Under former US President George Bush, the White House set for itself two possible choices in the Middle East: stability through the support of ruling regimes, or change through war and creative chaos, even if this forces the United States to abandon its friends. It tried the second choice. It failed in Lebanon. It was not able to spread the chaos to Syria, or to Iran, as it had wished. It failed in Egypt, despite severe pressures on the regime. It was confronted with the Arabs gathering around their regimes. It discovered too late that the hatred of peoples for occupation and wars, after its experience in Iraq, exceeds their longing for blood-drenched democracy. Thus, it retracted and returned to cooperating with friendly regimes in order to “win hearts and minds”. It held a truce with “the Axis of Evil” in preparation for withdrawal from Iraq. The Barack Obama Administration was surprised that peoples' demands for reform, democracy and participation in government did not require its incitement. The peoples hate it more than they hate their own regimes. After ascertaining the failure of its policies and its inability to affect Tunisia's uprising, it abandoned President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. It announced that it stood with the revolution, hoping to have a role to play in forming the new regime, in collaboration with France. Just as it tried to join the movement of change in Tunisia, without the slightest indication that it could succeed to do so, here is the United States now trying to catch up with the developments in Egypt, without a care for the fate of its ally. Obama expressed his sympathy with the protesters, calling on President Hosni Mubarak, who has been “very helpful [for Washington] on many difficult issues”, to enact “political reform [and] economic reform, which is absolute and essential”. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had preceded her President when she sent her Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman to Tunisia to show solidarity with the revolution. Washington is reassured to the fact that change in the Arab World will not affect its interests. Indeed, those carrying out the uprising do not blame their regimes for their mistakes in foreign policy, nor are they raising slogans hostile to the US or to Israel. Moreover, Islamist political parties have no impact on the course of events, and Iran is far away from everything that is happening. The demands of protesters in Egypt and in Tunisia are still, so far, limited to social freedoms, economic reform and holding the corrupt to account. Yet such a transformation is bound to lead to changes in foreign policy that will not be in the interest of the United States, even if the protesters do not proclaim their enmity towards it. Indeed, the collapsing regimes have linked their relations with Washington (and peace with Israel) to economic prosperity, and have long frightened the West from Islamists reaching power, from terrorism and from Iran's efforts to turn things around, yet it has become apparent that the danger lies at the very core of their own structure, as well as in the directions they have taken, identified with the economic and political directions taken by the United States. The regimes of Tunisia and Egypt no longer have the ability to cover up corruption, repress freedoms and commit fraud, nor do they have the ability to confront the revolution. Washington has thus abandoned them, feeling sorry for those who had been “helpful on difficult issues”, and aspiring to the formation of new friendships. Nevertheless, it does not so far know where to start.
