There are presidencies that destroy through an excess of force.
There are others that weaken through an excess of morality.
The presidency of Barack Obama belongs to the second category.
Not out of cynicism.
But out of illusion.
Obama did not believe in power relations.
He believed in symbolic recognition.
He believed that the world could be pacified through understanding,
and that power must first apologize for existing.
This belief has a founding act.
It has a date.
It has a place.
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I. The Cairo Speech: The Original Error
On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama addressed the Muslim world.
In Western chancelleries and European intellectual salons, enthusiasm was immense.
People spoke of a “historic moment,” a “new era,” the “end of Western arrogance.”
But this speech rested on three major conceptual errors.
1. Addressing Ideologies Instead of Societies
Obama spoke to Islam as a moral entity.
He did not speak to real Muslim societies, caught between:
• authoritarian regimes
• clerical establishments
• ideological apparatuses
• religious militias
By doing so, he legitimized the intermediaries of the problem.
He recognized those who claim to speak on behalf of the peoples,
without ever addressing the peoples themselves.
2. Dissolving Ideology into « Context«
Jihadism was treated as a symptom.
Never as a structured, coherent, expansionist ideology.
Violence became a reaction.
Hatred became a misunderstanding.
Antisemitism became a cultural byproduct.
This was the central moral error:
excusing without acknowledging that one is excusing.
3. Relativizing the Western Moral Compass
Israel was no longer a democracy under attack.
It became a “case” to be balanced.
The Holocaust was mentioned, then immediately offset.
Security was relativized.
Moral legitimacy was diluted.
The message was received very clearly in the Middle East:
the West doubts its own moral hierarchy.
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II. American Withdrawal as a Global Signal
From Cairo onward, a message took hold:
America no longer wished to assume the world’s conflicts.
This did not produce peace.
It produced a strategic vacuum.
The fastest actors to understand this were:
• Iran
• Russia
• transnational Islamist movements
The discourse became a signal:
• hesitation = weakness
• restraint = opportunity
• morality = disarmament
⸻
III. When the Internal Dikes Collapse
The Arab world did not collapse because it was attacked.
It disintegrated because its internal dikes were weakened, then destroyed.
These dikes existed:
• authoritarian but structured states
• national armies
• administrations
• secular nationalisms
• fear of chaos
They were imperfect.
But they held.
Western elites despised them.
Called them “dictatorships.”
Applauded when they wavered.
Without ever asking the only serious question:
what will remain once they fall?
⸻
IV. Tunisia: The Democratic Illusion
Tunisia was supposed to be the proof.
It became the laboratory.
Everything seemed favorable:
• a relatively educated society
• advanced status of women
• an administration inherited from Bourguiba
• so-called “moderate” Islamism
The error was believing that Islamism in power would moderate itself.
It did not conquer through violence.
It hollowed out the state from within:
• administrative infiltration
• judicial paralysis
• religious clientelism
• collapse of the education system
• economic decay
Result:
• youth fleeing
• ruined economy
• ghost state
When a state dissolves slowly, it does not leave a vacuum.
It leaves the only organized force.
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V. Libya: The Pulverized State
In Libya, the state was not reformed.
It was destroyed.
Army dissolved.
Territory fragmented.
Militias, trafficking, jihadism.
Libya became:
• an Islamist rear base
• a migration hub
• an exporter of regional instability
Here, Islamism no longer even needs to disguise itself.
It thrives on nothingness.
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VI. Egypt: The Military Dike (Temporary)
Egypt reveals the mechanism in its purest form.
Elections.
Muslim Brotherhood.
Rapid capture of institutions.
The army takes back control.
Brutally.
Western consciences are outraged.
They forget a simple fact:
without the army, Egypt would today be an Islamist state of 110 million people.
The dike holds.
👉 Temporarily.
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VII. Syria: The Global Breaking Point
Syria is the turning point.
Red line not enforced.
State fractured.
Ideological violence unleashed.
Consequences:
• globalized jihadism
• Russian and Iranian intervention
• social destruction
• massive migratory shock toward Europe
Syria proves a harsh law:
when the state breaks, ideological violence becomes structural.
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VIII. Africa: The Spread
What was contained in the North moves south.
Sahel.
Nigeria.
Mozambique.
Horn of Africa.
Where the state is weak, Islamism replaces:
• justice
• redistribution
• order
This is not a religious revival.
It is a substitute political offer.
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IX. The Bourgeois-Bohemians ( Bobos ) and the Useful Idiots
At every stage, the same Western errors:
• sanctifying elections
• demonizing authority
• despising the state
• refusing to think ideology
They believed morality disarmed violence.
They confused decency with strategy.
They backed the wrong horse.
Again.
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Verdict
Obama did not destroy the world through brutality.
He weakened it through moral illusion.
The Cairo speech did not open an era of peace.
It opened an era of predator disinhibition.
When the dikes collapse,
it is not the moralists who swim.
It is the predators.
© Paul Germon
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