The protests in Egypt have been going on for over a week now, and the entire situation is truly an example of how globalized and interconnected our world has become. Not only has the unrest greatly affected the stability of the Egyptian state, but it also threatens the regional stability of the entire Middle East which then has implications for the entire world through importance of the supply of crude oil. Egypt has unarguably been one of the U.S.’s most important strategic allies in the Middle East for the past thirty years, and President Mubarak has been pro-U.S. in terms of U.S. strategy as well as relatively friendly towards Israel. The U.S. has recently made public statements calling for an “orderly transition of power”, and the general tone form the Obama administration is that it is time for Mubarak to step down. It is with these facts in mind that have caused Israeli government leaders to speak out against what it believes to be Obama and other Western leader’s “betrayal” of a moderate ally who had helped them for decades. Israel has all but officially harshly criticized the U.S. and other Western nations for not taking a stronger approach in supporting Mubarak’s regime.
The Israeli argument does have a lot of merit in terms of a political endgame. They claim that the U.S. (as well as Israel) enjoyed a moderate and staunch ally in the Middle East in the form of Mubarak and that the U.S. is abandoning its ally in his time of need. Not only that, but also more importantly, Syria, Saudi Arabia, as well as other Middle Eastern nations have witnessed these reactions in the West and U.S. and might be disinclined to trust in their American allies for their support. These issues are all very important ones to raise about U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy, but when thinking about whether or not the U.S. should support the Mubarak government in Egypt, the issue is not near as cut and dry. After all, how are people supposed to weigh the importance of preserving an ally versus our nation’s respect for democracy and people’s ability to choose their own leaders? As far as I can tell, the protests occurring in Egypt are not from some specific demographic or some radical splinter group, although there are some relatively radical elements involved such as the Muslim Brotherhood. People from all demographics across the spectrum are taking to the streets in demand for change. The U.S. should continue to closely monitor the situation and only intervene politically and diplomatically if the region begins to become unstable. In terms of supporting the current regime, I feel as though it is an easy choice to make between the value of democracy and claiming purported foreign policy advantages. The U.S. must remain true to its own core values of respecting the power of people or else it will really become the great big bully that many parts of the rest of world tries to paint the country as. I am not discounting the importance of regional stability in the Middle East, nor am I disregarding the likely increased threat to our Israeli allies; instead, I am advocating and supporting an approach that has been largely carried out so far, one that allows democracy (albeit in its more primal connotation) to take its course while remaining watchful for further escalation of the instability.
