Obama’s Cairo Speech: Has the Empire Changed its Colour?

Barak Obama’s 4th June speech in Cairo University has become a major talking point. It has its critics (Noam Chomsky , Ali Abunima, ), as well those (Uri Avenerry) who see in this a new beginning in the US engagement with West Asia. For the critics, the test of the speech would lie in action that the US administration is willing to take with regards to Israel. Here, the speech provided rhetoric but was short on action. Those who saw in the speech a departure from George Bush’s destructive policy, focussed on the move away from unilateralism to a more internationalist approach as a welcome change.

So is it a case of a glass being half empty or half full? The reality is a little more complex. The symbolic significance of the speech is that he spoke to an international audience including Muslims in terms they can relate to. In contrast, George Bush’s speeches were always was rooted in a domestic discourse, catering largely to his Middle America base. His rejection of the clash of civilisation theory, his references to a tolerant Islam were quite different from the undercurrent of Islamophobia that formed much of US foreign policy under George Bush.

Symbols however, do not a foreign policy make. Those facing US bombs and bullets – from Palestine to Afghanistan -- are unlikely to hail an US President for speaking in an idiom they can at least understand. So if Obama wants to go beyond the symbols, we need to see what are the departures in Obama’s speech and what are its essential continuities with the tainted George Bush past.

 

President Obama's Cairo Speech

 

Iran – A Significant Departure

One of the flash points in the world today is Iran. Not because Iran is in turmoil, but because of the US policies towards Iran. The key issue has been Iran’s quest for building an indigenous nuclear energy program. The US-Israeli axis has argued that such program would then have the ability to build nuclear weapons and therefore needs to be stopped – if “persuasions” and threats fail, then through outright military action. The Bush administration had toyed quite seriously with the military action, either jointly with Israel or letting Israel front the operation initially with US entering into action if Iran retaliated. The threat of such an action was quite real as long as the Bush administration ran the White House. The Obama speech is definitely a move away – at least immediately – from the military option.

For most of the world, the military action would have taken the world down a path to disaster. Iran is not a minor power – it has a population of 80 million and is the pre-eminent political and military power in West Asia. With the exception of Israel. The US War machine has the ability to destroy Iran’s military and civilian infrastructure. But the cost would be paid by the whole world, as Iran certainly has the ability to stop movement of oil tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz -- one of the choke points for global oil flows. It would also be able to take out much of the oil infrastructure in Iraq and Kuwait, if not further afield. The consequences for the global economy, tottering on the brink today, would be horrendous. Therefore, a return to sanity in the US is no minor matter for us in the rest of the world.

On Iran, apart from the movement away from threats of military action and speaking the language of diplomacy, Obama also accepted the US role in removing Mossadeq, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran through military action and installing an 18-year old Shah on the Persian throne. For those who may not know or remember Iran’s early history, Mossadeq was Iran’s Nehru like figure, whose “crime” in the US eyes was to nationalise the Anglo Iranian oil company. The physical liquidation of the secular, progressive intelligentsia in Iran under Shah-Savak-CIA rule ensured that resistance only survived in the mosques and paving the way for the rise of Khomeni and radical Islam.

Of course, Obama’s terms of what Iran should do are still problematic. He wants Iran to adhere to NPT’s terms of not building nuclear weapons, while the US and Israel would continue to stockpile nuclear weapons themselves. But judging from the narrow standpoint of whether this is a departure from the past 10 years, we have to agree that this indeed a departure. It is only through diplomacy and negotiations that Iran can be persuaded not to turn to nuclear weapons.

 

Palestine – Largely Rhetoric, Little Substance

The Palestine issue is the immediate one that comes to mind in Cairo. The Rafah crossing, barely 275 kilometres from Cairo, repeatedly blocked by Egypt under Israel-US pressure, remains the only lifeline for the imprisoned 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Cairo is where a new initiative on Palestine would have mattered.

Obama did lay stress on a two-state solution, which in any case has been the official US position. On the key issues – settlements on West Bank, including in the peace process the Hamas who are the elected representatives of the Palestinian people, he had little new to offer. On other central issues – the right to return and status of Jerusalem, he remained silent.

The Obma speech is supposed to have sent a shock wave in Zionist and the US neo-con circles. This speaks more about the state of mind of the Zionists and the Fox News viewers than the radical views of Obama. While Obama talked about the holocaust and the death of 6 million Jews, he also talked about the Palestinians sufferings including references to 60 years of "the pain of dislocation" and "the displacement brought about by Israel's founding." For Zionists, who have built their entire “legitimacy” of oppression on the holocaust, sufferings of Palestinians cannot be a part of the same discourse. Palestinians and their losing their lands must be written out history. Not surprisingly, one of the first tasks of the new right wing coalition in Israel is to pass a set of laws, one of which is to make the mention of Nakba in Israel a criminal offence, punishable by three years imprisonment (Uri Avenarry).

On settlements, Obama said, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” The question is do we read into this that no expansion of existing settlements and building new settlements or does this call for dismantling of all the illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank that today contain more than half a million Jewish settlers? Without dismantling of these settlements, there is no two-state solution. What would be on offer is a truncated West Bank, split into numerous Bantustans with Settlers hogging the best lands, water and resources. A Palestinian state that even a collaborationist Palestinian clique cannot accept. So Obama’s stand on existing settlements is the litmus test for his sincerity on a two-state solution.

Though Obama’s language on settlements and a two-state solution has been stronger than George Bush’s, in substance, it is no different from that stated numerous times by Condi Rice and US officials. Is the US is prepared to withdraw money where its mouth is – can they stop the flow of funds and arms that maintain the Israeli regime? Mere words are unlikely to make a jot of difference to the Israeli regime. It did not to the Labour, the Kadima and would scarcely move the far more rightwing bunch that today runs the new Government. It is here that the world has to see a new initiative from the US to believe that the new man in White House will make a difference to the Middle East.

While Iraq and Afghanistan remains the other critical issues in the West Asia mix, Obama has already spelt out his positions there well before Cairo – Afghanistan was a necessary war and now his war, while Iraq was perhaps an unnecessary one, which he will get out of eventually. To expect him to say anything different is to forget that Obama represents the Empire, even if it is a more benign face of the Empire than that we saw earlier. The continuity here with the earlier Bush regime is going to continue under Obama.

For many, and it is not that they are wrong, Obama is simply a more benign and a far more clever face of US imperialism. What this view does not address is that the US remains the most dangerous state on earth, simply because it is militarily the most powerful. An Empire run by Neo-cons and Bushes, can also mean a world run amok. Obama’s speech in Cairo is therefore a welcome return to the days where we could discuss Imperialism and Empire and without being engulfed in the fears of an Armageddon. There is little doubt that Obama has chosen -- for the time being -- to walk away from the precipice in Iran. Does it mean peace there? Will his words on Palestine translate into some action? On both these, we would have wait and see. What it demands of all those who fought against the War on Iraq and are today fighting against the occupation of Palestine is that they cannot rest. They must step their campaigns. To expect the Empire to change its spots only because the occupant in the White House has changed his colour is to misunderstand history. It is only people who finally make history, not individuals however powerful.