Is this the end of the U.S. client state?
Max Fisher charts it:
The fall of easily controlled dictators across the region (the U.S. has already given up on its man in Yemen) comes at the same time as U.S.-allied democracies and autocracies alike seem increasingly willing to buck Washington's wishes. Last week alone, the U.S. clashed with some of its most important client states. Maybe that's because of America's habit of picking the most troubled states in the most troubled regions as clients (where they're perceived as the most needed), maybe it's because democratic movements are pressuring client states to follow popular domestic will rather than foreign guidance, and maybe it's because the idea of clientalism was doomed from the start....Whatever the reasons, U.S. client states have been causing Washington more headaches than normal this year, and particularly over the past week.... Looking over the list of troubled client relationships, it's easy to wonder if the entire Cold War-inspired enterprise could be nearing its end. Maybe Egypt, just as it helped end the centuries of European imperialism in 1956, could make 2011 the year that began the end of clientalism.
It's possible, but unlikely. For one, no one in Washington is particularly eager to abandon the client model. Nor do other states seem particularly to dump the paradigm. China has what I think could accurately be called client states in North Korea and Burma (and, increasingly, Pakistan). Russia is trying to cultivate Central Asian states in its periphery as clients. Iran would obviously like Iraq to function as its client state, much as Lebanon does the job for Syria. In the case of the U.S., however, the client doesn't always amplify U.S. power but instead diminishes it. We are investing large sums of money into states like Afghanistan and Pakistan with little to show for it. Israel and Iraq may, on a dollar basis, deliver greater returns to the U.S. but carry with them a series of diplomatic mine-fields, and Iraq in particular may quickly swing back into the "more cost than benefit" column if violence flares anew.
The larger problem is that the U.S. appears to treat the creation of dependencies and client-states as an end in itself and not a means to an end. We are lured by the illusion of perfect security to believe that if we could only "fix" Afghanistan's political system, then we will have "solved" our terrorism problem (or at least our safe-haven problem). That such a project is self-evidently difficult (impossible?) doesn't seem to register.
