Who Lost Egypt?

Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of ecstatic Egyptians have been seen celebrating in the streets and squares of Cairo. They are delighted that they are to be ruled by the Egyptian military who have dissolved the parliament and abrogated the constitution. This once was the well-worn tradition of banana republics. Surely the idea of the military as an institution of popular rule has changed dramatically. The duly, if not fairly, elected government has been overturned through the continuing demonstrations of the people. Hosni Mubarak is no longer President Mubarak. What is next?

In the coming days and months and years citizens and power brokers in Egypt will shape the answer to this question. And Americans will be watching nervously. There is a joke among Jews, all social change is to be evaluated through the prism of a simple question, “But is it good for the Jews?” Jews are not the only ones who ask the question. All peoples worry how massive change will affect their own lives. American policy makers and pundits are asking the equivalent question. If we determine that change has distressing consequences, a search begins for explanations and for those responsible. Typical of the narcissism of nations, the question of blame will arise. “Who is the scapegoat?” “Who is the traitor?” We read history backwards to discover culprits. Should the outcome in Cairo not be to our liking it will be hard for Americans to avoid asking: “Who Lost Egypt?”

Sixty years ago a powerful version of that question was being asked by journalists and in the halls of Congress: Who Lost China? The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek had recently fallen to the communist troops of Mao. Americans believed that China was within our sphere of influence.  We had been propping up the corrupt Nationalist regime, but suddenly these leaders fled to Taiwan. We found Chinese troops fighting against American soldiers on the Korean peninsula. Perhaps most of the blame could be given to Chiang’s corrupt regime, but were there American traitors who shaped State Department policy? This was the hue and cry first of the fiercely anti-communist Henry Luce, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, and his friends in the China Lobby. Later, Senators Joseph McCarthy and Patrick McCarran took up cudgels, as they pounded villains, such as Johns Hopkins Sinologist Owen Lattimore, using his prominence and connections to blame Truman’s State Department.

Of course, the thoughtful examination of foreign policy disasters is to be expected and to be encouraged. Even liberal Walter Lippmann remarked, “The heart of the Republican attack is the belief, in itself quite legitimate, that after such a humiliating and costly disaster there must be an accounting.” But who are the accountants? In part, because of the drumbeat of negative attacks on counter-subversives, Republicans triumphed in the 1952 elections, reshaping postwar America.

Historical events do not come in neat packages. No two are alike. While conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, Dick Morris, and Sean Hannity, have raised the charge today, it is by no means clear that Egypt is lost and, despite the Obama Administration’s miscues, we do not yet have an expert or policymaker who might be targeted as responsible for the outcome in Cairo. While Islamists in the form of a newly radicalized and legitimated Muslim Brotherhood may assume power, it is also quite possible that Egypt will become a robust democracy with continuing ties to Israel and strong connections to the United States. With such an outcome Egypt will be far from lost.

But if Egypt changes in ways we find disconcerting, someone will be identified as a plausible villain to target.  Whether National Intelligence Director James Clapper who claimed, somewhat implausibly, that the Muslim Brotherhood is a secular organization, would serve in a pinch remains to be seen. In Congress today there seems no backbencher salivating to wear the McCarthy/McCarran mantle. The most enthusiastic detractors of administration policy are to be found on talk radio and Fox News. At this point the sharks are circling the Administration’s boat sensing weakness, but there is no blood in the water. Critics cannot even agree if the administration was too quick to distance itself from the Egyptian government or too slow. Should revolts continue throughout the Middle East, promoting governments hostile to American interests a more intense search for villains will occur. Yet, if democracy flowers in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and Iran, the Obama administration will receive – and will deserve – some of the credit.

Still, the underlying point is that when bad and surprising things affect the national interest, an accounting will occur: a blame game. This is the role of opinionated fighters and reputational entrepreneurs, both of the left and of the right. It is part of how nations with contentious and democratic parties operate. These rivals construct narratives of malfeasance and of mischief, hoping that the stories gain listeners. Today, opponents of the Obama administration are ready for storm clouds to brew in Egypt. They wish to ask, not Mubarak, but Barack, “who lost Egypt?” “Why in your omniscience and omnipotence did you betray us so?”