Reading Barack Obama’s copy of 'Brave New World'

The prairie fire lit by a vegetable seller committing suicide in a small Tunisian town, forcing the country’s president of 23 years to flee, has reached the heart of the Arab world, Egypt. Even as president Hosni Mubarak, in office for nearly 30 years, is seeking to buy time by nominating a confidant vice-president for the first time after dismissing his cabinet, the hurricane shows no sign of abating.

Much of the Arab world was like tinder waiting for a match to explode. Apart from the oil and gas-rich Gulf monarchies, mostly with small populations, buying peace and happiness with their ample wealth, the traditional Arab nation state is ruled by an autocrat, who gives his people little freedom or distributive justice, and presides over a predominantly young population that is unemployed and often desperate to make ends meet.

Tunisians were also scandalised by the ostentatiously opulent life the ruling elite led and the self-enrichment of the president’s wife and her clan while the young fed themselves on scraps from the high table. After Tunisia came Algeria, and Jordan, and Yemen and Egypt, the last with a population of 80 million. Egypt is no longer the lodestar it was, but unlike Tunisia, it has remained the bulwark of the American architecture in the Middle East, being the first to make peace with Israel and “managing” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to American advantage.

President Barack Obama is desperately trying to balance his country’s geopolitical needs with paying lip service to the credo of democracy. The truth is that the cosy relationship the US has had with a succession of rulers in the region is unravelling. Although no one knows what the future will look like, deal making with a more democratic dispensation will be a more difficult undertaking. Egypt receives an annual US subsidy of $1.3 billion, mostly in military aid, the next highest amount after Israel.

It is ironic that president Obama blazed a new trail shortly after he assumed office in his famous address in Cairo painting a brave new world of American camaraderie with the Arab and Muslim worlds. He won much praise for his sentiments and a Nobel Prize for his intentions. The protesters on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria and in Suez asking for president Mubarak’s ouster were perhaps reminding the US president of the lost world he had outlined.

While the immediate cause of the Tunisian uprising was escalating food prices, the pent-up frustrations of the young in particular over lack of freedoms found a new instrument in technology, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and their ability to gather a significant mass without going to the traditional political leaders. In much of the Arab world, the opposition, if it exists, is of a quiescent kind. Even the only organised opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, had accommodated itself in Mubarak’s ways. And as rioting and protests spread in one country after another, opposition leaders were playing catch-up with the young who had mounted revolt over secular and bread-butter issues.

The future is unpredictable because the Middle East is moving into uncharted territory. For the US and the West, the geopolitical interests weigh heavily. In recent times, they have amounted to support for Israel at the cost of Palestinians and Arabs and in building an iron ring around Iran. It is, indeed, curious that for most of the Arab states, keeping Iran at bay takes precedence over the continuing denial of justice and land to Palestinians. The obvious question to ask is whether a more democratic dispensation in the region will ensure the compact between the Arab rulers seeking US protection for their countries and their own political longevity in exchange for sacrificing Palestinian interests and whether promoting Israeli and American policies will hold good.

Both the US and its Arab friends have an alibi in keeping off the evil of Muslim fundamentalism and there are obvious advantages in folding American geopolitical interests in the “war on terror”. The rash of Arab revolts, with their inevitable twists and turns, is a warning that the bulk of Arab peoples do not subscribe to the prevailing narrative of the choices they possess.

Although president Mubarak has shown greater sophistication than his Tunisian counterpart in confronting his nemesis, it is a matter of time before he is forced to leave. If he has prepared the ground by appointing a vice-president for the first time in 30 years, he will find that the choice is unacceptable to his people.