Well things are moving along quite nicely in Egypt today. The citizenry are at each others throats and the Internet was just turned back on so everybody can see what a bloody nut house this revolution has created. About the only thing the pro and anti government activists agree on is that the US is responsible for creating this situation. It's becoming quite comforting to know that everyone always remembers the good ole US whenever they need a reason to devolve into mindless rabble. And you just know every other country in the world is loving it. All the other countries with diplomatic and business relations in Egypt get a free pass from any criticisms about their involvement with the government. You would think that the US is the only country that has diplomatic relations with Egypt.
Countries work to create diplomatic relationships with as many countries as possible to try and create a climate of cooperation that can benefit both countries in the relationship. Even countries at each others throat work to maintain diplomatic contacts with their adversaries. The US and Soviet Union were combatants in the global political theater over the past 45 years and even at the worst of times the President and Premier as well as the lower level diplomats had instant access to one another via the "red phone". It seemed that when it came to nuclear weapons both sides were able to drop the diplomatic pretense and talk directly to the person in charge at anytime a potential nuclear situation came up. I still think it is amazing that neither the US or the Soviet Union ever used their nuclear arsenals. It's comforting to know that no matter how corrupt or incompetent the governments may have been there was at least some sanity and commonsense applied when it came to the use of nuclear weapons. I think the world dodged a bullet in the early 50's when the US did not deploy nuclear weapons during the Korean war. Except for the bombs dropped on Japan it was probably the only time the US could have gotten away with using nuclear weapons again without the fear of a nuclear reprisal. The Soviet Union was not a major player in the Korean conflict and they were the only ones who might have been able to deploy nuclear weapons at the time and China did not have that capability.
Diplomatic relationships are vital in the world. That's why the recent Wiki-leaked diplomatic cables could cause problems between countries. Nothing secret or surprising has surfaced in the released cables but there have been frank assessments of individuals and countries that were embarrassing and really didn't need exposing. That's also why a countries embassy grounds are considered a sovereign part of the country the embassy is representing. The host countries are responsible for providing security and services to all of the embassies in their country with the expectation that the same consideration will be applied towards their own embassies. So that being said the US and Egyptian diplomatic relations were centered around issues that both the US and Egypt thought important. The US wanted to reduce the possibility of war with Israel and wanted stability around the Suez Canal shipment routes, and they wanted someone who they could rely on in that geographical region. The Egyptians were also trying to reduce the chances of continued hostilities with Israel having lost the last 3 times they attacked Israel and they wanted special consideration from the US regarding access to trade advantages and technology. Egypt use to be a Soviet client state and relied on Soviet weapon systems that ultimately came up short against the newer Israeli and US weapons systems and Egypt wanted to upgrade.
So it is distressing to keep hearing people denigrate the past US-Egyptian diplomatic relationship. The US is constantly being singled out as an interfering presence in other foreign governments but when the US refuses to interfere in the current Egyptian revolution they are accused of supporting a dictator. The US is accused of backing Mubarak over the past 30 years when in fact the US was only maintaining normal diplomatic relations and not trying to openly challenge the Egyptian leadership. If the US is going to be castigated on this so should every other country in world with diplomatic relationships with Egypt. Why is the US being singled out? Why has it taken the Egyptians 30 years to decide they want another leader and actually do something about it?
I hope things work out for the Egyptians but in that region of the world they rarely do. The entire region is filled with people who have been spoon feed nothing but anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda from early childhood and taught that all their problems have been caused by the US or Israel. Of course this conveniently lets their piss poor leaders as well as themselves off the hook of responsibility. And to think some of these people accuse Americans of blindly swallowing the government line. If they seriously want to change their society stop blaming others and get to work on your own problems. Until that happens I would not require but I would support a total break in the Egyptian-US relationship similar to the US break with Iran until the Egyption citizens publicly request diplomatic relations be resumed. Either way there will be no big loss on the US side of the equation.
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