Twice during the past week senior United States officials
have let it be known that the Barack Obama administration has chosen to adopt a
highly selective approach to the ferment in the Middle East.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couched the
message in appropriate diplomatic idiom in Washington last Tuesday in a speech
at a gala dinner celebrating the U.S.-Islamic World Forum before an audience of
dignitaries from the Middle East, including the foreign ministers of Qatar and
Jordan and the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference.

Clinton acknowledged that the ”long Arab winter has begun
to thaw” and after many decades, a ”real opportunity for lasting change” has
appeared before the Arab people. It, in turn, raises ”significant questions”
but it is not for the U.S. to provide all the answers. ”In fact, here in
Washington we’re struggling to thrash out answers to our own difficult
political and economic questions,” she said.

Following a long-winded appreciation of the “Arab
revolt,” Clinton hit the nail on its head: ”We understand that a
one-sized-fits-all approach doesn’t make sense in such a diverse region at such
a fluid time. As I have said before, the United States has specific
relationships with countries in the region. We have a decades-long friendship
with Bahrain that we expect to continue long into the future … Going forward,
the United States will be guided by careful consideration of all circumstances
on the ground and by our consistent values and interests.”

Two days later, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
picked up where Clinton left off. At the ground-breaking ceremony of the
national library honoring George Washington in Virginia last Thursday, Gates
dipped into the oldest annals of America’s young history to underline that the
U.S. has always pursued a selective approach to democratic aspirations and
values of other peoples.

When George Washington was confronted with the consequences
of the French revolution, he didn’t allow himself to be swayed by the ideals of
liberty, equality and fraternity but instead weighed in the terribly dangerous
prospect of the possible ”spread of violent French radicalism to our
shores,”  the negative
consequences of estrangement from the British in terms of disruptions in the
”lives of ordinary Americans by impeding trade” and the ”fragility of
America’s position at that time.” 
Therefore, he adopted a neutrality policy toward France and chose to
make a peace treaty with Britain although he was accused of doublespeak,
sellout, et al.

Gates acknowledged that the U.S. has always ”struggled”
with ideals while doing business with terrible autocrats. So, what matters
today is that ”many of the [Arab] regimes affected have been longstanding,
close allies of the United States, ones we continue to work with as critical
partners in the face of common security challenges like al-Qaeda and Iran.”

Is the democracy project so terribly important? Gates had an
answer: ”An underlying theme of American history going back to Washington is
that we are compelled to defend our security and our interests in ways that in
the long run lead to the democratic values and institutions … When we discuss
openly our desire for democratic values to take hold across the globe, we are
describing a world that may be many years or decades off.”

Significantly, Gates was speaking after a tour of the
Persian Gulf region against a complex backdrop of Saudi Arabia’s intervention
in Bahrain to crush the lively democracy movement, frictions in the relations
between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, a jump in oil prices into triple digits and
signs that Riyadh might consider expanding its mammoth U.S. $60 billion deal to
buy arms from the U.S.

At any rate, coming out of a 90-minute meeting with the
Saudi King Abdullah, Gates said he saw ”evidence” of Iranian meddling in
Bahrain. Gates’s visit was followed up within a week by a trip to Riyadh by the
U.S. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, who handed a letter from Obama
to Abdullah. All indications are that a deal has been struck whereby the Obama
administration will not queer the pitch for the autocratic Persian Gulf rulers
by dabbling in the democracy project in the region.

A hegemon on the move

On the contrary, Washington will allow Saudi Arabia to have
a free hand to tackle the movements for democratic reforms in the region and
forestall any regime changes in the region. Accordingly, the Saudis are moving
on three different tracks. First, they have done everything possible to portray
the democracy movement in Bahrain, which has serious potential to overthrow the
regime in Manama and trigger a domino effect, in starkly sectarian terms as an
issue of Shi’a empowerment. The Saudi calculation by stoking up the latent
fires of sectarian prejudices in the Sunni mind is to somehow prevent a
unified, pan-Arab democracy movement from taking shape.

Second, Saudis are giving a coloring that the democracy
movements in the Persian Gulf are in actuality a manifestation of Iranian
meddling in the internal affairs of the Sunni states in the region. The Iranian
bogey comes naturally to the Saudis for rallying the Sunni states in the region
under its leadership as well as for striking sympathetic chords in influential
Washington lobbies (although the Obama administration has been so far inclined
to view the protests as essentially home-grown movements that arose out of
genuine local problems accumulating through decades of authoritarian misrule).

The Saudi ploy is working. During a visit to Manama in early
March, Gates himself had urged the al-Khalifa family to swiftly undertake
political and social reform. By early April he is a changed man who claims he
senses an Iranian hand behind the protests.

Third, and potentially quite tricky, is the Saudi propensity
to see the case in both Bahrain and Yemen as open-and-shut. The intervention in
Bahrain is taking a violent turn with every possibility that it will radicalize
the opposition and possibly force it – or at least elements within it – to
resort to insurgent attacks. A Bahraini variant of Lebanon’s Hizbullah seems to
be in the making.

The Saudis have also waded into Yemeni tribal politics and
are dictating the contours of the transfer of power from President Ali Abdullah
Saleh, ignoring the potency of Yemeni nationalism, which resents Saudi
hegemony. Again, Saudis propagate that Iran is fueling the Houthi rebellion in
north Yemen. (Western observers rule out any extensive ties between Iran on the
one side and the Houthis or the Bahraini Shi’a.)

What are the Saudi calculations? A longstanding objective of
the Saudi national security strategy remains, namely, to exercise its
quasi-hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
served this purpose for decades. But the GCC dispensation can easily unravel in
today’s uncertain circumstances if there is regime change in any of the member
states. Riyadh has mooted the idea of the GCC transforming into a “Gulf
Confederation” with common and unified foreign, security and defense
policies — under Saudi leadership, of course, under the garb of collective
security.

In military terms, this would facilitate the creation of
joint armed forces under a unified command with a rapid reaction force that
could act in any of the GCC states. In other words, Saudi Arabia hopes to
assume the role of the provider of security for the GCC territories.

Riyadh felt disillusioned by the US’ ”abandonment” of
Hosni Mubarak and quite obviously, in the Saudi estimation, there was no real
inevitability about Mubarak’s exit if only Washington had stood by him. The
behavior of post-Mubarak Egypt also adds to a sense of isolation in Riyadh.
Significant shifts have begun appearing in Egypt’s regional policies already.
Cairo is moving toward establishing diplomatic relations with Iran (broken off
since the Islamic Revolution in 1979); Cairo ignored U.S. and Israeli protests
and allowed for the first time two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez
Canal; Cairo is allowing Hamas leaders in Gaza to use Cairo airport as a
transit point for travel to and from Damascus; Cairo is mellowing toward the
Hizbullah in Lebanon.

What hits Riyadh most is that Cairo will be disengaging from
any containment strategy toward Iran and may gravitate toward the nascent
strategic axis involving Syria, Turkey and Iran. Egypt is swimming toward
mainstream Arab politics, whereas Saudi Arabia never had much fondness for
pan-Arabism.

This growing sense of isolation prompted the Saudi
leadership to invoke its ultimate reserves of influence in Washington — the
Pentagon. The promise Abdullah made to Gates — that Saudi arms purchases from
the U.S. this year will exceed the $60 billion deal (which is already the
biggest in U.S. history) — changes the entire complexion of Persian Gulf
security from the American perspective. Obama interprets arms sales to foreign
countries as the means to create jobs at home. And if the Gulf Confederation
idea takes hold, the sky is the limit for lucrative arms deals since a joint
military will be created by the petrodollar states involving land, air and
naval forces.

The speeches by Clinton and Gates suggest that the Saudis
have succeeded in making Obama reassess the Arab spring in the Persian Gulf
region. Obama is never short on resonant words. Still, presenting with
conviction his (revised) vision of the New Middle East in the major policy
speech he is expected to make isn’t going to be easy.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea,
Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah
greet each other and pose for the cameras at a recent event.