Tunisia: How the US Got It Wrong (and How to Make It Right)

One sign read "Game Over". But in fact, the game has barely started.

The
Facebook generation has taken to the streets and the "Jasmin Revolt"
has become a revolution, at least as of the time of writing. And the
flight of former President Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia is inspiring people
across the Arab world to take to the streets and warn their own
sclerotic and autocratic leaders that they could soon face a similar
fate.

As the French paper Le Monde described it, scenes that were
"unimaginable only days ago" are now occurring with dizzying speed.
Already, in Egypt, Egyptians celebrate and show solidarity over
Tunisia's collapse, chanting "Kefaya" and "We are next, we are next, Ben
Ali tell Mubarak he is next." Protests in Algeria and Jordan could
easily expand thanks to the inspiration of the tens of thousands of
Tunisians, young and old, working and middle class, who toppled one of
the world's most entrenched dictators. Arab bloggers are hailing what
has happened in Tunisia as "the African revolution commencing... the
global anti-capitalist revolution."

The birth of a human nationalism?

Around the turn of the new millennium, as the Arab world engaged in
an intense debate over the nature of the emerging globalised system, one
critic in the newspaper al-Nahar declared that an "inhuman
globalisation" has been imposed on the Arab world when its peoples have
yet even to be allowed to develop a "human" nationalism. Such a dynamic
well describes the history of Tunisia, and most other countries in the
Arab/Muslim world as well.

And so, if the people of Tunisia are
lucky, they are in the midst of midwifing the Arab world's first human
nationalism, taking control of their politics, economy and identity away
from foreign interests and local elites alike in a manner that has not
been seen in more than half a century.

But the way is still
extremely treacherous. As a member of the Tajdid opposition party told
the Guardian, "Totalitarianism and despotism aren't dead. The state is
still polluted by that political system, the ancient regime and its
symbols which have been in place for 55 years."

Indeed, the problem with most post-colonial nationalisms - whether
that of the first generation of independence leaders or of the leaders
who replaced (often by overthrowing) them - is precisely that they have
always remained infected with the virus of greed, corruption and
violence so entrenched by decades of European colonial rule. Tunisia's
nascent revolution will only succeed if it can finally repair the damage
caused by French rule and the post-independence regime that in so many
ways continued to serve European and American - rather than Tunisian
- interests.

A region's tipping point

The stakes could not be higher. The "Tunisian Scenario" could lead
either to a greater democratic opening across the Arab world, or it
could lead to the situation in Algeria in the early 1990s, where
democratisation was abruptly halted and the country plunged into civil
war when it seemed that an Islamist government might come to power. We
can be sure that leaders across the Arab world are busy planning how to
stymie any attempts by their people to emulate the actions of Tunisia's
brave citizenry. But at this moment of such great historical consequence
what is the US doing about the situation?

The timing couldn't
have been more fortuitous, as Secretary of State Clinton was in the
Middle East meeting with Arab political and civil society leaders at the
moment events took their fateful turn. Yet when asked directly about
the protests the day before Ben Ali fled her answer said volumes about
the mentality of the Obama administration and the larger US and European
foreign policy establishments to the unfolding situation.

"We can't take sides."

A more tone deaf response would have been hard to imagine. This was a
moment when the Obama administration could have seized the reins of
history and helped usher in a new era in the Arab/Muslim world world. In
so doing it could have done more to defeat the forces of extremism than
a million soldiers in AfPak and even more drone strikes could ever hope
to accomplish. And Mrs. Clinton declared America's attention to remain
on the sideline.

Obama's Reagan moment

Can we imagine that President Reagan, for whom Obama has declared his
admiration, refusing to take sides as young people began dismantling
the Iron Curtain? Indeed, even when freedom seemed a distant dream,
Reagan went to Berlin and challenged Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"

It's
not as if the Obama administration doesn't understand what kind of
regime it was dealing with in Tunisia. As the now infamous WikiLeaks cable from the US Ambassador in Tunis
to his superiors in Washington made clear, "By many measures, Tunisia
should be a close US ally. But it is not." Why? "The problem is clear:
Tunisia has been ruled by the same president for 22 years."

Indeed, WikiLeaks did Clinton and Obama's job: It told the truth, and
in doing so was a catalyst for significant change in the country - yet
another example of how the release of all those classified documents has
helped, rather than harmed, American interests (or at least the
interests of the American people, if not its political and economic
elite), even if the Obama administration refuses to admit it.

What is clear is that if the massacre in Tuscon last week might have
provided Obama with his "Clinton moment", as he eloquently led the
country on the path towards unity and healing, the Jasmin Revolution has
handed him his Reagan moment. Obama needs to stop playing catch up to
events, lay aside hesitation and throw his support behind radical change
in the region, behind young people across the Middle East and North
Africa who could topple the regimes who have done more to increase
terrorism that Osama bin Laden could dream of accomplishing.

Read the full article at Al-Jazeera.