Middle East: The blame game has started in the West - by Sreeram Chaulia

After every major foreign policy catastrophe in the contemporary history of the United States, the blame game goes around as to who "lost it'.

Post Mortems of events that generate a crisis for American overseas interests essentially go along two opposing lines. The first one is technical, which involves dissecting the minutiae of why the nation's assortment of spies did not provide accurate advance information so that the dreaded outcome could have been occluded or at least hedged against.

The second one is political, which asks why American interests were poorly defined and executed by the highest office holders in power when the realities on the ground were clearly headed towards a shocking denouement that would set back US influence in a country or region for decades.

The current self-introspection in the wake of the overthrows of pro-American despots in Tunisia and Egypt fit neatly into this dualistic framework. The US intelligence community is finding itself under a heap of brickbats from politicians and hindsight-equipped pundits for turning a blind eye to signs of the popular mobilization and protests that have toppled two solid US allies already and threaten to scalp some more in a hurry.

Note EU-Digest: Case in point in reference to the the above report can be found in an editorial written yesterday by KT McFarland, a Fox News National Security Analyst, who served under the Ford and Reagan Administrations and who wrote former Defense chief Weinbergers "Principles of War speech" in 1984. In this recent article for Fox News she commented: "if the dominoes fall away from us, we could be locked into a clash of civilizations of biblical proportions between the democratic West and a radical Islamist Caliphate bent on spreading Sharia law throughout the world. If the dominoes fall toward us, we could see a flowering of freedom, development and economic opportunity throughout the region, and a golden era of peace and prosperity throughout much of the world. The stakes could not be higher. That’s why it is crucial that the United States do everything in its power to help the dominoes to fall in its own direction. While the outcome is up to the Egyptians … and Tunisians … and Libyans … and Iranians … there is much we can do to help their efforts along. There is no turning back the clock. To bemoan the stability those autocratic regimes once offered Israel and the U.S. is like crying over spilled milk. We need to get over it and move on. America cannot change the past, but it can affect the future."

Ms. McFarland is living in the past. The US is not in the same position it was ten years ago and has very little power to influence how the dominoes will fall. What they can do and which is much more effective is that the US and the EU openly announce their withdrawal of all support, including military, from every despotic regime in the Middle East and that they state that aid will not be resumed unless those regimes start immediate discussions with pro-democratic forces, followed by fair and free elections. That is the way to go. If not, Russia and China, now sitting on the sidelines (both with regimes which can not be classified as Democratic), will take the West to the cleaners.

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