What should America do about the Arab Spring? Not much.
As the upheavals that have made 2011 a historic year in the Arab world look to stretch into 2012, a few regional trends are coming into clearer focus: The Arab world is going to be more democratic, more Islamist, and more volatile than ever.
The challenge for the United States is how to navigate this new regional environment. There is no shortage of advice about how the United States should be handling the changes. Almost every pundit calls for Washington to do more — talk more, threaten more, spend more, advise more. Foreign Policy contributor Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy is representative of this trend. In his “America’s Second Chance and the Arab Spring,” after appropriately humble bows to the idea that reform should “grow from within, rather than be imposed from without,” Pollack then calls for Washington to “articulate a vision of change … that lays out a path forward that they [the Arab governments] could be persuaded to tread, even if grudgingly at first.” How to persuade them? Pollack lays out an activist blueprint for Washington to use aid, diplomacy, the bully pulpit, and pressure on allies and enemies to follow his reform path.
I do not disagree with Pollack’s contention that “the changes sweeping the Middle East will affect America’s vital national interests.” But just because something is important to the United States does not necessarily mean that the United States can affect it. In fact, the record of the last decade indicates that the more resources the United States pours into a country (see: Iraq) in an effort to make it a stable, pro-American democracy, the further away that goal recedes.