Monday, February 28, 2011

The upheaval in Egypt revealed the true divide between Israelis and U.S. neocons

But the events in Egypt have laid bare a stark divide between neoconservatives and the Israeli elite: While the former are ecstatic about the fall of Mubarak and the prospect of a democratic Egypt, the latter are wary—at best. “Supporting democracy is part of the genetic code of Americans,” says Martin Kramer, a senior fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem Center. “Israelis,” on the other hand, “like the status quo.”

Putting pressure on the Middle East’s sclerotic and corrupt governments to liberalize is the touchstone of the U.S. neoconservative foreign policy project, as embodied in the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002 and made manifest with the war in Iraq. With regard to Egypt, one of the earliest and most persistent critics of the Mubarak regime was Robert Kagan, the preeminent neoconservative intellectual. Over a year ago, Kagan formed a bipartisan Working Group on Egypt that issued a stream of reports and statements warning about the potential for mass volatility in the country. In June, he co-authored a Washington Post op-ed alleging that the White House was “repeating the mistake that Cold War-era administrations made when they supported right-wing dictatorships—right up until the point when they were toppled by radical forces.” “The delegitimizing of Mubarak began with the neocons,” Kramer explains.

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