As Hamas gained political ground internationally, the Palestinian Authority seemed on the verge of irrelevance. In response, Mahmoud Abbas resorted to the time-tested strategy of seeking via the United Nations what Palestinians have consistently failed to win militarily or through direct negotiations. Granting it UN observer state status, as the General Assembly did on November 29, is a fantasy, but unfortunately consistent with trying to create facts on the ground in the United Nations rather than the Middle East. By now using the concept of "lawfare" against Israel, the Palestinians may in fact be able to gain political and financial advantages, whether through the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, UN specialised agencies or weak European foreign ministries. 

This entire embarrassment, foreshadowed by "Palestine's" October 2011 admission as a member state to Unesco could have been avoided had President Obama bestirred himself. In 1989, the PLO tried the same gambit, seeking to join the World Health Organisation, Unesco and, ultimately, the UN itself. George H.W. Bush stopped this cold by releasing America's most persuasive weapon, its financial leverage in the UN. Secretary of State James Baker said in May 1989, "I will recommend to the President that the United States make no further contributions, voluntary or assessed, to any international organisation which makes any change to the PLO's status as an observer organisation." The PLO effort collapsed, and Congress then prohibited US funding for any UN body that admitted "Palestine" as a member state. This guillotine has now fallen on Unesco because the Obama Administration showed weakness, assuring Unesco it would do everything it could to have the statutory prohibition repealed. That will not happen. And Obama showed weakness again in the General Assembly by not utilising the Bush-Baker threat on observer state status. Now Israel has retaliated financially against the Palestinian Authority, weakening it further, and by announcing it would allow 3,000 new settlers' homes to be built in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Congress seems likely to cut off some funding either to the UN, the Palestinians or both. Obama's weakness thus gives him the worst outcome conceivable.

In the Arab Spring's early days, naive, ill-informed observers, along with propagandists and apologists for radical Islamists, all proclaimed it to be the alternative to al-Qaeda, the revolution that would undercut the threat of global terrorism and bring democracy, sweetness and light to the Middle East. That line of analysis has proven tragically wrong, which many of its original adherents, not including those in the White House, now admit. But in fact, the Arab Spring's risks were obvious from the outset. The post-colonial tide of secular, socialist, anti-Western Arab nationalism receded long ago, and it is now being replaced by a wave of religious fanaticism, equally or perhaps even more anti-Western than its predecessor. 

Egypt, given its size and importance in the Arab world, is the Arab Spring's biggest failure. For Americans, however, Libya is the most visible and painful embodiment of what went wrong, and the reason why the September 11 Benghazi attack has the prospect of being seen by history as the symbol of US decline under Obama. Libya, after all, was supposed to be an Obama success story. Gaddafi was overthrown under the doctrine of "responsibility to protect", a humanitarian intervention and not one based on crude national interest, and under UN auspices to boot. It was accomplished without American ground forces or casualties, an immaculate conception of the Obama doctrine of "leading from behind".