Striking developments in Egypt

Note: Stoddard is a regular columnist for The Hill. For her latest piece, see here.

Reports out of Egypt indicate that President Hosni Mubarak could go tonight.
This is a sudden reversal from a protest movement that was facing long odds
just 48 hours ago.

All week, protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo have watched as their
new vice president, Omar Suleiman, went through the motions of
“negotiations” with opposition leaders that participants dismissed as
inadequate and insincere. They watched as the United States provided quiet
consent. President Obama even used the word “progress” to describe
the talks in which Suleiman affirmed that President Mubarak would never resign and
also insisted there was no need to lift the state of emergency Egyptians
have lived under for 30 years under the Mubarak regime.

It was quite different from the message President Obama had sent when he called
for an orderly and meaningful transition to begin now. Suddenly, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton was warning of too rapid a transition, should Mubarak
actually depart, while Vice President Biden made repeated phone calls to
Suleiman in hopes of speeding up a reform agenda. It was clear the Obama
administration had acquiesced to Suleiman’s new efforts to
consolidate power, no matter how illegitimate his concessions to the
protesters.

And there were shocking comments from former Egyptian envoy Frank
Wisner last weekend, when he spoke of the importance of Mubarak remaining in
power. Dispatched the week before by the Obama administration
to request that Mubarak and his son both take themselves out of the
running in elections coming this September, Wisner then said
days later, “I believe that President Mubarak’s continued leadership
is critical.”

The messages were mixed, which the people in the streets heard loud
and clear — the many messages said loudly that Americans are in a bind,
with one foot in the water and one foot still in the boat. Allies in other
Middle East nations were getting nervous, accusing Obama of moving too quickly
against Mubarak and urging him to place stability before a push for a hasty
and chaotic democracy. He heard their complaints and changed his tack
once more.
 
What is clear from the rollercoaster ride of the last two and a half weeks
is that the Obama administration will remain in a reactive posture, a
state of whiplash determined by completely unpredictable events on
the ground in Cairo. But the sum of the
administration’s reactions, and the entire challenge,
has revealed much about President Obama and his foreign policy
worldview. What we have seen is what Ross Douthat described in his
New York Times column as Obama’s cold-blooded realpolitik, a policy that
weighs practical considerations over idealism.
 
Douthat writes that Egypt
is “a situation that calls for great caution, rather than grand idealistic
gestures. And it calls for a certain measure of of relief, from the American
public, that this liberal president’s foreign policy instincts have turned out
to be so temperamentally conservative.”
 
John Heilemann agreed in
New York Magazine. He wrote that the episode paints a picture of Obama as
“a president who views foreign policy through the lens of pragmatism, not
idealism or ideology. Of a president who is in some ways (and surprisingly)
more sure-footed playing the inside game of old-school diplomacy than the
outside game of grand public gestures.”

So far, so true. But as for next week, who knows?
 

WHO WINS THE BUDGET FIGHTS? TEA PARTY OR LEADERSHIP? Ask A.B. returns Tuesday,
Feb. 15. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions
and comments to askab@digital-staging.thehill.com.