Questions on Hamid’s Egypt

Three questions in reaction to Shadi Hamid’s detailed analysis of Morsy and Egypt:

1. “The Brotherhood’s priorities, for now, are rather simple — to survive and get to the next elections.” Won’t that always be the Brotherhood’s priority? In fact, isn’t that the priority of every party in power everywhere?

2. Is Khairat al-Shater a “revolutionary” or “pragmatic”? What does it mean to call him both?

3. How much does it matter what is in the new Egyptian constitution? Would a constitution in Egypt that Islamists liked act as a real constraint on liberals? For the Brotherhood, would it (could it) function as a blueprint for the Islamization of the Egyptian state (and society writ large)?

The Anti-Chemical Weapons Norm Is Not in Danger

The cruel violence of the Syrian regime should not have surprised anyone, nor should the fact that it continued to engage in it without concern for the ambiguous threats issues by the US and others. Regimes like Bashar al-Asad’s have nothing to gain and everything to lose by compromising and giving up some of their power.

Now that the regime may have used chemical weapons against the opposition, some analysts and advocates are calling it a “game changer,” arguing that American credibility is on the line, requiring the United States to intervene. And if it doesn’t intervene after the small-scale use of chemical weapons in Syria, Jonathan Tobin asks, how can we trust Washington’s promises to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?

Others have rightly pointed out the absurdity of calling for intervention now, after the regime has tortured and killed tens of thousands of Syrians with conventional weapons and methods. To this, Max Fisher responds that more is at stake now—namely, the norm against the use of chemical weapons in the international system.

But if we are going to think about what constitutes a “red line” that might trigger a more direct military intervention in Syria, I’m not sure that strengthening the anti-chemical weapons norm is a good enough reason: because the norm against the use of chemical weapons is not endangered of being undermined by what happens in Syria.

Since World War Two very few states have used chemical weapons. The US used them in Vietnam. Evidence suggests Egypt used some in the 1960s during its involvement in the Yemeni civil war, while Libya used some in a 1987 conflict with Chad. Iraq used it against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War, and also against the Kurds in 1988. Beyond this, there is little evidence that many states have considered using them in many circumstances.

The reason is because the norm against the use of chemical weapons is very strong. The Chemical Weapons Convention, with 188 member-states, is the most formal representation of this. But consider, too, what a norm is. It is a “standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity,” which incorporates a logic of appropriateness—a sense that specific behaviors are required as some sort of baseline for states to participate in international political life. The overwhelming majority of states want to be recognized as “good citizens” of the world.

Customary practice, the norm of sovereignty, and the laws of war have all entrenched the use of violence under particular circumstances. In the case of conflict, good citizenship requires controlling levels of violence, and that means that violence must based primarily on the use of conventional weapons. Indeed, the evidence suggests states are increasingly moving to control “excess” violence toward this end.

When it comes to chemical weapons—or nuclear or biological weapons—the exceptions to the norm proves the rule. Even a cursory glance at those states that have used them indicates that their interest in violating the norm is specific to their conditions, leaders, and motivations. If the US doesn’t intervene immediately in Syria because of the use of chemical weapons, no state that wouldn’t already be thinking of it will look at Syria and believe that Washington doesn’t care about chemical weapons, and therefore decide to use them. What matters are the particular regime dynamics at play in a given place and time.

This isn’t an argument against intervention or against considering the need to maintain the norm as a reason for intervention. It’s to say that intervention is a big deal, and we need to be careful about why we might go in. And if we’re thinking about implications and comparisons, instead of focusing on the use of chemical weapons at this point in time, I think the lesson is rather very strongly about the need to deter mass killing near the beginning, before regimes come to believe they either have impunity to attack their own citizens or feel cornered enough to try anything.

Defining the Arab State

Issandr el-Amrani has a very angry response to Aaron David Miller’s piece on the post-Arab Spring decline of the Arab state. Though el-Amrani raises a couple of important points, the piece seems as full of misperceptions that he accuses Miller of.

El-Amrani’s underlying point—that the Arab states are not simply “tribes with flags”—is a strong one, and I think Miller undermines his own argument by falling back on that assertion. But contrary to what el-Amrani seems to indicate, Miller wasn’t arguing that the state has collapsed everywhere in the Arab world, much less so in the Middle East (where he notes Israel, Turkey, and Iran have remained coherent and strong). El-Amrani uses the examples of the UAE, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to prove his point. But apart from the fact that Miller explicitly put Saudi Arabia in the category of states “holding their own,” these examples underline Miller’s point that it’s about “basic coherence and governance.”

It’s not about feeling good about the Arab Spring, as el-Amrani dismisses Miller’s piece, but about questions of legitimacy and governance. That’s a legitimate concern to note, as different groups compete with each other, either violently or non-violently, to define the state and its basis for legitimacy, laws, and norms.

Indeed, Karl reMarks notes this in his own response to Miller, and which el-Amrani cites approvingly. He acknowledges that “the collapse of the state, in varying degrees in each of the three states [Egypt, Iraq, Syria], is an undisputable phenomenon.” reMarks’ critique is centered on the reasons for the failing nature of these states, and that’s certainly something to engage and debate.

Also contrary to what el-Amrani seems to assume, Miller wasn’t providing a normative take on the aftermath of the Arab Spring, but more like a logistical take. Will these Arab states remain functioning as central authorities, with institutions capable of asserting that authority across all of society?

I share el-Amrani’s yawn with the language Miller uses in his piece, which is—as with his other ones—filled with clichés. I suspect this is because Miller simply writes too much, and for a non-specialist audience. It seems the easiest thing to do. But that’s a different motivation than the implicit orientalism that el-Amrani hints at.

Finally, el-Amrani inserts his own cliché as much as he criticizes Miller for doing so. Referencing Miller’s take on the Hamas-Fatah split and the sectarian divisions in Iraq, el-Amrani faults Miller for ignoring the Israeli occupation and the American invasion. Obviously both are relevant, and I seriously doubt Miller isn’t aware of these as constraining factors. (In fact, he references colonial interference as a contributing factor.) But neither was relevant to his particular point, which is that Palestine and Iraq are simply unable to get their internal houses in order so as to provide good governance to their people. Explaining why certainly requires an account of the Israeli and American presence, but that wasn’t the point of Miller’s piece.  Moreover, Miller puts Palestine and Iraq in the category of “pre-Arab Spring” countries with governance problems.

The underlying problem seems to be that Miller and el-Amrani are approaching the issue from two different angles. Miller doesn’t claim that states don’t exist in the Arab world, or even that they will collapse entirely tomorrow. He admits that borders are well entrenched, and that efforts to redraw them have been few in number, and failed completely. Rather, Miller defines the state as “effective” and “possessing the capacity to protect the wellbeing of all of its citizens.” Surely, with the violence being visited upon the citizens by the governments and other citizens, this is an obvious and legitimate argument to make.

El-Amrani seems to assume that Miller is making the opposite argument. He contends that Miller confuses “the dysfunctions of Arab states with the absence of a state.” But that line of thinking doesn’t appear in Miller’s argument. Nowhere does he say there is the absence of a state; at best, only Lebanon is listed as a “non-state,” but Miller doesn’t connect this to the Arab Spring but its own long-standing internal divisions and problems.

Perhaps El-Amrani disagrees with Miller’s proposals for stabilizing the Arab states, which include strengthening national institutions and broadening their legitimacy. After all, if the Arab state is already doing fine, then it requires something else to fix the problems currently roiling them.

Miller’s assumptions of the weak foundation of the Arab states—something that’s been a perennial concern throughout the literature on the Arab state—should be engaged on their merits. Otherwise, serious policy solutions can’t be debated.

Agents and Structures in the Middle East

Michael Doran argues that Chuck Hagel’s admiration for Dwight Eisenhower’s handling of the 1956 Suez Crisis is misplaced. This is, Doran continues, because Eisenhower’s smack-down of Britain, France, and Israel had worse consequences for the Middle East and American interests than a more forceful policy against Egyptian President Nasser might have.

He then extends the logic of this lesson to imply that today Hagel stands for harsher treatment of Israel, particularly for imposing on it to resolve the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. This connects to Jeffrey Goldberg’s own argument that “linkage” (that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the root of all problems in the region, and that solving it will end the threats to American interests there) seems to be an Obama Administration misconception.

I agree that linkage is the wrong assumption on which to approach the Middle East. It should be obvious by now that plenty of other problems—internal fights between communities within the Arab countries, inter-Arab and inter-Muslim rivalry and contests for regional leadership—that don’t rely on Israel to continue.

But this doesn’t mean there aren’t connections between some problems in the region, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In their arguments, Doran and Goldberg represent one side of a perennial debate in Political Science—the agent-structure problem. They assume that the Arab states and Palestinians are independent agents, who choose to drag Israel into their problems, but who also have the choice to leave it out. By virtue of doing the former, then, the United States must—it follows—adopt the position that Israel doesn’t matter because it’s being utilized as a matter of choice for strategic or tactical reasons.

That Israel is used as such is certainly true: During the heyday of Arab authoritarianism, the conflict was used by the regimes to justify shifting the focus from domestic reform to fend off the Zionist threat, to clamp down on domestic dissent, to rationalize a bloated bureaucracy, including domestic security agencies, and as a stick with which to beat other Arab states.

But at the same time, larger structural forces have long been at play in the region that bring Israel into the equation even apart from conscious Arab decisions. One such structure is the network of inter-actor relationships in the region, including outside powers like the US, which conditions how actors act, sometimes pushing them into decisions.

The Middle East as a regional system means that Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab states, Turkey, and Iran are all inter-connected through their regional politics. What happens in one area has ripple effects in the other. The lines that connect one actor to another criss-cross each other until it looks like a spider web of links.

This applies to American policy in the region, as well. Doran suggests that Eisenhower’s implicit protection of Nasser had dire consequences: it led to a deeper Soviet penetration of the region, and it enhanced Nasser’s regional and international standing.

But there’s no evidence that this wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Nasser’s own regional ambitions would have led to a direct clash with Washington anyway, given the American preoccupation with the Cold War and the desire to see locals as allies or enemies. Egypt’s rivalry with Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan would likely have pushed some states into the Soviet camp and some into the American camp for their own purposes anyway.

Moreover, when Ike pressed the British, French, and Israelis at Suez, he wasn’t just concerned with Egypt: he was driven by larger processes as well. He had other—which is not to say more important, but just competing—interests at the time of the Suez crisis. This included the expansion of the Cold War, and the Hungarian uprising and crisis that overlapped with the Suez war. Eisenhower was angry at his allies because he wasn’t consulted, but primarily because he was trying to manage American interests at the global level. His concern was that the attack on Egypt undermined his effort to castigate and push back against the Soviets for their invasion of Hungary at the same time.

And what was the alternative? To let the British, French, and Israelis undermine Nasser so that he was eventually replaced? Who would have replaced him? The evidence of foreign countries intervening to shape the politics of a state has, over the years, demonstrated time and again that it hardly works. Rather, it leads to breakdowns of traditional networks upon which the polity is built, suffering for the citizens, and regional instability, threatening other countries. If the Israeli experience in Lebanon isn’t the clearest example of this, I don’t know what else is.

Doran’s argument contains other misperceptions that can be attributed to emphasizing agents over structures. He contends that Eisenhower’s action put the final nail in the coffin of the British Empire. Maybe, but the end of empire was already there—at best, the empire would have dragged on a little longer. The structural conditions for its demise were already playing out. Opinion in Britain and in its possessions was turning against it, while resistance and national liberation movements were already mobilizing against British authority. The financial crisis London faced after World War Two and the loss of India had made the end inevitable. Nothing Ike would have done would have saved it, and it’s even arguable that prolonging the empire would have led to more suffering as Britain fought longer to keep its possessions.

Doran’s take on Ike provides an early representation of the American conundrum in how to deal with the Arab Awakening today. I buy the argument that Washington can contribute to the stabilization of Egypt without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But at the same time, it is clear that removing this festering conflict would undermine many of the arguments anti-Israel groups use to support their militant positions; would free up American attention and resources to help stabilize other countries; and more. It won’t end all the other conflicts—Saudi Arabia and Iran will still remain rivals, for example—but that’s not a reason not to push for a settlement.

(For the record, I’m not trying to resolve the agent-structure debate here. Just noting the difficulty in separating them under certain conditions.)

Winners and Losers

My first reaction of who comes out stronger and who comes out weaker from the Gaza conflict was posted at Open Zion. It is reprinted in full below.

A ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hamas and came into force an hour ago. It’s early yet, but an initial glance at potential winners and losers gives some insight into how the ceasefire came about, and how it might play out in the region—if it holds.

Some short-term losers: Turkey and Egypt, both of whom claimed to be staunch supporters of Hamas but failed to press for anything that might resemble a Hamas victory. Turkey was at first extraordinarily quiet, pretty much abdicating any responsibility for Hamas and Gaza after spending a few years damaging relations with Israel for their sake and thus undermining its effort to enhance its appeal to the Arab world. Then, once he got going, Prime Minister Erdoğan ruined any chance in the near future for a reconciliation with Israel by calling it a “terrorist state” and condemning the US for supporting it. (See Michael Koplow’s excellent discussion of this.)

For its part, Egypt, despite President Morsi’s declarations, didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done under the Mubarak regime. It’s true that Morsi’s rhetoric was far more supportive of Hamas, and reports are that his ideas for a ceasefire annoyed the Israelis because it so overtly favored Hamas. But the outcome was the same as under Mubarak: the status quo ante, with Hamas getting no promises from Israel to lift the blockade (though Israel seems to have said it would ease up on attacks on Hamas).

Long term losers: Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. Jonathan Schanzer asked whether Hamas was upstaging the PLO. Abbas displayed total impotence during the conflict; more, he was pushed completely to the side. Hamas’s strategy of sticking to its “resistance” guns and gathering increasing legitimacy and recognition from others makes Abbas/Fatah/the PLO/the PA less and less relevant in Palestinian politics. As far as I can see, the only things that can save them are a successful bid at the U.N., or tangible progress in negotiations with Israel.

The other long-term loser is Israel. As I’ve argued before, Israel has no long term strategy regarding Gaza. Its victory in a limited military campaign will only strengthen the perception that its tactical-military emphasis works and doesn’t need to be changed. This means it’ll be harder for Israel to accept a new formula for maintaining security and achieving peace. It also means we’re likely to see a repeat of November’s events again.

Winners: The obvious one is Netanyahu, for pulling off a clear military victory and moving past his blunder in the Western Wall Tunnel riots of 1996, and for now having a clear foreign policy victory to point to during the campaign; Ehud Barak for showing he still matters (first polls give his Independence the greatest numbers of seats since the campaign began, though I’m not sure it will last to January); Qatar for inserting itself into this arena; and missile/rocket defense systems.

Steven Cook argues the U.S. was in a very difficult position during the conflict, but I think President Obama also comes out a winner. I’d argue he handled the crisis extremely well, by hanging back and letting local actors—especially Egypt—take the lead, thus giving them a stake in the post-war system. He also provided continual encouragement and prodding, through phone calls to Morsi and Netanyahu and with Secretary of State Clinton assuring Netanyahu in person that this was a good idea and the US supported Israel’s right to self-defense.

On second thought, we might consider putting Egypt in this category instead. It navigated very well the shoals of public opinion, Muslim Brotherhood pressure, Hamas’s demands, its own strategic interests, and Israel’s actions. That Morsi was able to pull off a Mubarak-style outcome, even under changed conditions, suggests Egypt remains a regional player, and the outside player when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The more things change…

Israel-Hamas Implications Thus Far

What if the Israel-Hamas clash stops today or tomorrow? (I know, a big assumption; things could certainly be more drawn out or escalate) Where would that leave things? Some speculation:

Israel will probably have reduced weapons stores of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Perhaps Israel will have especially reduced the longer-range rockets. Perhaps Israel will have taken out missiles that came from Libya to Gaza.

Iron Dome appears to have proven its effectiveness. (which, as a side note, leads me to believe Hamas and others will think about how to innovate to circumvent the limits imposed by Iron Dome. Look for different means, different technology etc Just like missiles are more appealing when Israeli walls closed off other tactical options.)

Hamas and others have demonstrated they can aim for Tel Aviv and, possibly, Jerusalem or its environs. (I am less *certain* than @mkoplow that central Jerusalem was the target. But maybe I was not paying attention) [I don't claim to know which of various factions are firing the missiles. For more on factions in Gaza, see this Crisis Group report, Radical Islam in Gaza]

I don’t know whether for one or both sides this was a dress run for a confrontation connected to an Israeli military attack on Iran. (Amir Oren wonders regarding the Israeli side).

Neither side articulated or demonstrated a new strategy. This is Groundhog Day. Various levels of escalations this year in March (here, here) and June (here, here). Now November. The 2008-09 battle was only four years ago.

Both Hamas and the Government of Israel will claim victory and say they stood strong in the face of danger. That would likely help Netanyahu and Likud at the polls next year.

I don’t see how this changes perceptions much – Israelis and Palestinians about the other or Arab states, the US, and the international community about Israelis and Palestinians. Despite the much-talked about battle of social media, does much actually shift? Are lower casualty numbers meaningful?

My wildcard: what does this mean for Egypt?

I have written this with a lot of uncertainty, even about some things that have been reported on (like Iron Dome numbers). Moreover, how a cease-fire or de-escalation takes place might be meaningful but that has not happened yet. More to come….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Israel in Gaza: Politics or Bad Decision-Making?

My first organized thoughts on the Israel-Hamas conflict was were posted at Open Zion yesterday. Here’s the main conclusion:

It’s hard to argue politics wasn’t somewhere in the back of the minds of the elected leaders when they decided to go ahead with the military campaign. But such an assault is a very risky move: while so far, the Israel Defense Forces has successfully minimized civilian casualties, there was no guarantee this would or will be the case. There is even less guarantee that Israel will be able to avoid a ground invasion in response to whatever Hamas does—which would in turn raise real questions about the ultimate military objective and exit strategy, and the associated costs of not having these.

Click here to read the full post.

Cutting Off Its Nose to Spite Its Face

Given the Israeli government’s reaction to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to ask the UN for non-member observer state status, you’d think the PA was asking the General Assembly to resolve Israel out of existence. The government has threatened to “go crazy,” while the Prime Minister’s office apparently intends to show the Palestinians “what’s what.” The most extreme measures contemplated are building lots more settlements and halting transfers of tax revenue to the PA.

Put another way, Israel is being extremely short-sighted, and if it follows through with its threats, will put itself at great risk.

Mahmoud Abbas seems bent on pursuing this course while ignoring all the signals of lasting damage that could be done to the Palestinian government and the two-state solution. To be fair, virtually all of his options have been taken away from him: distracted by the American election, Iran, the Arab Awakening, and the rising power of Hamas, nobody is supporting the PA, leaving it to struggle alone against far more powerful forces. Although Abbas could do far, far more to convince Israel that he’s genuinely committed to peace negotiations, there’s no evidence that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is interested and would take seriously any offers.

But still, Israel’s over-reaction is creating a situation in which it will be responsible for the collapse of the PA. It’s hard to see how this would benefit Israel. The West Bank will then be opened up to greater penetration by Hamas; the security cooperation between Israel and the PA, which has been successful at containing most violence and threats against Israelis, will end; the Salam Fayyad administration, which has been busy stabilizing the Palestinian economy—no small feat under contemporary conditions—and ensuring international support for a moderate government will disappear.

More settlements will also mean more settler violence against Palestinians and their property, which in turn will undermine the legitimacy and authority of the Israeli state.

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that a third intifada is the likely outcome here, and moreover that Israel is simply not prepared for it or will be able to respond effectively. This is the conclusion reached by many Israel analysts and former military and intelligence officials; at best, serving officials argue, the current “quiet” in the West Bank is temporary. Nobody can say what form such an uprising would take, but coming while the nuclear issue with Iran is unresolved, the Syrian civil war rages, relations with Egypt continue to be marked by uncertainty, and the Sinai remains a source of danger, Israel cannot afford to direct soldiers and resources to the West Bank.

This is the moment for hard decisions in Israel, most of which go against long-standing assumptions and expectations. A broader policy framework needs to be constructed, one that incorporates policy toward Hamas/Gaza and the PA/West Bank. A firmer assertion of the state supremacy over domestic groups should complement this. And a more realistic assessment of the settlements is necessary.

The nature of governmental decision-making in Israel combined with the continual threats to the country hasn’t facilitated this kind of long-term thinking. The experience of surviving and prospering under all kinds of adverse conditions also engenders a kind of we-will-persevere-no-matter-what presumption.

These conditions are dangerous for the country’s future security, welfare, and stability. What will it take to get the country to take all this seriously?

A Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu Joint Ticket

So it appears that while I was away from my computer, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu (YB) decided to run on a single list for the upcoming elections in Israel. Thus I can only give a quick reaction now.

This isn’t really a surprise, and provides considerable benefits for the two parties, but at the same time has several implications for Israeli parties and politics.

Israeli political parties merge and split all the time. Likud itself is an amalgam of several parties. Yisrael Beiteinu ran as part of the ticket of National Union in 2003, and there have been rumors in the past about a merger with Likud.

On the surface a unified faction makes lots of sense. It helps protect both Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman from internal party rivals. It allows for a concentration of resources and voters, particularly as the left and the center are emerging as serious challenges in the campaign.

On the other hand, a super-right party would draw voters from some of the smaller right secular parties. These aren’t likely to be happy about this, and may fight to keep their share of the vote. It’s also not clear all Likud members are happy about this. There was already substantial discontent among some with Netanyahu; a joint ticket will be seen as a way of silencing them, and they may intensify their anti-Bibi activities, and work to undermine the union.

Nor will YB members be all that happy. The Russian and secular constituencies that voted for it will see their issues diluted within a larger party. Netanyahu was careful to give YB more or less equality with Likud on the ticket (which I take as a sign of his perception of his weak position), but Likud is still bigger and stronger and will dominate the agenda more than YB will.

The haredi parties will not be happy, whatever they say in public. YB, and Lieberman particularly, is considered to be staunchly secular. For example, it harped on the haredi draft as major policy issue for a long time, and seemed less inclined to compromise than Bibi was. This opens the door a little more for the religious parties, especially Shas, to consider a government with the left and center-left, should the latter obtain enough seats in the Knesset to form a plausible core to the coalition.

I understand Lieberman may have been offered his choice of ministry should the ticket form the coalition. This would be disastrous for Israel. As a Foreign Minister, Lieberman has been one of the least productive and biggest liabilities Israel has even had in that position (with a possible except of David Levy). If Lieberman chooses the Defense Ministry, he’ll be in an even more powerful position to shape Israeli security and foreign policy (assuming they are not the same thing, which isn’t a safe assumption) along his confused, incoherent, and belligerent preferences. In such an event, expect a downward spiral in relations with the US, the Palestinians, Turkey, and Egypt.

Finally, don’t expect the ticket to last. Israeli politicians are known for their large egos, and Lieberman and Netanyahu are no different: neither will want to play second fiddle to the other for long, particularly as Lieberman will now see himself as being in a stronger position. There are also real policy disagreements between the two parties, including differences over the role of religion in politics and society. They share some, but not all, of the same type of voters. And other parties, among the left, the right, and the religious will prefer Likud over YB; they’ll see YB as an obstacle to overcome more than anything else. This will push Likud, including Bibi, to leave the ticket as soon as is feasible or the pressure gets too great.

Too Soon to Predict American Defeat in or Retreat from the Middle East

In the New York Times, Pankaj Mishra considers the “inevitable retreat” of the US from the Middle East. Certainly the argument is important to debate, but the article itself contains too many assumptions and problematic comparisons.

Mishra is correct that there are similarities in current conditions to the beginning of the Iranian Revolution: there, too, the uprisings against the regime were composed of different groups—some Islamist, some not—alongside intra-group struggles for domination and a share in power.

It’s also true that the US has a long history of clumsy and ill-advised interventions in the Middle East. But that history has been there for a while, as has the dissatisfaction with it. The frustration, anger, and resentment that has been expressed lately has been expressed many, many times before; the only difference is that this time in some places the authoritarian governments that contained them are no longer around to do so.

Mishra also begins by assuming the Middle East and the Muslim world are interchangeable; they are not. Afghanistan, which Mishra compares to Egypt, is not part of the political, security, economic, and cultural structures of the Middle East, which have a totally different dynamic.

Afghanistan also has a long and separate history of dealing with foreign interventions, the experience of which is very different from the Middle East. At the time of the 2001 American attack on Afghanistan, observers were already noting the British and Russian/Soviet history in the region, predicting similar responses to a US presence. The specific attack referenced in Mishra’s piece is not something new or in any way unexpected, and occurred under very different conditions, expectations, and historical experiences than the embassy and consulate attacks in Egypt and Libya.

The article then claims that a “more meaningful analogy” to the US struggle against radical Islam in the Middle East is Vietnam in 1975, and the American withdrawal from Indochina more broadly. But this example, too, falls short of historical experience and contemporary conditions.

Mishra rightly points out that the US perceived the area to be on the frontline of the defense against Communism, and therefore worth involvement in. But the difference with the Middle East is that in the latter there is hard and tangible physical and other evidence that its presence is based on more than perception.

The US has close and longstanding security, economic, and strategic ties with several states in the Middle East that it didn’t have in Indochina. It also has publicly committed itself many times to the defense of some of these states (particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia)—and has demonstrated this commitment with force of arms.

One might argue that the US has faced similar moments of “withdrawal” from the region before. But close examination reveals that these were really only in response to short-term and contained violence (Lebanon in 1983) or about tactical redeployment to elsewhere in the region (Saudi Arabia some years after the 1991 Gulf War). When it did have hundreds of thousands of troops in the region (1990-1991), it was deeply committed to maintaining them there for a very short period of time with a limited war aim; after that, most of the thousands of troops that remained were moved elsewhere in the region not as a retreat but a tactical and strategic redeployment in some cases, and due to a lack of need in others.

The one example of a large-scale American military commitment to the Middle East that might rival Vietnam was the occupation of Iraq. At the time, many did argue that Washington’s ill-advised invasion was opening the door to Iranian influence, at the expense of American influence. The American withdrawal of forces from there is comparable, but it was also on Washington’s policy agenda before the outbreak of the Arab Awakening, and it was not conditioned upon a larger removal of American presence from the region—as the Vietnam example was.

More broadly, Mishra’s argument that retreat is inevitable is not supported by the contemporary relationships the US has with regional actors. It remains very close to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel.

In fact, according to Mishra’s implication, the US has only really “lost” Egypt at the moment, and even that deserves qualification since we are still at the beginning of a transition. There is no way to know whether America’s military aid to the Egyptian military and Cairo’s need for aid and money from international organizations and creditors won’t act as a vehicle for a continued American role, however different, in the future of the country.

As has been pointed out several times already, the “mob assaults” against the US have been just that: small groups of people who haven’t been able to sustain any real momentum, rallied by individuals engaged in their own intra-communal struggles or the work of violent groups committed to attacking the US regardless of how the population as a whole feels. These are disconnected from the larger structural conclusions Mishra is pointing to.

Certainly, the moment has arrived at which the US has lost its ability to control events there. And there is no reason to think the demonstrations and what they represent will end any time soon. This is a period of adjustment for the Middle East and for outside powers involved in it.

Mishra’s argument rests, in the end, on a historical comparative case for a “compelling” American “strategic retreat” from the Middle East. But because these comparisons are incomplete or too different, this recommendation, too, falls short of careful consideration. One could argue that the exact opposite of Mishra’s recommendation is necessary—that the US can help transitions in the region to some form of democracy, peaceful coexistence and shared tolerance, healthier economies, and so on.

This doesn’t require the kind of intervention and sinister influence the author implies is the only option for the US, but it does require some careful consideration of available options and ideas, not to rushed judgment about the inevitable future. The conclusion might be the same as Mishra’s, but there should be some time devoted to such a discussion first.