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The United States should encourage a quick and peaceful end to the current crisis in Egypt and do what it can to support the establishment of a new democracy in the country.
A major change in the Egyptian government might affect Egypt’s policy toward Gaza and its role in the Arab League, but it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
While the crisis in Egypt will have major implications across the Arab world, the peace process will not be significantly affected. The country that will be most crucial in charting a new path forward for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is Saudi Arabia, not Egypt.
Other Arab regimes are right to worry about the possibility of an uprising in their own nations; the same combination of economic hardship, political corruption, and repression that inspired protests in Tunisia and Egypt exist in all Arab countries outside the Gulf.
A change in Egyptian leadership would bring to end nearly three decades of uninterrupted rule and have significant implications for the region’s balance of power.
In the wake of the protests, the United States has an opportunity to publicly promote the emergence of governments in the region that respect democracy and human rights and to aid Tunisia and Egypt in making successful democratic transitions.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement that uses anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric, its primary agenda is to make Egypt better through domestic reform.
The time for top-down political reform has come and gone in Egypt. In its place the world is seeing bottom-up change, with all its inherent risks.
The United States has an opportunity to clearly signal its strong support for democracy and engage with the Egyptian government, opposition, and civil society to play whatever role it can in supporting bottom-up democratic change.
While Washington's reaction to the growing unrest in the Middle East will have almost no impact on what actually happens in the Arab world, it will affect the United States’ standing in the region.