Arab protests puts foreign policy at the fore

WASHINGTON — His eye fixed firmly on securing a second term, President
Barack Obama had hoped that the rest of the world would wait until after
the election if it had to grow restless and demand his attention.

The
eruptions in the streets of the Arab world, inflamed by an anti-Muslim
video made in the U.S., mean Obama can put it off no longer. The
protests are testing the president's foreign policy skills and giving
voters a pre-election view of how he handles a crisis.

The
turmoil also offers an opportunity — a risky one — for Obama to appear
presidential in the midst of the election campaign, to contrast himself
with a challenger less experienced in foreign policy and to illustrate
that being president is not just about being a steward of the economy.

Even
with a rebellion in Syria and tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions,
no international image can be more searing and demand more public
attention than that of a U.S. embassy under attack and American
civilians in peril. This week's angry demonstrators, flag burnings and
imperiled civilians already were drawing comparisons to 1979, when
Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 60
hostages and held them for 444 days, helping erode President Jimmy
Carter's public support.

For Obama, the timing of the violent demonstrations less than two months before the election creates further complications.

His
rival, Mitt Romney, jumped on the administration for what he claimed
was a feckless response to the breach of the U.S. embassy in Cairo. A
favored and popular U.S. diplomat, the ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens, was killed along with three other Americans in an attack on the
U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And protesters in the capital of
Yemen stormed the U.S. embassy compound there and burned the U.S. flag.

"I
know that it's difficult sometimes seeing these disturbing images on
television because our world is filled with serious challenges," Obama
told supporters Thursday in Golden, Colo. "It is a tumultuous time that
we're in. But we can and we will meet those challenges if we stay true
to who we are, and if we would remind ourselves that we're different
from other nations."

The protests and the attack in Libya present
a juggling act for the president. He must show resolve both at home and
abroad, pressing foreign governments to do their part in protecting
U.S. personnel and property, condemning the protesters and at the same
time denouncing a provocative, though amateurish video that finds refuge
in the cherished U.S. right of free speech. At the same time, he has
been forced to push back on Romney.

Obama accused his GOP rival
of having "a tendency to shoot first and aim later." And while even some
Republicans flinched at the timing of Romney's criticism, that could be
forgotten if protests continue to threaten U.S. overseas posts.

Still, in an election dominated by the economy, other issues have grabbed headlines, only to quickly recede.

The
mob actions in Egypt, Libya and Yemen nevertheless present a challenge
for Obama because they draw more attention than other foreign policy
conundrums. What's more, in these instances the perpetrators are not
state-sponsored, presenting Obama with a diffuse target.

"The
risk here for President Obama is that he appears weak because there is
not an easy military solution," said John Ullyot, a Republican
strategist and former Senate Armed Services Committee aide. "You're
talking about unruly mobs and shadowy figures."

Obama forcefully
condemned the attack in Libya and has decried the assaults on the
embassies. Secretary of States Hillary Rodham Clinton forcefully
denounced the film, which depicts Muhammad variously as a cartoonish
lecher, fool and thug.

But it was just that type of condemnation
from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that prompted Romney to accuse the
administration of issuing an "apology."

The uprisings also draw attention to unrelated and more intractable foreign policy troubles with Syria and Iran.

The
protests in Egypt came on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu complained that no ally had the right to demand that
it not strike at Iran over its nuclear buildup. The White House was
forced to tamp down reports from Jerusalem that Obama had rejected a
Netanyahu request to meet on the sidelines of a United Nations General
Assembly meeting later this month.

U.S. officials said the
president's schedule would not allow for any such meetings, a contrast
to last year when he packed his visit to the U.N. with individual
sessions with foreign leaders.

Then Obama and Netanyahu spent an
hour on the telephone, and the White House said they "reaffirmed that
they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going
forward."

While the problems in Syria and tensions with Iran
remain separate, U.S. officials are watching closely to ensure that the
protests don't extend into Iran and get manipulated to provoke even
deeper problems.