Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring: The Cases of Egypt, Libya, and Syria

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This chapter covers Barack Obama’s foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean and in particular in three main cases of the Arab Spring: Egypt, Libya, and Syria. There are many reasons why I have decided to dive into the stygian depths of the Arab Spring. On first look, this sociopolitical phenomenon still continues to deeply influence the Eastern Mediterranean by questioning the established status quo of the Arab states. And more importantly, the Arab Spring proved to be the most serious foreign policy test for Barack Obama and for the American establishment in the MENA region. Perhaps, for the first time during the US presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, Washington failed to produce positive results for American national interests and for the status quo of the region, playing the graceless role of a distant observer in many cases. This failure, as it has already been labeled in the theoretical analysis of the wider Arab Spring phenomenon, is utterly interesting and at the same time crucially important, since it sets the foundations for the next day in the Eastern Mediterranean. Additionally, the study of Barack Obama’s foreign policy in the region has another point of interest: to comprehend how such a talented and charismatic politician of high global caliber failed not only to minimize the negative aspects of the Arab Spring in the Eastern Mediterranean but also to protect the American status in a region of high importance for US foreign policy. Was it a matter of a systemic breakdown of the American antennae? Was the Arab Spring a more complex and durable phenomenon, both in context and substance, than the Western world in general thought it to be? Was Barack Obama perhaps unwilling, unable, or unprepared to first accept the responsibility of preserving the US foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean, and to do so with the same skill as his predecessors managed during previous times of high global political tensions? All these questions led me to the writing of this chapter, one of the most interesting moments for the US foreign policy in the twenty-first century, beyond a doubt. In addition, this chapter provides a second and a third image analysis regarding the origins of the Arab Spring, as well as a conceptual approach regarding this multidimensional phenomenon that still affects a large part of the sociopolitical and ideological developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, including the US foreign policy in the region.