What Does the U.S. Want in Egypt?
While the U.S. favours Egyptian political reform in theory, in practice it props up an authoritarian system for pragmatic reasons of national self-interest.
The U.S. would not welcome Mubarak’s fall and the dislocation a revolution would cause in Egypt and across a chronically unstable region. … In the final analysis, the U.S. needs a friendly government in Cairo more than it needs a democratic one. Whether the issue is Israel-Palestine, Hamas and Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, security for Gulf oil supplies, Sudan, or the spread of Islamist fundamentalist ideas, Washington wants Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous and influential country, in its corner. That’s the political and geostrategic bottom line.
