Egypt: The Alternative Could Be Even Worse

The wave of protests in the Arabic world has opened the possibility for all forms of speculation. For example, Saudi Arabia considers Iran responsible for all the riots. They believe that Iran has an interest in destabilizing these countries so that they can install regimes that are connected to Tehran like they have in Lebanon. The Iranians, on the other hand, believe that the riots are a reaction against the allied governments of the USA and Israel. In both cases, it is obvious that both countries are trying to make the protests a way of drawing attention to their own ideological political agenda. Either way, the current crisis definitely helps to show that what is said about Israel being the Arabic world’s main problem is only a myth that helps dictators and theocrats.

With respect to Egypt, President Obama is walking on eggshells because the dictator Hosni Mubarak is his strategic ally. At first, his government only appealed for calm, saying that Mubarak’s government was stable. Israel has the same view. It has not expressed an opinion in public regarding the subject, though internally it believes that Mubarak does not run the risk of being overthrown because his government is heavily supported by the army.

However, the violence that has occurred and the return of the Egyptian Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed ElBaradei — who is willing to use his credibility to spearhead a change in the regime — made the American president feel obligated to say a little more in his speeches. Obama now says that this is the opportunity for reforms in Egypt. He does not mean an extreme change in the regime, but a change with some flexibility (the American vice-president, Joe Biden, who is well known for his gaffes said that he does not even consider Mubarak a dictator). The problem for the USA is the risk of having the largely fundamentalist opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, rise as a substitute for Mubarak. The preliminary indication of the problem occurred when the Muslim Brotherhood, after being silent about the crisis, announced that they would participate in today’s protests.

Therefore, there is no guarantee that the incipient Arab movement for democracy will end up as an effective democracy. A historical example of this possible deadlock is the troubled disintegration of the USSR. It is too early to know what kind of regime will emerge from all of this confusion. The predictions are not too encouraging because historically, in most of these countries, the democratic opposition is either too weak or was totally destroyed, leading the way for one autocracy to be substituted by another.