Mubarak falls; now comes the hard part of restructuring

Hundreds of thousands of peo- ple demonstrating in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square for 18 days culminated in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

About 300 people died during that time, and while the loss of any life is sad, the toll could have been much higher. Indeed, in many other countries — including China, where the square was Tiananmen, not Tahrir — thousands died and the regime stayed in power. There are a lot of reasons for the dramatic differences in toll and outcome. In February 2011, Mubarak could not count on the armed forces to crush the rebellion as Deng Xiaoping could in China in June 1989. The world was not watching in China as it was in Egypt these last two weeks. One thing despots are learning is that new media is making it almost impossible to block out the rest of the world. If a government is going to decide to be brutal, it is going to have to do so with the sure knowledge that the rest of the world will see and history will graphically record its brutality.

Some dictators will still do what is necessary to crush an uprising that threatens them. That Mubarak couldn’t or wouldn’t was his last saving grace.

In the United States, there will be those who criticize President Barack Obama for abandoning a long-time ally, ignoring that the day is past when an American leader could aid and abet the crushing of an uprising such as that seen in Cairo. Not only would it have been morally wrong, it would have been perceived as morally wrong. And in politics, perception becomes reality.

The challenges the United States faces in dealing with the new politics of Egypt specifically and the Middle East in general are daunting. Had the United States attempted to give Mubarak and the military cover to crush the popular uprising, the United States would have been the ultimate loser, first in prestige, and ultimately in power.

Propping up Mubarak at any cost was never an option.

Winning hearts and minds

The job facing the United States now is to win the hearts and minds of the people in the streets in Cairo. As difficult as it is to consider at this time and given this nation’s economy, that is going to take money.

The politics of this uprising is complicated, but the oxygen that fed the fires of rebellion is easy to see. While Mubarak, his family and his confidants were getting wealthier and wealthier, the masses were getting poorer. Immediate and highly visual aid to the people in the way of food, medicine and other necessities of life is a bargain — especially within the context of nearly $2 billion we’ve routinely sent to Egypt, much of it for military purposes.

There are no doubt radical elements within the uprising, but those hundreds of thousands of people seen dancing in the streets are not all fanatics. They were simply fed up.

Mubarak had managed to keep a tight enough lid on dissenting parties that there was no organized moderate opposition. The challenge facing U.S. leaders and diplomats will be to work in whatever ways are possible with Mubarak’s successor government and with the military to allow a timely development of a viable democratic government. That’s a difficult balancing act.

Popular anti-government movements are easily taken over by radical elements — witness what happened in Iran a generation ago, when a corrupt monarchy was replaced with an even more repressive theocracy. Or the more recent challenges in establishing a stable government in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

We can all hope for a better outcome in Egypt, not knowing yet what it will be, but knowing that clearly Mubarak’s time had come.