White House in a Quandary

Should the U.S. threaten Cairo or protect it?

President Obama has a dilemma on his hands because of the situation in Egypt. He sees himself obligated to support the reform movement but at the same time doesn’t want to do anything to destabilize a nation so strategically important in supporting U.S. policies. Obama withheld making any public statements about the mass demonstrations in Egypt until Thursday. On YouTube, he announced that the United States wanted to see freedom of expression as well as peaceful demonstrations in Egypt and that he had personally and repeatedly encouraged President Hosni Mubarak to institute governmental reforms.

Vice President Joe Biden appeared less understanding toward the Egyptian demonstrators in his PBS appearance on Thursday night. While he agreed that the demonstrators had a few legitimate demands, he said he wouldn’t describe Mubarak as a dictator. He went on to say that the United States had an interest in regional stability there as well as in alliance partners such as Egypt who support the peace process with Israel. The State Department, on the other hand, drew rhetorically closer to the opposition without distancing itself from Mubarak, causing State Department spokesman Philip Crowley to get caught in an embarrassing contradiction during an interview with the Al Jazeera television network.

The Obama administration’s priorities clearly favor the stability of their client states over their democratic reform as well as the preservation of their dictatorial systems over the respect for human rights. As evidenced by the WikiLeaks revelations, Washington is familiar with Cairo’s power structure. America’s Ambassador to Egypt, Margot Scobey, describes Mubarak as an isolated supreme ruler for life who allows his governmental ministers and security service little flexibility. She makes no assessments, however, concerning Egypt’s military.

Since the Egyptian government signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, it has received $28 billion in developmental aid from the U.S., in addition to the $1.3 billion it receives annually in military aid. Just last month, Congress approved that amount once again. Egypt is the second largest American client state in the region after Israel. Accordingly, American media traditionally describes the Egyptian regime as “moderate.” When the dictatorship becomes shaky, as it is now, the alarm bells begin sounding in Washington’s upper echelons. It’s a matter of “national security.”

Regarding the situation in Egypt, foreign policy expert Blake Hounshell, an editor for Foreign Policy magazine, advises the United States to “think hard about its system of support for these autocrats. Can the U.S. credibly call for freedom in Egypt when it’s subsidizing the Egyptian military to the tune of a billion and a half dollars a year? Is Egypt really so helpful when it comes to the ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinians? Can we live with the Muslim Brotherhood in power, or closer to it? If the answer to these questions is the same as it’s been for the last few decades, it’s probably best to keep our big mouths shut.”

George Washington University political Science professor Marc Lynch is skeptical that the current Cairo regime will be able to institute meaningful reforms and points to its many brutal repressions of demonstrations and street protests over the last decade. He feels certain they would have no scruples about tightening the repression again.