The Electoral Issue:

The Challenge:

Problems:

Embassy Attacks

On September 11, 2012, protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In Egypt, protesters scaled the embassy and tore down the American flag, replacing it with an Islamist flag. In Libya, by the morning of September 12, four Americans had been killed in the attack in Benghazi, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

Emerging evidence suggested that the Benghazi attack was not a spontaneous event but rather a premeditated attack by armed commandos. The protests erupted in response to an online video promoted by Florida pastor Terry Jones (who had previously caused international tensions by threatening to burn the Qur'an) that mocked Islam and the prophet Mohammed.

Before the violence erupted and the embassies were breached, the U.S. Embassy in Egypt issued a statement condemning "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslim." Although the statement was later disavowed by the Obama Administration after the ensuing violence, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama both unequivocally condemning the attacks, GOP Nominee Mitt Romney called the response "disgraceful," saying the United States should not apologize for "American values."

The Obama administration blasted Romney for politicizing the tragedy, saying through a spokesperson, "We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack."

Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood

In late January 2011, thousands of Egyptians flooded the streets of Cairo, protesting almost 30 years of autocratic rule under President Hosni Mubarak. By February 11, 2011, Mubarak stepped down and an interim military government stepped in to manage a transition to electoral rule. After some delay, the first-ever Presidential Election in June 2012 was held. The winner was Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that was repressed under Mubarak and generally seeks a greater role for Islam in public life.

On the eve of the election, the military dissolved the parliament, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and claimed control over the drafting of a permanent constitution. Morsi pushed back, denying the Military's authority over the constitution and firing the Defense Minister and several senior military officials in a move to reassert civilian rule.

Although Mubarak was seen as a dictator by many, he was also a staunch U.S. ally that upheld a peace treaty with Israel and generally aligned with U.S. interests. In return, the United States provided billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt, the largest Arab country and a cultural center of the Arab world. If the Egyptian government under the Muslim Brotherhood lurches too dramatically toward a hard-line, theocratic, and anti-Western character, and if other new governments follow suit, some worry about what the ascendance of political Islam across North Africa and the Middle East would mean for American values and interests in the region.

Syria

In March 2011, scarcely a month after Mubarak was deposed, Syria erupted in its own civil unrest, with anti-government demonstrators in many cities protesting the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Al-Assad's reign had been marked by the use of political violence to intimidate dissidents into silence. The protests quickly metastasized and the government reacted violently, sending tanks and troops to quell the uprising in numerous cities. When significant portions of the Syrian Army defected to the rebellion, the protests quickly devolved into all-out civil war.

By the summer of 2012, thousands were dead, the international community (including much of the Arab world) had almost wholly abandoned Assad, and policymakers from Amman to Paris to Washington began seeking Assad's ouster, believing only a transition of power and a governing stake for the rebels could mollify the uprising. Several ceasefire agreements have been hastily instituted and just as quickly abandoned.

Aside from the obvious humanitarian crisis that resulted, with thousands dead and thousands more fleeing to neighboring countries, Syria's instability also offered a foothold for Al Qaeda, which may have been involved in several suicide bombings in 2012. The escalating violence presents a crisis for the international community, which is attempting to facilitate regime change despite the objection of Syrian allies Russia and China, which have nixed more robust United Nations intervention.

Israel's Security

Among Israel's Arab neighbors, only two countries, Egypt and Jordan, have officially recognized the Jewish state - Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978 and Jordan followed suit in 1994. In the wake of the Arab Spring, which unseated one regime in Egypt and unsettled another in Jordan, Israel is understandably wondering just how unfriendly their neighborhood is likely to become.

While Jordan under King Abdullah has largely avoided the dramatic upheaval that ransacked other countries in the region, Egypt's regime change has called into question the relationship between Israel and its western neighbor, the world's largest Arab country.

Under Mubarak and his predecessor, Egypt fully honored the peace treaty, often against the wishes of large swaths of Egyptian society, particularly the Islamists whom Mubarak brutally repressed. Will the new regime continue to honor the 1978 accord in spite of the Muslim Brotherhood's markedly more hostile tone toward Israel?

Despite assurances from Washington that the Muslim Brotherhood will honor Egypt's diplomatic obligations, including the treaty with Israel, conflicting reports have emerged: some Muslim Brotherhood officials have suggested putting the treaty to a popular referendum, allowing the Egyptian people to retain or scrap it. Newly elected President Morsi has reportedly mulled amending the treaty to increase Egypt's military presence in the Sinai peninsula.

Power Vacuum & Al Qaeda

What began in Tunisia quickly spread across North Africa and the Near-East, to Egypt and Libya, to Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and several other countries. This political renaissance offers the possibility of democratization and revitalization, but also poses the threat of a dangerous power vacuum in one of the world's most unstable, conflict-torn regions. A rising tide of anti-American political Islam, and an absence of political stability that could provide terrorists with safe haven. Al Qaeda. Yemen is primed to provide a foothold for Al Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula, absorbing the elements of the terrorist syndicate that have fled the Afghanistan-Pakistan region due to the American military presence there. Shortly after the fall of Libyan Col. Moammar Qaddafi, the Al Qaeda flag was flown over a courthouse in Benghazi, the heart of the Libyan rebellion.

Next page: Solutions

Solutions

Jargon Watch:

"America must support and encourage democracy."

American policymakers generally agree that democracy is a cherished American value that should be promoted. But democracy is not a result, it is a process - one whose outcome can be hard to predict. What happens when a democratic turnover produces a regime that is hostile or indifferent to American interests, as we saw with the 2006 elections in Gaza that empowered Hamas? And how should the United States respond to a democratic protest against a dictatorial leader who has faithfully served American interests, as did Hosni Mubarak for almost 30 years before he was deposed?

In some contexts, it may well be true that despotism is more in accordance with American aims. The Arab Spring, some have observed, has frequently pitted our values against our interests - our ardor for democracy against our preference for leaders that facilitate American prerogatives. Policymakers voicing full-throated support for democratic movements must be pressed on what comes next - can we realistically count on the ballot box producing an outcome that serves American interests?

Intervention in Syria

Seeking an end to the civil war in Syria, some hawkish policymakers have pushed for aggressive intervention, saying we should either arm the rebels or join in the fight to unseat al-Assad. Because Russia and China are standing in the way of more forceful U.N. action, these advocates of military intervention see it as the only way to bring a quick end to the violence.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.., has called the lack of aggressive U.S. action "shameful," arguing that we should arm the rebels to help oust al Assad and chastising President Obama for not "speaking out" on behalf of the Syrian rebels. McCain predicted that, after al Assad's fall, Syria would follow Libya's example and constitute a duly elected democratic government. Others have gone a step further, arguing that America's direct military involvement in Libya should be repeated in Syria, and that the case for intervention in Syria is "even stronger" than it was in Libya, due to Syria's alliance with Iran, the regime's ties to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and a death toll that equals or surpasses that of pre-intervention Libya.

Challenges: Arming the Syrian rebels could aid the rebellion, but it could also prolong and intensify the conflict. The Russians, who are already supplying the Syrian army with weapons, could step up their arm sales to offset the contribution of the West. Flooding an already violent region with additional weapons may do more harm than good

More direct military involvement, from airstrikes to boots-on-the-ground, is beset by logistical and strategic problems. Logistically, Syria is a far more densely populated country than Libya, and the Syria rebels do not have a Benghazi - a base and supply port from which the rebels could push outward. The port city of Aleppo, a potential staging ground, is controlled by the government.

Strategically, Syria is not as internationally isolated as Libya was, retaining the support of Russia, China, Iran, and several other allies. And Syria is not as homogenous as Libya - al Assad and the ruling class are largely part of the Alawite Muslim minority, but 74 percent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Nobody knows what a post-Assad Syria would look like, but tensions between Alawite and Sunni Syrians virtually ensure that some form of sectarian conflict would occur. Finally, depending on the depth of American military involvement, it is not clear that the American public would countenance another Middle-Eastern conflict on the heels of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Counterterrorism

Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula was dealt a serious setback when Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American-born radical cleric hiding in Yemen, was killed by an American drone strike in September 2011. The incident was emblematic of a renewed American focus on counterterrorism, which emphasizes targeted elimination of terrorist networks without embracing the political engineering and nation building involved in counterinsurgency.

Some have touted counterterrorism tactics as an important safeguard against the emergence of terrorist havens in chaotic Middle Eastern states. If the Arab Spring does not produce capable, durable political structures that would allow these states to police their own extremists, the United States can do part of the job for them, eliminating or disrupting the operational capabilities of terrorists and their allies through a combination of clandestine and overt tactics - drone strikes, air strikes, deployment of special operations forces, etc.

Challenges: Drone strikes and other counterterrorism measures are efficient but controversial - they mostly keep Americans out of harm's way but have been fiercely criticized by foreign governments that see American drone strikes as a violation of their national sovereignty and decry the collateral damage drones can inflict. U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay explained, "Drone attacks do raise serious questions bout compliance with international law," voicing support for a U.N. probe into civilian casualties resulting from America's use of drones in Pakistan.

Counterterrorism tactics like drones and airstrikes may serve America's short-term interests by targeting and eliminating terrorist networks, but leaders risk sowing greater future problems by inflaming governments and people who object to the unilateral deployment of force in their countries. Policymakers must explain how they will use counterterrorism methods judiciously, targeting enemy combatants while minimizing civilian casualties and political dust-ups with other countries.