A World of Trouble

Americans are notoriously indifferent to what’s going on in the rest of the world, and a cursory glance at the stories coming in from around the globe will readily reveal why. There’s a lot of bad news out there, and there seems to be little that America can do about it.

Not only is there is no good news lately from Egypt, the most populous and arguably the most influential country in the Middle East, there’s not even a sure way to describe what would constitute good news in such a dysfunctional state. A candidate backed by the Muslim Brotherhood claims to have won the recent presidential election, which might even be true, but the courts have dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which had backed the second-place candidate, has declared itself sweeping powers that include writing the new constitution that will define the president’s role. Neither the theocratic rule of the medieval Muslim Brotherhood nor the severe order of a brutal military dictatorship serve the interests of Egypt or the rest of the world, but the social media-savvy young modernists that the media and the administration expected to take over back in the giddy days of the “Arab Spring” are no longer an option. Should the country fall into a civil war between the military and the Islamists, a distinct possibility, the hipsters should fare even worse.

A military dictatorship in Egypt might be the best outcome for the west, at least in the short term, but any overt support from America or Europe will only aggravate the constant anti-western sentiment throughout the Muslim world. Western support for the Islamists, even if couched as a pro-democracy statement, will fuel their ambitions but won’t lessen their hatreds. Saying a few nice things on behalf of the modernists will sound nice, but be futile. None of the options bode well for Israel, which is already seeing an increase of violence on its Egyptian border.

America’s interests are somewhat clearer in regard to Syria, where the vicious regime of Bashir Assad has been slaughtering thousands of rebels and non-combatants in a desperate attempt to retain its power, but the options are no more appealing. In addition to the clear humanitarian objections to the Assad regime, Americans of both parties are eager to see a new government take hold because Syria is one of Iran’s last reliable allies, a constant meddler in the affairs of Lebanon and other countries, a backer of terror groups, and a general annoyance to the world order. Although America joined with France and other European countries to provide weapons and air support for rebels fighting against the odious but less troublesome Gadafi government in Libya, this time around the support has been purely rhetorical.

The newfound caution is understandable, given that there are no assurances the rebels will represent an improvement, as well as the chaos that followed the Libyan revolution, but it might also be motivated by fear of antagonizing the Iranians or even the Russians, who have been supplying weapons to the Syrian government and is now dispatching warships to the region. Such sound reasons offer no solace to the victims of Assad’s atrocities, of course, and a reluctance to antagonize the likes of Iran and Russia does little to deter them.

Just because these crises offer no good choices, however, does not mean that the American government has lately been choosing poorly. In retrospect it was a bad decision to demand that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak step down, for despite his many faults he was a reliable keeper of the peace with Israel, and America could have used its clout to negotiate a deal that would have kept him or a hand-picked successor around long enough to improve the political chances of the pro-western intellectuals who helped to launch the revolution. While there can be no certainty that sterner policies would have succeeded in cowing our adversaries into compliance, the attempts at “resetting” relations with Russia and offering an “open hand” to Iran have completely failed, as have America’s earlier attempts to work with Assad as a “reformer.” Cuts to the American defense budget probably aren’t sending the right signals, either.

Similarly scary situations can be found in every corner of the world, and in most cases there are also legitimate criticisms of America’s response. It’s enough to keep one focused on the domestic news, as bad as that might be, or maybe even limit one’s reading to the sports pages.

— Bud Norman