WASHINGTON — President Hosni Mubarak’s decision to step down Friday after three decades in power presents the Obama administration with a political vacuum where a stalwart ally once stood, shaking up the Arab Middle East in ways that present as much peril as promise for U.S. interests in the region.
Emerging from the secular nationalist movement that produced Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Mubarak presented five U.S. presidents with a choice: push for greater democracy in a bellwether nation that gave birth to modern political Islam or tolerate repression in the name of regional stability and to support an Arab government willing to offer Israel a tepid partnership.
For decades, the U.S. government chose the latter path. But the option came at the expense of U.S. popularity among Egyptians and the millions of other Arabs living under U.S.-backed autocrats in Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the gulf emirates.
President Barack Obama sought to soften that legacy during the weeks of demonstrations in Cairo by calling for a swift political transition from Mubarak’s rule to fair elections, irking U.S. allies among the region’s other autocrats yet failing to appease the Egyptians in the streets.
Mubarak leaves behind the rigid institutions and laws of a police state, including the emergency decree he used to suspend many civil liberties, and a powerful army with a large stake in who leads the country. Egypt’s Armed Forces Supreme Council announced Friday it would rule the country, at least temporarily.
“Obama’s insistence that this was about how Egypt is governed, not who governs Egypt, which was awkward for him, is actually the right thing to be insisting on now that Mubarak is gone,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch.
“A successful transition would have implications in and beyond the Arab world,” he continued. “It will be inspiring for opposition movements, but also potentially something that causes governments to crack down harder.”
By necessity, the Obama administration is already looking beyond Cairo — just as it quickly turned the page on Tunisia after President Zine Abidine Ben Ali fled last month — to the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
What senior U.S. officials see in those kingdoms’ economic stagnation, youthful populations and simmering political frustration is a potential echo of Tunisia and Cairo — and political change that could usher out allies in favor of an angry, anti-Western opposition.
How to encourage the election of governments not only responsive to their electorates but also to U.S. interests remains the uncharted challenge ahead.
“There are a number of countries in the Arab world that reflect some of the same concerns . . . the lack of freedoms, the lack of political reform, the lack of truly free and open elections,” CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee this week. “The triggers, the factors that kicked off what happened in Egypt could very well impact in other areas.”
The aging Saud monarchy of Saudi Arabia, home to roughly a fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves, governs a population where many are influenced by the most extreme interpretation of Islam that is hostile to Western culture.
In Jordan, King Abdullah II has fired his government and taken steps to appease public anger fanned by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
And in Yemen, where demonstrators have taken to the streets against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Obama administration is carrying out counter-terrorism operations in secret partnership with the government.
