This is so for two reasons. First, during the Cold War, many nations outside the Soviet bloc sometimes went along with America’s wishes, even if doing so was at odds with their own interests, because the alternative—the bear across the horizon—was too unsettling. Now the bear is dead, and these countries feel freer to go their own ways. Second, and more important, for the entire last half of the 20th century the United States defined—and built up—its power to meet the rules and requirements of the Cold War competition. We won, but now that the game is over, and the tools of power that we spent all those years amassing and refining are less relevant (not irrelevant but less so) to the challenges and threats of today.
And so we find ourselves in the unusual situation—unprecedented in the lifetime of nearly every American breathing today—of watching from the sidelines as world-historical transformations unfold. Protesters all across a “vital region” took to the streets, in some cases brought down once-immovable regimes, with almost no reference to, or care about, what the United States or any other “major” power thought about it. (The notable exception, the rebels of Libya, requested and received attention because of the humanitarian emergency. And even then, President Obama—perhaps understanding this shift, certainly having learned from Egypt and Tunisia that national revolutions are best waged by their own people—responded only as part of a Euro-Arabian alliance, and in a subordinate position at that, at least publicly.)
The fate of all these uprisings is certainly a matter of U.S. interests—arguably, in the case of Egypt and Yemen, our vital interests. Yet there’s little we can do to direct their paths. And even if there were more, the factions that might best serve our interests don’t want our direction (not openly, anyway).
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