Egypt protests

   
 

   
 

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Saturday

January 29, 2011

   
 

Egyptian Protests

   
 

When the Chinese filled Tiananmen Square in 1989, we supported them. Nothing really happened to reform the Communist Party in Beijing, though. When protesters filled the streets more recently in Tehran, Iran, we supported them, too. But nothing really happened to reform that government, either.

Now protesters fill the streets of Cairo, and so we support them as well. But, again, nothing is really going to happen to change things in those countries. There might be cosmetic changes, maybe even the premier will have to step down in an extreme case, but still the ruling class will continue in power as before, and the oppressed will still live the way they always have.

These protests don’t aim at the ruling class, but only at the government, and that’s why these protests fail. The larger point for us Americans is that, since we don’t realize that the protests are almost always destined to fail, we just get people, the protesters, in trouble when we support them. Given that we do not possess the will to go in country and really eliminate the ruling regime, we should just shut-up.

That is to say, our existing foreign policy, in which we verbally (and very publicly) support the protesters, but don’t really do anything substantive, could truly be called: “speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That is absolutely the worst mistake you can make in foreign relations.

Either crush the ruling class or do nothing at all – those two moves are both defensible moves. But by all means don’t, on the other hand, just talk a lot and then do nothing forceful or compelling. That failure only gets the protesters in a heap of trouble with their government since they are now branded as pro-American, and an international confrontation has been set in motion.

In addition, we must remember that the protesters are naïve and think that when the US supports them in front of the entire world, good things cannot fail to happen. But they are in for a shock when, at the moment of truth, our foreign policy establishment quietly draws the curtain and retires from the scene, leaving those “pro-democracy” demonstrators to their grisly fate with a brutal government.

   
 

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