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Grumbling in Egypt: Why The United States Should Worry
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11513 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1986 |
3,395 Words |
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Robert E. Hunter
Robert E. Hunter is vice president for regional programs at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, D.C. During 1979-1981, he was director of Middle
East Affairs at the National Security Council. |
As American leaders decide what to do in foreign policy, they must set priorities: What is most important, and what is least important? What must be done now, and what can be postponed? By this standard, the future of Egypt must figure prominently in U.S. thinking.
Circumstances now facing the Egyptian government can be characterized by the old aphorism: "Situation desperate but not serious." By conventional reckoning, the economy should have collapsed months, if not years, ago. Popular discontent should be soaring. The military should be plotting coups against president Hosni Mubarak, and Islamic fundamentalists should be finding fertile ground for their message.
Yet the government continues to survive and to muddle through. Unlike his two more flashy predecessors, Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Mubarak raises few expectations he cannot fulfill. He excites few jealousies, at home or abroad, and he lives modestly, unlike Sadat with his extravagance and corrupt courtiers. While continuing to be isolated from most other Arab countries, Egypt is at peace, and the prospect of major loss of life every few years is now a memory.
Yet the fact that nothing has happened to the Mubarak government must not be taken to mean that nothing will happen. Accumulated woes can gain a catalyst and lead to crisis. A half-million Egyptian workers who sent money home from the Persian Gulf have now been sent home themselves to a country with few jobs. Collapsing oil prices reduce revenue from sales and tolls from the Suez Canal. Military leaders who still see Mubarak as one of their own - as air force commander in the 1973 war - may begin looking for alternatives. And America's response to terrorism - humiliating Mubarak over the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship last year or striking at neighboring Libya last April - can aid the government's enemies.
For the United States, it is important to weigh the risks and to predict whether, when, and how Mubarak could be deposed - and what could follow. It is even more important to weigh the consequences. They are many and they are grave.
The strategic context
For the United States, weighing the consequences must begin by assessing basic strategic interests in Egypt. Before 1973, Egypt represented a major success for the Soviet Union in terms of penetrating a Third World country. From the ill-fated U.S.
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