In an article on the Egyptian crisis headlined “Obama Presses for Change but Not a New Face at the Top,” David E. Sanger and Helene Cooper of The New York Times report:
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decision to stop short, at least for now, of calling for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was driven by the administration’s concern that it could lose all leverage over the Egyptian president, and because it feared creating a power vacuum inside the country, according to administration officials involved in the debate…
The administration’s restraint is also driven by the fact that, for the United States, dealing with an Egypt without Mr. Mubarak would be difficult at best, and downright scary at worst. For 30 years, his government has been a pillar of American foreign policy in a volatile region, not least because of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. American officials fear that a new government — particularly one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist groups — may not honor the treaty signed in 1979 by Mr. Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat.
Mr. Sadat was assassinated two years later, paving the way for Mr. Mubarak…
…Some officials have compared what is unfolding in Egypt with the uprisings more that three decades ago that led to the ouster of Iran’s shah, and the protests in the Philippines that brought down Ferdinand Marcos.
In Iran, Washington gambled on the emergence of a government that it could work with, and lost — a process that one member of the Obama cabinet, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, was deeply involved in as a young aide in the Carter administration. In the Philippines, the result was a messy democracy…
Obama administration officials would like to see a moderate and secular government emerge from the…Egyptian crisis. But in large part because Mr. Mubarak stifled so much political debate and marginalized any opposition, there is no middle ground in Egypt’s politics, no credible secular party that grew up in opposition to Mr. Mubarak’s government. Instead, there is the army, which has long supported Mr. Mubarak’s government, and on the other end of the spectrum, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood…
