Washington exploits the changing Poliscape of the Middle East

The U.S. is maneuvering to stem the revolutionary tide around the Middle East.

Washington’s plan to derail the Arab Spring
13 December, 2012 – SocialistWorker.org

BEHIND BARACK Obama’s rhetoric about democracy and freedom, the U.S. government is maneuvering to install a new generation of strongmen to roll back the Arab revolutions and reassert U.S. dominance in the Middle East.

In the latest two examples, the U.S. backed the power grab of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has tried to install ex-regime officials at the head of Syria’s newly reorganized opposition. Thus, Washington hopes to divert two massive social uprisings into supportive governments that will remain allied to Western interests rather than reflect the popular will.

The stakes for the U.S. government are high. The invasion and occupation of Iraq–once considered by the arrogant hawks around George W. Bush to be the stepping stone to “regime change” from one end of the Arab world to the other–ultimately succeeded in turning the country into an ally of Iran, the main U.S. nemesis in the Middle East.

Last year’s Arab Spring–by overturning long-time dictators in a few countries and forcing governments in others to be more responsive to their populations–threatened to take even more nations out of their close U.S. orbit.

That, in turn, exposed the contradictions of U.S. reliance on Israel to dominate the region. Israel’s latest war on the Palestinian territory of Gaza not only failed to crush the Hamas government there, but also propelled the cause of Palestinian liberation to a level of prominence in Arab and Muslim countries unseen in decades.

THAT’S THE common thread in Washington’s seemingly contradictory policies since the revolutionary wave began in Tunisia two years ago. First, the U.S. supported Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali until a mass uprising and general strike forced him out, all in a matter of a month’s time. Washington followed the same script in Egypt, sticking with Hosni Mubarak–one of the linchpins of U.S. policy in the Arab world–until the last minute.

In Bahrain–the base of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet–Washington green-lighted savage counterrevolutionary repression against a peaceful pro-democracy movement. In Yemen, the U.S. eased out a despised authoritarian, in the hopes of shoring up a military-dominated government.

Only in Libya–where the U.S. and European powers armed rebels opposed to Muammar el-Qaddafi and carried out a punishing aerial assault under the guise of humanitarian aims–did the U.S. seem to unreservedly back the ouster of the old regime. But as Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn anticipated, the fall of Qaddafi’s regime was “primarily won by NATO, and not popular revolution.”

Over the two decades before his downfall, Qaddafi had been welcomed back into the good graces of the West on the basis of oil deals, but he was still considered too unreliable and isolated–and therefore expendable. So the Western powers channeled the revolution into a pliable government in which CIA assets and ex-Qaddafi officials played a key role.

The same method is at play in the U.S. policy toward Syria.

Barack Obama has voiced U.S. recognition of Syria’s opposition himself, signaling a more interventionist approach. But what’s remarkable about the U.S. attitude to the Bashar al-Assad regime is just how long the U.S. has held back from funding and arming the Syrian rebels. …source