Home Pop Culture US Hegemony and the crises called Egypt.

US Hegemony and the crises called Egypt.

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Egyptian uprising. Images courtesy of CNN.

 

If one is to gain an appreciation of the intricacies of world wide politics one ought to pay attention to the way the US government up to now has responded to the crises in Egypt. In many ways the Egyptians desire for liberty and democracy is a coup d’etat for the US, but what’s not being discussed openly is the fact that the movement for democracy and liberty (a reaction more to the increasing social and extreme economic  inequities that a largely young population has been forced to deal with) has been a covert mission for the longest time, a stance that has been until now largely ignored by the US which has chosen for the sake of expediency (world hegemony) to side with the autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, who it had coincidentally put into power 31 years ago. 

With the winds changing, especially in lieu of the successful recent uprising in Tunisia, disillusioned youth in neighboring states (including Egypt and perhaps Yemen and Algeria next) have been emboldened to speak out. A situation which puts the US in an untenable quandary: risk encouraging the dissent and it can fracture the support it garners from Saudia Arabia, the US’s biggest Arabic ally in the region, and by extension give that nation’s disenfranchised youth the green light to revolt (if you want to talk about exploitation and disenfranchised youth Saudia Arabia is a ferment hospice) as well it’s access to oil wells and future covert missions in the US. Stand aside and do nothing to help the moribund Mubarak and the US risks alienating him in the future, should he succeed in warding off protester’s. Commit themselves to the autocrat then the US will risk alienating themselves with those individuals who may win power and be thus be left out when it comes to redistributing the economic pie. Then of course the question remains, if you let Mubarak go, who will replace him, and what will their policy be towards Israel, America’s biggest albatross in the region and allie, and how does the US react should their position (unlike Mubarak’s) be anti Israel?

newsweek.comThroughout the week, as the crisis gathered storm in Egypt, the administration had otherwise been slow to react, seemingly always one step behind events. This was partly because neither the U.S. intelligence community nor diplomats on the ground foresaw how swiftly the protests in Egypt would gather momentum—even if everyone realized that virtually the entire Arab world is a tinder box of pent-up frustration, with despotic regimes unable to meet the needs of, especially, their youth. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself put it last month, in aspeech in Doha that now seems uncannily prescient, Arab leaders would face growing unrest, extremism, and even rebellion unless they reformed “corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.”

How ironic that the US Secretary of State should call attention to the despotic institutions that entrench the small elite interests

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