Change: U.S. officials now preparing for a long siege of Arab unrest

Although the tumult subsided Saturday, senior administration officials said they had concluded that the sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries may presage a sustained crisis with unpredictable diplomatic and political consequences. While pressing Arab leaders to tamp down the unrest, Mr. Obama and his advisers are left to consider whether to scale back diplomatic activities in the region.

The unrest has suddenly become Mr. Obama’s most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season, and analysts say it is calling into question central tenets of his Middle East policy. Did he do enough throughout the Arab Spring to help the transition to democracy from autocracy? Has he drawn a hard enough line against Islamic extremists? Did his administration fail to address security concerns? Has his outreach to the Muslim world yielded any lasting benefits?…

[Obama] has struggled to find a balance between supporting the growth of democracy and guarding national interests in the region as authoritarian governments have been replaced by popular Islamist parties, some of them unfriendly to the United States. Even to the extent that the United States supports greater democracy, it may not necessarily be able to tamp down radicalism and anti-American rage in a region with no real history of popular rule and deep economic troubles. His citing of Libya as a model now looks suspect, and the United States has been powerless to stop a bloody crackdown in Syria.