy that they were paralyzed by Facebook and Twitter users is an idiot.

  • steve Link

    Sigh. Rule by the MB is not in our interest. That is not the point. Once it was clear Mubarak was not staying in power, then working with them to achieve our interests is realism.

    I guess a lot of this hinges on your view of Mubarak’s fall. I think it pretty clear that the military mostly runs the country. They decided Mubarak was going down and abandoned him, rather than go full Assad and try to keep him in power. The MB then came to power. Refusing to work with the MB just because they are the MB doesn’t seem like realism to me, but YMMV. I certainly don’t remember the administration openly supporting the MB. They certainly praised those who overthrew Mubarak, hoping for a better govt. I think you have just succumbed to the weird narrative that Obama wanted the MB in power.

    Steve

  • The Egyptian military was always the only game in town. Siding with the MB was never in our interest and you cannot know anything about them and believe it was. That’s not realism unless realism has now come to mean being detached from reality.

    The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, doesn’t see the difference between a democracy and a mobocracy. If the Administration wasn’t supporting the MB, they did a pretty good imitation of it. Here. Here. Here.

    The mark of realism is outcome. How has the Administration’s advocacy for the MB worked out for them?

    Let’s rewind. You’ve already acknowledged that the Obama Administration supported the MB:

    Once it was clear Mubarak was not staying in power, then working with them to achieve our interests is realism.

    Work with. Support. Po-tay-to—po-tah-to. What realistic interest was furthered by doing so? None. That they were in control of the country? That’s foolishness. The Egyptian military was in control. That Morsi was the democratically-elected leader? That’s not realism but idealism.

    I am not claiming that Obama is some sort of crypto-Muslim. I think that’s foolishness. I think he sees himself as an enlightened small-d democrat and that he wanted the U. S. to support democracy in Egypt. That’s not a realistic objective but an idealistic one.

  • Andy Link

    Dave’s last comment reflects my view, particularly the last paragraph. This administration, like every administration since GHWB, and like most of the current FP establishment, is wedded to this infantile idealist notion that elections = democracy and that people the world over are naturally inclined to representative democracy if only they were “free” hold an election. America’s job is to help even if that means breaking a few eggs. That was in full evidence in Egypt until the Obama administration could no longer ignore the fact that the MB weren’t interested in democracy or sharing power or minority rights. It soon became clear to just about everyone that the MB intended to remake Egypt into a political Islamist state. Their attempt to buy the military off eventually failed and the military put a quick and brutal end to the MB’s plans and the MB itself. The Obama administration’s relative silence about it shows they at least learned something in the process, but a lot of damage was already done thanks to our foolish idealism.

    Or, look at Hamas. There are still a lot of ignorant fools out there who constantly like to point out how they were “elected.” Nevermind the fact that right after they were elected they started rounding up and shooting any political opposition. That’s the way it works in the Middle-East, you win an election to gain power and then do whatever is necessary to stay there. Hamas succeeded and the MB failed. And then there is Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan where we till persist in deluding ourselves that democracy is just around the corner if we persist a little longer.

    I don’t see how anyone can argue that the Obama foreign policy is realist, though I can perhaps understand how it may appear realist compared to the GW Bush administration. Just look at Obama’s advisors – almost all hold the R2P worldview and our political, economic and military interventions during his administration mostly reflect that worldview (See Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, South Sudan, etc.).

  • I don’t see how anyone can argue that the Obama foreign policy is realist

    It’s not hard if you think that idealism is realism. I think that we can stipulate that if it’s a Humpty Dumpty world and words mean just what you want them to mean no more no less then idealism is realism because they say it is. Anything is anything and communication has stopped.

    Just for the record although like art or pornography I recognize realism when I see it, I’m not a foreign policy realist. However, my ideals could hardly be more different from those of the Obama Administration. I do not think we should be the vindicator of democracy and defender of the weak everywhere in the world. We should not sally forth in search of dragons to slay. We have plenty right here.

  • steve Link

    All of your examples refer to support after the coup where the MB was thrown out by the military. I have been referring to Mubarak leaving and the MB assuming power. As I said above, an you have not disputed so perhaps you agree, we did not have the ability to keep Mubarak in power. The military clearly gave up on him. He was toast. So, does a realist work with the new government that comes in, or do they refuse to do so because of their ideology, i.e. because it is the MB? I say that a realist decides to work with the MB because they are now the ones in power.

    What I will agree with is that Obama is also too enamored of elections. Just because he needed to work with the MB once they help power didn’t mean that he needed to oppose the military coup. That was a time when they probably should have just kept quiet, then worked with the next government.

    ” Nevermind the fact that right after they were elected they started rounding up and shooting any political opposition. That’s the way it works in the Middle-East, you win an election to gain power and then do whatever is necessary to stay there. Hamas succeeded and the MB failed.”

    Which is pretty much what the current Egyptian government has done AFAICT. However, they are a bit better group for us to work with than the MB.

    “Work with. Support. Po-tay-to—po-tah-to. What realistic interest was furthered by doing so? None.”

    Words have meanings, as you point out. We work with Putin to help achieve our ends in Iran. Does that mean we support him? What interest was furthered? In the 1 1/2 years they held office? Not much, but what would you expect. Mostly, they didn’t immediately go after Israel since we continued to send them money.

    Steve

  • I disagree with the absolutist position you’re articulating, steve. Egypt got rid of the dictator without getting rid of the dictatorship. IMO the withdrawal of U. S. support from Mubarak was a contributing factor to his ouster. Was it the only factor? No. Was it a contributing factor? Yes. Was withdrawing support sufficient? Probably. But my point about Mubarak is not about any particular fondness for him as an individual but about the Obama Administration’s actions and statements that lead to his ouster which certainly conveyed the impression to me, the Egyptians, and, I think, most people who aren’t completely sold on how brilliant the Obama Administration is that U. S. support for the Egyptian military government was being withdrawn or, at the very least, weakening. I do not believe that can be portrayed as a realist goal.

    As to your remark about Putin, I think we’re erring in how we’re dealing with Iran and how we’re reacting to the situation in Ukraine (which I believe has been fomented by the Germans just as the break-up of Yugoslavia was). What realist goals are we pursuing in either case? More idealist objectives and mistaken ones to boot.

    If you’d like a good yardstick for what a realist would do in any given situation, you could do a lot worse than checking what Putin’s doing. He’s a consummate realist.

  • Andy Link

    “As I said above, an you have not disputed so perhaps you agree, we did not have the ability to keep Mubarak in power. The military clearly gave up on him. He was toast. So, does a realist work with the new government that comes in, or do they refuse to do so because of their ideology, i.e. because it is the MB?”

    The problem with your analysis is the US didn’t sit idly by while the Egyptian military considered the fate of Mubarak free from US influence. Quite the opposite. Mubarak did what we asked/demanded almost every step of the way, albeit reluctantly. The US didn’t wake up one morning to discover that the MB were suddenly in power.

  • The problem with your analysis is the US didn’t sit idly by while the Egyptian military considered the fate of Mubarak free from US influence.

    That’s what I meant by an “absolutist position”. Because we’re not all-powerful, we’re helpless. The truth is somewhere in between. Our actions may not be dispositive but they do have impact and consequences.

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