America's interests vs. values

By Elise Labott, CNN Senior State Department Producer

The Obama administration’s ad hoc strategy to the Arab Spring brings to mind the game “whack-a-mole.” With each swing the U.S. takes to respond to the transformational change sweeping the region, new problems pop up pitting American interests against American values.

In Egypt, President Obama eventually threw his support behind the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, abandoning a 30-year ally and a pinnacle of stability in the Middle East. This caused longtime regional leaders to doubt whether the U.S. was a reliable partner.

Now the U.S. risks critical Arab support for a no-fly zone in Libya by criticizing the government crackdown in Bahrain.

The United States wants to be on the right side of history - to support popular yearnings for democracy and economic prosperity. But when democratic movements seek to overthrow regimes friendly to the United States and its interests, the roadmap becomes less clear.

The campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is relatively easy. It’s harder to argue against stopping a brutal dictator on the verge of butchering his opposition.

But the administration has been less decisive about the government’s crackdown on protesters in Bahrain, where it has found its push for reform on a collision course with its national security interests.

From the start, U.S. officials have called for Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy to take steps toward reform. The U.S. is urging King Hamad to hold negotiations with the opposition, which is mainly composed of the country’s Shiite majority.

But Washington has tempered its criticism, keenly aware that not all of the protesters were Jeffersonian democrats. With potentially radical Iranian-backed leaders joining the fray, the U.S. knows quite well that Bahrain has the potential to become the fault line between the region’s Sunnis and Shiites, swallowing the Gulf into a high-stakes confrontation with Iran.

An example came last week, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - at the request of the Bahraini government - sent troops into Bahrain to quell the increasingly violent protests. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in Paris, found herself offering muted criticism of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi while also asking them for troops to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya.

The half-measures mollified nobody. The U.S. looked weak on Bahrain and gambled away the promised support of the United Arab Emirates in Libya, leaving the coalition without the Arab “leadership and participation” that President Obama counted on as a pretext to authorize military action.

Traveling with Clinton to the Middle East this week, one would have thought that supporting the revolutionary tendencies in the region was a no-brainer for the U.S.

While walking through Tahrir Square in Cairo and speaking on a popular television talk show in Tunis, Clinton said the U.S. would stand with the people as they gave birth to democracy.

But events in Tunisia and Egypt made painfully clear Washington’s limited ability to shape the outcomes in those countries. The administration did little during Tunisia’s uprising, and its response to the protests in Egypt was largely driven by the size of the crowds in Tahrir Square. It wasn’t until those countries’ leaders stepped down that the Obama administration truly embraced the movements as “revolutions.”

To be fair, it’s hard to influence events from the outside when the engines of change are powered by faraway indigenous forces. But the U.S. has not been clear about where the tipping point is - when that nod from Washington will come urging the protesters to go all the way.

Now in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh hangs by a thread as his cabinet ministers, top generals and ambassadors continue to defect, protesting his violent crackdown against the opposition. Here, too, the U.S. has offered lackluster criticism of Saleh, calling only for an end to the violence, a peaceful dialogue with the opposition.

Washington knows Saleh’s 32-year rule has been rife with corruption. But he has also stepped up operations against al Qaeda.

In Yemen, the U.S. will once again be forced to balance its interests and its values. Whatever it does, another challenge is sure to pop up elsewhere soon.