The Arab Spring turns sour for America

For anyone who still clings to a naive belief that recent dramatic changes to the political landscape of the Middle East have made the world a safer place, the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks should act as a brutal wake-up call.

For more than a year, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have given their enthusiastic backing to the seismic changes taking place among the ruling elites who have dominated the region for decades. As dictator after dictator has been removed from power, either through force of arms or the overwhelming strength of popular discontent, Western leaders have universally given their support to what they mistakenly identified as an "Arab Spring" of Western-style pro-democracy movements sweeping aside despotism.

In Washington President Barack Obama has sought, from the start of his presidency, a "new beginning" for America's problematic relationship with the Muslim world. He has given unqualified support to those campaigning for change in the major Arab capitals, actively encouraging the overthrow of one of Washington's longest-serving allies, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, and backing the military campaign to overthrow Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

In London, a similarly proactive stance has been adopted by the Coalition. David Cameron and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy were at the forefront of last year's Nato-led coalition to effect regime change in Tripoli, while William Hague regularly lectures his Foreign Office staff that it is important for Britain to be seen to support the reformers clamouring for change in the Middle East.

But as the brutal murders of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the Libyan coastal city of Benghazi have demonstrated, the wave of change sweeping the region is not without risk. It is still too early to say for sure who was responsible for the attack on Stevens's convoy as he was being evacuated from the American consulate following an assault by a mob of anti-American protesters, but this tragic episode certainly brings into stark relief the dangerous currents that are swirling beneath the reform movements.

Given the timing of the killings, on the eleventh anniversary of the worst terrorist attack carried out on American soil, there have inevitably been claims that they were the work of al-Qaeda. Indeed, Libyan officials were quick to attribute them to Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Islamist group known to have close links to al-Qaeda that was viciously persecuted under Gaddafi's regime.

But no sooner had al-Qaeda been blamed than another Libyan official pointed to dissident pro-Gaddafi loyalists, still active in the Benghazi region, who wanted to protest at last week's extradition to Libya of Gaddafi's former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi. Such is the level of chaos afflicting post-Gaddafi Libya that either of these theories might be true.

Then again, it might simply have been an unplanned side effect of protests against an ill-conceived American film, seemingly made by a Californian property developer named Sam Bacile, that ridicules the Prophet Mohammed, which has also been the pretext for demonstrations and attacks on US embassies in Cairo and Tunis.

No doubt the 50 US Marines dispatched to Libya by Obama to track down the killers will reach their own conclusions about the likely culprits. In the meantime, the American people are left to mourn the death of Chris Stevens, one of the most exemplary diplomats of his generation and the first US ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan in 1979. A fluent Arabist who was an enthusiastic advocate of America's long-standing ties with the Arab world, Stevens had approached his job with customary enthusiasm. In a YouTube film made for Libyans following his appointment in May, Stevens can be seen talking warmly about the intense interest ordinary Libyans have shown in taking up American educational opportunities.

The fact that someone as supportive of the new Libyan regime can meet such an end shows that the West's continued involvement in this vital north African state is not universally appreciated. While the official position of the new government elected in July is to pursue a friendly dialogue with the West, there remain many factions, including those supporting a hard-line Islamist agenda, who want the country to adopt a more anti-Western approach, and who deeply resent the continued influence the major Western powers exert over the country's development.

Indeed, the warning signs of an impending backlash against the West's involvement in Libya have been there since the summer when a well-organised group of Islamist militants desecrated the graves of British servicemen killed during the Second World War. There was also a failed assassination attempt against Sir Dominic Asquith, the British ambassador, who had a lucky escape when his convoy was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.

The same is true in neighbouring Egypt where, despite the lead role the Obama administration played in securing Hosni Mubarak's removal from power last year, large crowds of Islamist demonstrators attacked the fortress-like American embassy complex in Cairo. Although, as in Libya, the new Egyptian government of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi says it wants to maintain friendly relations with the West, Morsi was hardly forthcoming yesterday in denouncing violent demonstrations that could easily have had a similar outcome to that in Benghazi.

What is indisputable is that these two countries, which were at the forefront of last year's heady wave of anti-government protests, are finding themselves increasingly susceptible to the demands of hard-line Muslim fundamentalists. Under the Mubarak and Gaddafi regimes, such characters were more likely to find themselves incarcerated in grim prison cells than allowed the freedom to attack Western diplomatic establishments. But with the old dictators gone or, in the case of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad surely soon to depart, and the influence of well-armed Islamist militants growing, the changing face of the Middle East presents as many difficulties for Western policy-makers as it does opportunities.

The murder of Stevens and the other Americans seeking to escape the US consulate compound in Benghazi that had been deliberately set alight by Islamist demonstrators is a most unwelcome development for Obama as he enters the final stage of his campaign for re-election.

Having been an enthusiastic supporter of the so-called Arab Spring, Obama will now face accusations that he has been too conciliatory in his approach towards radical Islamist groups. It is certainly true that, so far during the election campaign, he has tried hard to avoid discussion of difficult foreign policy issues such as Iran's nuclear programme, or the fate of Afghanistan once American combat troops have withdrawn by the end of 2014.

The President may well feel that in a war-weary nation, exhausted after more than a decade of continuous involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no votes to be had from talking about America's battle against Islamist militants. But, as Jimmy Carter found to his cost after American diplomats were taken hostage in Iran after the Islamic revolution, the American public takes a close interest when its fellow citizens are placed in harm's way, and expects its leaders to take the necessary measures to keep them safe.

Carter was thrown out of the White House for failing to rescue the American hostages from captivity in Iran. And Obama could suffer a similar fate in November's presidential election unless he can come up with a convincing means of tackling the new generation of Islamist extremists in the Arab world.