Another Foreign Policy Debacle in Cairo?

Between our global intelligence apparatus and our Foggy Bottom brigade at the State Department, events in Cairo and elsewhere in the Middle East, have taken us by surprise and we are reacting, in our usual manner: ready, fire, aim. Newspaper headlines trumpet, "US Breaks Away From Mubarak." To whom will we go?

President Mubarak made some courageous moves, unfortunately they were almost a generation ago. Making peace with Israel was a historic moment, and his staying free from assassination was a preoccupation for many years. Unfortunately, in the intervening thirty years, he did almost nothing to build up the economic infrastructure in Egypt, and the educated, multicultural elite and middle class have largely emigrated. That's done and dusted. A second wave of emigration would be the angry, disenfranchised and under skilled twenty somethings.

In a parallel to Pakistan, the Egyptian army does hold some cards here. Who will they throw their support to, and what will they ask in return? Just as in Iraq and Afghanistan, exiled Westernized Egyptians are returning and holding press conferences touting themselves as Presidential wannabes. But surely we've learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan, these medicines are often worse than the disease. Let's not overreact and buy into one of these solutions.

We also don't really know who's in the streets and where the money is that's supporting and fomenting the unrest. Some newspapers have suggested that we don't have to worry about fundamentalists in Cairo. No? Tell that to all the dead, wounded and exiled Coptics. Our European allies are absent in the crisis as usual.

President Mubarak must become more visible, clear and strong about his plans--going or not going? Clear transition plans, expressed with visible presence from the military, legislative and cultural leaders. He has to become engaged, and we should work with him, even as an interim solution. Saying that we are cutting him loose in the absence of a well thought out alternative will be a repeat of our other foreign policy failures.