The slaughter of hundreds in Egypt this
week was horrifying. The response of the United States to that slaughter
seemed puny and impotent. The president and the secretary of state
offered strongly worded condemnations, and the United States canceled
its participation in a military exercise that probably wouldn't have
happened anyway, given the unrest.
Around the world critics
suggested the United States was either effectively condoning the
violence or sending a strong message that it wouldn't penalize the
Egyptian military for this or future harshness. It didn't help that
after his statement the president slipped off for a round of golf.
The unnecessarily callous optics of the golf game aside, the unsettling reality is that America's options were puny
and likely to have very little effect. Indeed, the White House wisely
avoided falling into the trap of "feel good measures:" bold gestures
that may resonate but ultimately won't work.
Some argue the United
States should suspend the delivery of some or all the $1.3 billion in
annual aid it sends to the Egyptian government. But this would only
further reduce the limited influence we have over the Egyptian military.
It is important to
remember that after Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy's overthrow,
governments from the Persian Gulf in a matter of days offered the new
Egyptian government 10 times the amount the United States gives each
year. Not only did this shift the balance of influence away from the
United States, but it also raises the possibility that they might well
have replaced any funds we withdrew, blunting the impact of our actions.
It is also important to
remember that the situation in Egypt is not black and white. While there
is no excuse for the kind of massacres that took place this week, the
Muslim Brotherhood also has a share of responsibility for the situation
on the ground. The Morsy government regularly abused its authority,
trampled on basic human rights and was so widely reviled in Egypt that
its overthrow was welcomed by tens of millions of citizens.
Indeed, if you are
looking for a place to fault the U.S. response, look to our relative
tolerance of Morsy's abuses and our failure to strongly and effectively
call him out as his government crushed personal freedoms, suppressed the
press, threw opponents in jail and stood by as the Muslim Brotherhood
actively sought to sow discord throughout the Middle East.
Had the United States
been tougher back then and had it worked more with the international
community to tie total aid flows to better behavior, it could have
helped forestall the current situation. The United States consistently
did and said too little too late. It also fell into the trap of
overstating the legitimacy that being elected conferred on Morsy, even
as he undercut that legitimacy by acting in a perniciously undemocratic
way.
This last overall point
contains the secret to effective U.S. leverage over Egypt and many
countries these days. The United States cannot have much impact acting
alone. Unless--in an instance like this-- it can speak for a broad cross
section of aid-giving countries and institutions, the impact of any
conditions it sets is likely to be limited.
Impact requires
purposeful, active political and economic diplomacy at the highest
level—including the willingness to pressure friends. It also requires
having a clear plan. Finally, those with whom the United States is
interacting, be they friends or adversaries, have to believe that it has
the resolve to follow through -- and the willingness to take materially
positive action if things go the way America wants.
But a United States that
is post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan is correctly seen in the Middle East
and elsewhere as "leaning back." A trifecta of forces has contributed to
this:
The huge costs and
damage of our misadventures in the region have left us disinclined to
further commit major resources or incur further risks. Our domestic
economic problems have led us to turn inward and question how we
allocate our resources. And the polarization in U.S. politics has both
produced divisions that make action hard and empowered the extreme wings
of both parties, groups that for all their divisions happen to share a
taste for isolationism.
American inaction in
Syria, the growing violence in Iraq, our apparent inclination to get out
of Afghanistan at any cost, and our relative silence on the decaying
situation elsewhere in North Africa all contribute to the unhelpful
perception that we are not going to put our shoulder into much in the
region (or elsewhere for that matter).
It's not that we'll be
absent. Not that we won't issue statements. Not that we won't take some
modest actions. It's just that we will do less where we can do less. We
will hesitate more. And with each illustration of this—whether our
restraint is soundly based or not—we lose credibility and thus leverage.
This is the hard choice
for America: Embrace the risks and costs of real engagement or accept
those associated with a much more passive role. This doesn't mean we
have to be foolish. We don't need more Iraqs.
But the lesson of Iraq
was not to never intervene again. It was to never do so rashly,
recklessly or for the wrong reasons. It was to resist the temptation to
act alone, to step up to the hard work of real diplomacy, to keep our
eye on our nation's need to be a more effective leader in the
international community, rather than simply the bullying hyperpower. It
was to understand that the trick of leadership is actually getting
others to follow, building coalitions, leveraging our power with that of
others.
Because as we are now
discovering, sometimes the greatest costs of mistakes like the ones we
made in Iraq and Afghanistan are the way they limit our ability or
inclination to take action in the future when it is truly necessary.
Editor's note: David Rothkopf writes regularly for CNN.com. He is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow him on Twitter.
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