 I just finished up a panel discussion for the Schieffer series on what's going on in Egypt. A fascinating discussion lasted an hour with several people with different perspectives on what's happening. Some people optimistic, some more pessimistic for the whole video. You can watch it here now. Thanks. Good evening. Good evening. Can I ask everybody to take their seats please? Good evening. Good evening and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Andrew Schwartz. I'm Senior Vice President for External Relations here. Welcome to everybody coming out, especially on such short notice. This is usually we put the Schieffer series together a little bit further in advance, but the dramatic events that we've all been glued to in Egypt over the last several days really made this an important session to have. And I'm so glad you all could make it out here. And I think this is the first Schieffer series we've done since the Horned Frogs won the Rose Bowl. So we'd say go Frogs to our frozen friends actually back in Fort Worth who are suffering what we normally suffer. I'd also like to thank United Technologies, our sponsor of this series that's made it possible for us to have these wonderful sessions led by the one and only Bob Schieffer. Thank you very much and thanks to all of you for coming. I mean we do try to stay on top of the news. I remember the last one of these we had. It was right after the North Korean thing erupted and we were the day of when we did our thing on North Korea and their potential nuclear power. We're going to talk about Egypt today and we really have some great folks. Dr. Ebrahim Fakara is Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera Satellite Channel in the D.C. and New York offices. He's a host of From Washington, a weekly show on American issues and current affairs and how they impact U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds. He came to Al Jazeera eight years ago from the D.C.-based AllAfrica.com, one of the world's largest providers of African news and analysis. Before that, he was with the BBC and also the world of Boston-based co-production of the BBC. Nancy Youssef, my friend from McClatchy, was for a long time the Bureau Chief in Baghdad, I guess, and then in Afghanistan too. Most of her reporting in recent years has been about Baghdad and Iraq and Afghanistan, but she is Egyptian. Both of her parents are Egyptian. They live here now, but she has a lot of family in Cairo, so she can tell us exactly what's happening over there from not from the standpoint of the government or the demonstrators, but folks who live there. Then John Alterman, of course, is director, senior fellow of the Middle East programs here at CSIS. Prior to that, a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, special assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, a member of the chief of naval operations executive panel. Before that, of course, he was an academic. He taught at Johns Hopkins and also at George Washington, a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. So we got some folks here, as we always do, who have a pretty good experience on what they come here to talk about. So let me just start, and I'm going to ask just this one general question to all three of you, and Dr. Fakari, you can, we'll just go around the horn here. Is this a revolt or is it a revolution? Oh boy. I'm going to relax and think. I think it's a revolution to the extent that it may succeed. I think if it does succeed and it passes off peacefully and leads to a good outcome for Egypt, for the Arab region and for the relations between the Arab region and the West, particularly the United States, I think it'll be revolutionary in its implications, transforming the region, something that some U.S. administrations have tried to do in that part of the world and sometimes dismally failed. It would be revolutionary in the sense that if it happens relatively peacefully, because we've seen some violence over the last 24 hours, but if it happens peacefully, it will be food for thought, not just for Egyptians but for other Arabs about how they can transform themselves without necessarily going back to where the Arab world was just two months ago before Tunisia happened. Nancy, you were on the phone with friends, relations all day today. What do they think it is? Well, they don't know. Step back a bit. The reason this is such a critical question is what we're really asking is what's an acceptable outcome to the Egyptians. If the acceptable outcome is almost Suleiman, is members of the current government, the saddest quo in terms of the institutions of government and how it's set up, then it's a revolt against Mubarak and some of the practices of his government. If there's a fundamental change in how things are done in Egypt and presumably in the Middle East broadly, then this becomes a revolution. To your question about what people are saying, I'm talking to the people mostly who aren't into here square right now, who are hunkered down on their homes, who are protecting their neighborhoods in some cases, who are trying to stretch their Egyptian pounds as far as possible as they don't know when they're going to get to the bank next, and their middle class Egyptians that I'm talking to. By and large, I hear them saying, look, we don't want Mubarak, we hear it, but this idea of an immediate end of his regime, what next? It's the uncertainty that worries them. It's the devil you know versus the one you don't. On top of that, they're seeing the protests in the street and they don't know who those people are and who they're speaking on behalf of. And so I think in a way they feel like their needs, their demands, their needs and wants are being hijacked by these two pulling forces, the Mubarak regime and those who want the revolution. And I think they in a lot of ways feel stuck in the middle. I call every day and I call it a various parts of Cairo and today I called into Madi, which those of you who know Cairo, it's very near where all this is happening. And I got the funniest comment I've heard the whole time. If you're Egyptian then you know you're related to people and you don't know how. So I'm going to say my cousin's wife said, you know when you guys had your Monica Lewinsky scandal, you had months to investigate the president. How come we have to form a new government tomorrow? So that was our analogy today. John, who are there? Who do you think these people are just picking up on what Nancy is saying here? Well, they don't really know who they are. There are a lot of different people who've never been put together before and when they've tried to come together it hasn't really worked. The kafaya movement was trying several years ago to create a broad-based coalition, never really succeeded. So I think what you have is you have a group that is largely agreed on basically a negative proposition. That is the president must leave. It's hard to agree on a positive proposition what they want as an alternative. The president and the government have been very careful not to allow people to formulate an alternative. So the alternative is the government or chaos. And one of the words you will see over and over and over when President Mubarak talks is the word chaos and he is the alternative to chaos. Now it's your question as to whether this is a revolt or a revolution. I think it's interesting to remember that when Egypt had a coup in 1952 led by the army, the army has been in power since, it wasn't initially called a revolution. It was originally a harga mubarak, the blessed movement. And it didn't have the name revolution until time had passed and people wanted to define it as such. And I think whatever happens, again we're in a period where we don't know what it is quite yet. What it is likely to be tremendously significant, but it's very early to say that this is a revolution because it's very early to judge the direction of the impact. In fact, rather than turning things over, it may create a consolidation much more of the status quo than anybody had anticipated even a week ago. Hosni Mubarak gave an interview today and I might as well say who he gave it to, my competitor, Christiane Amanpour. And he said he's tired of serving. He said I'm fed up with it. I've been doing this 62 years, which is a pretty good run when you stop and think about it. And he said he wants to quit, but he says he can't because it would be chaos if he quit. Do you think, doctor, that that's what would happen? Is it mubarak or chaos? Well, I mean just to put it in a philosophical context, it obviously has something to do with power. Power obviously does something to human beings. And for me as an Arab living in this country where obviously there's a constitution which reflects the foresight of the founding fathers. It's a very interesting question that you're raising because those guys, when they wrote the constitution, they obviously foresaw this. Power is addictive. And unless you have strong enough incentive to leave it, you will not leave it. There's a joke during the rounds in the Arab world, some of you Americans may have heard it, which is one of Mubarak's aides went to him and he said, Mr. President, the people are clamoring for a farewell speech. And he said, farewell speech? Why? Where are they going? And I think it just sums up the relationship that mankind throughout his or her history has had to power. Now this specific case of what he actually said, I find it very interesting that he has gone on the record as saying that after the going got tough, if he'd chosen to say it maybe a week ago, you and I would not be, you probably would not have raised that issue. So I think he's probably, the last week has probably taken a very strong toll on him, but I still find the statement a little bit disingenuous in the sense that all politicians can be disingenuous. John, you and I were talking before we came in here. What do you see happening now? Because clearly these counter demonstrators seem to be, at least if not all of them, most of them, appear to be sent there by the government. Or do we know that? I mean, certainly that's the way it looks from the outside. We don't know it. There certainly seem to be ties of some of the demonstrators to the government. Certainly people would know that the government would approve. Some people seem to work for government businesses. I think there's also some basic support for the leader among many of these people. Even if they don't have to be told, there's a sense it will be viewed with approval by people near them. But my sense of what's happening, and Nancy and I sort of hit on this together as we were talking yesterday afternoon and our mood started to sink, is that the government seems to be positioning itself so that rather than being the object of the demonstrations, it's the broker between these people who are starting to use violence and the protesters. So what the government says is we're going to hold back the mob and we will make sure that the mob of the protesters doesn't take over either. And we've heard the protests. We've heard the young people, Omar Suman this afternoon, said thank you for raising these issues and alerting us and we're aware and we'll work with you to resolve the difference between this mob who is using violence against peaceful protesters and the peaceful protesters. That puts the government holding two out of three of the chairs, which I think is precisely where the government wants to be. And then the government will manage this process through Omar Suman, through the prime minister, with the support of the president, with the presumed support of the military, and rather than leading to a real opening of the political process, it ends up being continuation of the political process with, I think, two important reservations. One is perhaps the government feels it was too lax allowing the political organization to go on. So you have more controls on communications, on the internet, on political activity than they had leading up to this. And a retreat from the sort of economics that were intended to bring in foreign investment to make it a better investment climate in Egypt would return to the socialist inspired economics of subsidies and state capitalism. So in the longer term, what you're going toward is not an Egypt that moves forward into a more open and prosperous economic future, but instead an Egypt that looks much more like Egypt in 1995 than Egypt that people thought were going toward in 2015. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, it was interesting. Suleiman, thank you for bringing up the things you didn't know before all this happened. And of course they knew. And frankly, I think it's working because there are very real practical things that are happening in everyday Egyptians who are hunkered in their homes and looking at protests and don't recognize or don't know who these people are. You know, they're holding back on money that they spend because they don't know when this is going in. They're not going to work in some cases. And it is a viable option because in a way the Egyptian government is outlining what it will do. The protesters are not. That said, I think people are astonished by what the protesters accomplished and they're hopeful about what lies ahead. But there's the immediate problem of not knowing what's next and at least there's the promise of stability. I was talking today to someone and I said, but what if Suleiman says in September or August whenever they hold the elections, I won despite all evidence otherwise, what makes you think he'll leave? And she said he has to leave everything that's happened. There's a belief that there is power now in the masses and in the streets so that if the government gets out of control, that they can reign them back in by taking back to the streets. There's a renewed sense of power in the people. Now, how much of that is real and how much of that is just out of fear of living under this for the last 10 days? It's hard to know, particularly from here. But I think that's what the government is able to exploit. Well, what do you think we keep hearing from our people there tomorrow's going to be the big day? What happens tomorrow? Well, remember what happened last Friday? You know, we were talking earlier about the internet and the impact it has. Now, last Friday when those protests got together, there was no internet. It had been shut down. You have people going to mosques, listening to their imams, gathering together and potentially going out in the street and big numbers as they can to essentially say, if you're one of the protesters, Mubarak, you need to step down by now and what you've offered is not enough. It's not enough for you to say, I'm going to be here until September. We want immediate change. And the question becomes what kind of pushback they'll get from pro-Mubarak supporters, either those sent out by the government or on their own. And what happens, presumably, when the Mubarak presidency does not end how does that go from there? What we're really seeing tomorrow is it's another sort of metric in terms of whether this is the revolt or the revolution. Whether people are saying we have confidence that things can move towards some reform or the reform cannot happen until Hussein Mubarak is no longer the president of Egypt. How has the someone looking at this from a foreign perspective, how has the United States done this for this? I think we all know what the stakes are here. How do you judge the way the administration has handled this? Well, the first thing I would like to say is that if your audience have come to this session feeling happy and optimistic my purview is to depress them. As an academic as a representative of Al Jazeera. You get a double whammy. Let me just backpedal a little bit and go back to Tunisia. The impression that has stuck to most people's minds about the reaction of the United States to what happened in Tunisia was that it came too late for whatever reason. We obviously had Secretary of State Henry Clinton visiting the Gulf just a few days before the former president of Tunisia fled and she did address in some stark terms the situation in the Middle East she was addressing the leaders and telling them about the youth and the conditions of their daily existence and that they had to take some drastic measures to improve that. But she also said talking about the riots going on in Tunisia, the riots, the uprising, the revolution, whichever way you want to call it, she said we do not take sides. And obviously seen from DC you can understand why she said that but seen from the region a lot of people took it as a slap in the face because two years ago when the youth in Iran were going through their turmoil the government of the United States was much more forceful in endorsing what they were doing if you go back with memory to the collapse of the former Soviet block again the position of the United States government was much much clearer and to the point this is what we want to happen that didn't seem to happen in the eyes of people in the Arab world in Tunisia and certainly because of the complexity and the consequence of Egypt which is obviously much bigger than Tunisia a lot of people perceive the United States to have been very tentative in the way that it has handled the Egyptian potato in terms of yes we support the protesters' rights but at the same time I think what a lot of people in the Arab world were clamoring for and again if you see it from Washington you understand why the Obama administration comes but what the people in the region were clamoring for is a clear cut we want Mubarak to go before it's too late now the way I see it is that it obviously has repercussions for the future role and influence of the United States in that region and I don't want to go too long I just want to say that whatever the outcome is I don't think there's a good outcome 100% for the United States in the region I'm not even sure at this particular point in time that there is a good outcome for the Egyptians and for the wider Arab world let's watch tomorrow if it passes off relatively peacefully then that would obviously reduce the risks down the road but if it goes down as a bloody event whether by Baltagia as these elements have been attacking the protesters over the last 24 hours or more dangerously by the army that suddenly decides to actually kill civilians I think you're talking about something much more unscalable Nancy why has there no particular person emerged between several people right now there's no way to sort of handicap if they did have an election who the people would be is there anyone that has a lot of popular support Mubarak designed it that way he crushed opposition he pitted them against one another and he did it within his own government and within his own army he ensured that there wasn't a threat to his regime or a natural successor other than his son as a means to protect power and so that's why you're seeing when we talk about what next he can frame the debate in some ways as a choice between civility and chaos because it's such a vast scale of unknowns that going forward the most notable place that you would think a leader would come from would be from the army of Egypt since its independence has come from the army but if you're a general in the army you were promoted because you either tacitly or explicitly supported the Mubarak regime and so you know historically I find myself thinking is there a kernel in that army that mid-ranking soldier between those conscript rank and file soldiers and the generals who could maybe rise up we've never heard that name yet and I have to believe that he's put a quash on that but Gamal Abdel Nasser of course Egypt's first president was a kernel so I find myself thinking maybe that's where that person will come from you'll hear a lot of people talking about Muhammad El-Barede as a possible leader at least at the minimum a transition leader I think he's more popular outside of Egypt than he is within he's seen as an outsider and a secularist more so and I haven't found anyone any middle class Egyptian who sees him as sort of the vision the embodiment of a revolutionary figure well John do you think it is possible to have an orderly transition we're talking about here I mean do you think Mubarak has to go for that to happen and if he does go can an orderly transition take place I hate to make prognostications where I'm actually going to read the transcript but I'm going to do it and I'm not sure he's going to go I've spoken to people, people I have tremendous respect for who say there's no way he can stay and I've come to the conclusion that I think there may be a way he can stay and what we'll have is a transition that will be precisely the transition that perhaps even more orderly a transition than had Mubarak died suddenly in office without these events people are playing for keeps Mubarak is focused on maintaining the strong role as both an actor and a guarantor of the political system and I think people are looking at the next 6 to 9 months as how do we have an orderly transition which sustains the status quo makes it indeed more sustainable than it has been and the other part of this that we haven't talked about is all the other Arab leaders would be absolutely delighted if Hassan Mubarak pulls this out because the implications of Hassan Mubarak's failure in this are tremendous because then you not only have Tunisia which is not strategically important to most countries in the neighborhood to Egypt which is strategically important to everybody and then suddenly you start having people being terrified of a domino effect if Hassan Mubarak is able to co-opt this movement, control the movement emerge with Omar Suleiman and General Shafiq as the paternal figures guarding them, protecting the nation and the national interest then I think we are right back to a much more comfortable status quo for every single Arab government. So how does he stay if you think it is possible for him to stay? Well let's say I think that the goal is to emerge as the arbiter between these street thugs who are throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks and everything else and the protesters and okay we have a process, we've heard you we're going to mediate this we're going to have this committee meeting and that committee's meeting we're talking about this provision of the constitution you have to talk about the constitution because it's going to be legal and orderly and you just sort of you drive it into process and the process is of course controlled by a parliament which was essentially hand-picked by the ruling party and former generals who have precisely an interest in maintaining the current system for a long time to come. Would you agree with that? To a certain extent let me just quickly tangentially say something about Tunisia. John reminded me of it. Tunisia is strategically unimportant as John said remember some extremely big things and I'm doing a quick flashback here, some extremely big things in the history of the region came out of Tunisia. Your Egyptian, so you would know this if you go to Egypt and you say Muizlidin Allah for example a lot of people are proud of Muiz as a leader from the 10th century who is such an icon of Egyptian history he is from a dynasty that actually started off in Tunisia and had its eyes on expanding its influence throughout the region so they decided to actually transfer to Cairo and that's how Cairo came into being and was built and this region is very history focused if not history obsessed so that's one thing the second thing I would say is that I feel that even if he were to leave and I'm of your mind as well I don't think that he's ready to leave anytime soon although when Saddam Hussein was introduced by your colleague Dan Rather before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and he asked him the same thing he said would you consider leaving Iraq and what did Saddam say he said why should I leave Iraq I'm Iraqi and I expect to die in Iraq Hussein Mubarak said the same thing in his speech yesterday the only difference is that for Saddam the ultimatum to leave Iraq at that time was coming from the Americans for Hussein Mubarak this time is actually coming from Egyptians now let's assume that all that is by the by and that he left I do not necessarily see the departure of Hussein Mubarak from Egypt as the end of the story by any stretch of the imagination again Tunisia is a good case in point because we saw the president flee but to this day some of the remnants of the old regime continue to hold on to power and their argument which is maybe a good argument depending on who you talk to is that we are still holding the country together and without us the country would disintegrate in all sorts of ways some of them internal some others external well I mean is it kind of the sense of the panel here and I find this all very interesting that perhaps the best thing that could happen is if that somehow or another Mubarak could kind of quiet down this protest and he's now announced he's going to leave and then sort of stay in office until elections could be held I don't think that's the crucial point I think the crucial point is are you going to be genuine about changing the nature of a system which has been a remarkably closed system I guess John what I'm getting at is there a better chance to do that if he stays than if he leaves I think the system is bigger than Hussein Mubarak Hussein Mubarak leads the system as the figurehead but I think the system is much deeper it's much broader and it's much harder to penetrate I don't I mean in some ways it's like a country with a king versus a president sometimes it's easier when you have a king because a king isn't a contestant and a king can sometimes bend the rules be a sort of crooked referee in order to keep everybody playing on the same playing field to that extent maybe on a marginal side if Hussein Mubarak were genuinely interested in playing that role I don't think he is interested in playing that role I think he's interested in the durability of the existing system and I don't think the durability of the system matters whether Hussein Mubarak is there or not except for the fact that if there were a widespread perception that the mob had run Hussein Mubarak out of office that the remaining elements of the system would feel besieged and would be less charitable that's not to say it's good that Hussein Mubarak is there but I think that the way it keeps being phrased as Nancy eloquently said it's always between the Hussein Mubarak and chaos there's no alternative Hussein Mubarak but chaos the most dangerous job in Egypt was to be the second most powerful person in the country and so that's sort of where we are and there's no bench this is a country there's no bench there aren't charismatic leaders or ministers who are widely perceived to have done a good job there's nobody with popular backing except for the president because he's had this huge warning track around himself and people who got close to the warning track had to find other jobs Nancy what choices does the Egyptian military face now in the coming months I mean what could be difficult what could get easier you know in a way they're in an unenviable position because it's interesting you can actually make a lot of comparisons to their military as to ours in the sense of their responsibility how they see their responsibility I think first and foremost there is a unifying threat in the Egyptian military which is they see themselves as the defenders of the Egyptian state and at this point and they answer to their leader their leader right now is Husnu Mubarak and so they are carrying out orders from him and the order right now is to not shoot on demonstrators it's not their job to shoot on demonstrators and I think they understand that if they did it would lead to instability in the state therefore the only time that I think they need to cross that line is if the state itself collapses if the system as we now know it somehow collapses and it becomes their job to intervene but at the same time for everyday Egyptians it's quite frustrating to many of them to see the violence breaking out I personally felt this yesterday as you're watching this violence break out yesterday and the military not get involved you see the tanks on the street and you see the firebombs breaking out and what not and here is the Egyptian army doing its job defending the institutions of the Egyptian state the Egyptian museum, its artifacts, its history it's defending the institutions that these violent protests carry out and so they're walking a very very thin line and they're doing it because that's the job of the military and that's the job of our military as much as it is of their military it's not their job to be an arm of Mubarak but an extension of the state and they really won the respect they already had and of course before all this but they really won it throughout I always think of it this way these are an extension of Mubarak but the army is the extension of Egypt and so that's why you see the frustration in the people with the police funny enough when the police came out today there were people saying you cowards where were you because they'd run away for a few days but the Egyptian army stayed so I think they're walking that line quite remarkably and consistently since this began I'm going to just ask all three of you and I can start with you Nancy talk about the the effect that this or the impact that this could have on the rest of the region we know about what happened in Jordan we know there's trouble in Yemen what are the real danger points and kind of where do you see this going across the region it affects all of the region and you know Tunisia really broke down that barricade of fear of the government punishing it and it happened so quickly and the dominoes started to fall and if you think of this as a big vat of oil that was the spark the match that kind of got thrown in and in Syria I think it'll be a little bit more difficult because they're certainly not as open relative to other states I think the acid regime would come down quickly on protesters we'll see this day of rage is now scheduled I think they believe for February 12 in Yemen I think they're a little bit more split about what they want it's not as clear cut or as it's been made to be in Egypt there are some people who just want President Soh to say that he and his son are not going to run in 2013 which they've done there are some who say he needs to step down right away and there are still others who say economic reform would be acceptable so it's a little bit more split in Jordan because it's a monarchy there's that division right between the Hashemite Kingdom and the government we haven't heard people say they want the end of the Hashemite Kingdom but they wouldn't have the option to say that anyway because you're not allowed to criticize the government in Jordan so we saw King Abdullah try to get ahead of it by firing a very unpopular prime minister and so each country's touched by this but the intermashinations of them are all different and so I think you'll start to see countries that haven't been directly hit by this try to outmaneuver and get ahead of the protest to salvage the system as they know it and as they're benefiting from it and other countries are now trying to adjust to what their populations are asking for I'm going to hear the other two panelists give their views on that but while they're doing that those of you who want to ask some questions be thinking of the questions you want to ask but let's hear I think it's nobody's secret that in the countries of the region some countries are less stable than others and I would like to mind as one of the least stable countries in the region I do not however believe that the domino effect is inevitable but the condition is speed the speed of change in Egypt may avert the risk of the domino effect and I think several of these leaderships in these countries are beginning to ripen up for change and I think if the change happens in Egypt in a way that safeguards the interests and aspirations of the Egyptian people who have been clamoring for it this past week and at the same time safeguard the Egypt's some of Egypt's international commitments whether with regard to Israel or others I think the government in Egypt would have would be under less pressure to introduce some of the genuine internal changes that the people of Egypt want. If that happens in a relatively short period of time I think other governments in the region may have an opportunity to do some of the adjustments that their own people are clamoring for although some of those adjustments could actually be quite bitter as a pill but I do not believe that the domino effect is necessarily inevitable. A couple of things you said first I think the speed is remarkable the fact is we've never seen a popular revolution in the history of the Arab world we may have seen two happen in January depending on how this comes out the fact that you can have something happen so quickly it's a combination of the and the Twitter effect that is television and instant messaging computer social networking I think working together in a profoundly interconnected way that changes things. I am less optimistic that this leads us to really positive reform we all saw the courage that Congress showed dealing with our budget problems by extending tax cuts and all those sorts of things I think the fact is that governments under threat are not going to want to swallow bitter pills they're going to want to sell they're going to want to restore subsidies especially a time when global commodity prices are rising I worry that the effect is going to be more government control of communication and more government subsidies and I say rather than moving forward to the kind of Middle East we thought we were moving toward I wonder if we're going to be moving back to 1994, 1995 not really in the positive direction at all. The one country out there we haven't talked about is Israel which is obviously watching this I think it was underlined to me just how serious Israel views this when Prime Minister Netanyahu asked the ministers in his government comment and it's been a long time since I've heard it since the ministers listened or one who would think he could actually tell them not to be quiet but they had been how serious is this for Israel? and then we'll go to questions Israel is terrified of a Muslim brotherhood led Egypt Israel is terrified of any sort of leadership change that Israel has become quite comfortable with Hassan Mubarak they're uncomfortable with more populist politics in Egypt because the Israeli Egyptian agreement is deeply unpopular in Egypt Israel feels that they have all the understandings they need with the current system in Egypt and any change to that system let me just ask you this when you start talking about bringing in other players and broader politics in Egypt do you think the thing that's been enforced here for 30 years now is that out the window? I think the Israelis have better understandings with Omar Suleiman they do with Hassan Mubarak and they have excellent understandings with Hassan Mubarak Omar Suleiman has been doing an incredible amount of lifting politics in Egypt that's when the Israelis get extremely concerned because that leads you away from the kinds of very pragmatic understandings that the current government of Egypt reach I think that as long as the army remains the backbone of power which as Nancy said a little while ago which is the very likely outcome anyway so I would argue that for many Egyptians fortunately the army is the instrument of the state but unfortunately it's also the instrument of the regime but that's a different question but whether you look at it as an instrument of the state or of the regime I think any government that takes over in the future in Egypt would not want to open that front with Israel and it would not be obligating the Camp David accord the peace treaty with Israel for one thing the army would not go for it so I think on that front I'm not so I'm not so sure that the Egyptians would go down that route where I do think they would make a change the new government in Egypt would make a change that isn't the Palestinians Egyptians have obviously been mediating between the two remember that Egypt has always carried the mantle of Arab nationalism and the Palestinian issue continues to be a very strong nationalistic rallying cry for the Arab so the government in Egypt will want to reassume that mantle because in the eyes of many Arabs they will stop wearing it so it will want to assume it and it will be very important for its legitimacy throughout the Arab world to actually change course in how it mediates between the Israelis and the Palestinians in other words Israel I don't think at least as far as I can see now it would not necessarily have to worry about peace treaty but the issue of settlement I think the Palestinian issue in all its flex just one quick thing I often hear comparisons between this and what happened in Iran and remember Egypt needs a relationship with the western world Iran didn't, Iran had oil Egypt needs the western world for the Suez canal for tourism for USAID for cotton exportation that's Egypt's economy and economically to anger the western world and so it's going to have to balance sort of carrying that title of the representative of Arab nationalism while sustaining itself economically that's a very good point I promise we'd go this gentleman here and could you go to the mic because it's on C-SPAN thank you is this on? my name is Joe Dukert I'm an energy analyst I don't know where physically President Mubarak is obviously Christian Amanpour does but I can't understand why the protesters have not used the classic protest tactic of surrounding him wherever he is who wants to take it? I'll start I was actually wondering that myself but then Christian Amanpour said that she interviewed him at a presidential palace I don't know if that because he was spending more time in Sharm el-Shake now Sharm el-Shake is advantageous to him because most Egyptians can't get there they can't afford it and actually Sharm is closed off to Egyptians other than those who work there and so that would be the most protected place he could be the presidential palace that was also a protected area so it's not as easy to sort of storm the palace if you will because as John talked about earlier it's an information war as well and the cameras and the attention is focused on Tahir Square it has been cast as the battleground in terms of who's representing the voice of Egypt so I think all those factors are in play I don't know anyone who's identified precisely where he is the first I heard was Christian Amanpour say a presidential palace I took that to be Cairo but I couldn't tell you for sure thank you very much enjoy the presentations I hear of course this sort of conservative by the way my name is Paolo von Schirach Schirach report the sort of skeptical approach regarding the possibility of this indeed becoming a revolution as opposed to a revolt and you Dr. Altman indicate that he may actually go back some to the extent that President Mubarak has transitioned himself as the broker between the revolutionaries and the counter revolutionaries if you wish if you could perhaps elaborate a little more on the role of the United States which was touched upon earlier on President Obama has said for whatever is worth the transition has to start now and watching yesterday the State Department briefing the State Department indicated that there has to be a process it has to be inclusive it has to be participatory we are going to watch it and so far it has not progressed to the level that we would like to see now are these just generic exhortations sort of to satisfy world opinion in a generic sense or is there something behind this idea of the transition has to start now or else or if it doesn't start now in a satisfactory manner what is a satisfactory manner obviously the United States provides Egypt with an enormous amount of resources I believe Egypt is the second largest recipient of military and civilian aid I personally visited USAID Cairo which is a city in the outskirts of the city so is there any leverage or is this essentially something that the United States is watching hoping for the best and again what does transition has to start now mean in a practical sense John why don't you I mean the Egyptians would argue that it started almost to the mind gave a speech and talked about the committees are going to form timelines are and I think one of the instructive things is to look at the Egyptian response to the Bush freedom agenda which was to have a big conference in Alexandria and talk about how the American freedom agenda was in fact an authentically Egyptian agenda and they were going to run it and the conference continued to meet and how many times the committees that everything else I mean the fact is that what the Egyptians will seek to do is institutionalize precisely what the Americans are talking about and then run those institutions and one of the problems you have from the US government side is you can assign people from the embassy to try to work with people involved with the committees are doing and everything else but for people in the United States this is an application it's one of many things they do they have other things going on and for the Egyptians this is for the whole ball of wax this is it this is the game this determines what the next 50 years look like and when that's the stakes and the Americans are trying to do a whole range of things I think it's very hard for the Americans to have a lot of influence over the shape of the process that being said I think there is no question the shape of the US Egyptian relationship going forward will change as a consequence of this it has gone along for 30 years and I think quite frankly it's been running on fumes that we have a relationship which because it's been so much aid for so long that there's been a mutual resentment between both sides each side feels taken for granted by the other and what this is doing is it's forcing both sides to think about what they want the US Egyptian relationship to be I don't think that's all unhealthy but part of that will mean it will not be as central to US thinking as it's been and how central it is partly depends on how the Egyptians behave during this process but we are certainly witnessing a change in this relationship it's a relationship which President Mubarak inherited from Anwar Sadat when he became president in 1981 it's a relationship which President Mubarak has not reinvigorated he sought not to reinvigorate it he sought to keep it the same way he disdained it and because of what is happening this is a relationship that will be redefined refocused over the next several years and the way that happens will be very much in the shadow of what happens in terms of the demonstrations in terms of the demands in terms of the succession to President Mubarak just want to quickly say two things if I may I mean the way I see it is that President Mubarak has two different clocks when he hears Obama, President Obama talking about we want change now one clock is pointing to yesterday which is as John said he's thinking I've already introduced some of those changes that you asked me to do the other one is pointing at tomorrow because he still feels that he has cards he can still play and if he's going to climb down the climb down is going to be incremental and it isn't over until it's over whatever shape or form that over finally takes just one quick thing I want to say about the aid I think the aid in the eyes of the Americans is one thing the aid in the eyes of the Egyptians is a different thing in other words aid has been part of the solution but also part of the problem yes the United States has invested a lot of money in military to military cooperation with Egypt but the way Egyptians see it remember Egypt it's 5000 years of history 80 million people crucial to anything that happens not just in the region but in the rest of the world in terms of security and stability how much does it get less than 2 billion dollars a year I'm not saying that the United the expectation is that the United States should match up what it gives to Israel because we know that's just not going to happen but a lot of Egyptians see it as more as an affront to some sort of humility is an affront to their dignity where the regime has actually put them it has put this country where it's actually seeking arms giving from the Americans when in fact it's a major power that should be sustaining itself rather than asking others for money question here with maximum international Bob I I was wondering when John quickly said Tunisia's non strategic of Hannibal and the Carthaginians and what the Romans thought of that area but 2000 years ago my concern now is we've spoken of Jordan we've spoken of Israel we haven't mentioned Lebanon but to my understanding that has suffered a great defeat as has Israel in the recent developments in Lebanon could you speak to that and how that sort of touches all the larger bases we've been discussing good point to pick up on Abidahim's point the fact is that how this plays out in all these different countries is very very different I think how it plays out in a country like Jordan which is divided between east bank Jordanians who serve in the army and in the government who feel that Jordan is their only home to Palestinian Jordanians West Bank Jordanians who the east bankers say are not really genuine Jordanians we just were nice and we gave them citizenship and I'm afraid that we're you to have uprisings in Jordan it would quickly turn into a civil war it would be Jordanians fighting Jordanians instead of united front appealing to the government so that's the Jordan in Yemen you have I think that Yemeni politics have largely been about interest groups making demands on the central government that's a different dynamic in Lebanon you have 18 different sects who are all officially recognized to all have their own politics I think the way it works in Lebanon is but has Bala can have influence in politics because they've made a deal with the Druze they've made a deal with a faction of the Christians I mean the fact is that I think with all of these countries the manifestations are different I think what we've seen as I've been saying that the speed of this the unpredictability makes everybody less comfortable because of a sense that people thought they knew the game and the sense that maybe they don't know the game that Tunisia can collapse essentially you know I mean it rose to a presidential level and within a week the president was on a plane out of the country I mean I am not ashamed to say that on Thursday of that week I said people are talking about an Ali leaving I mean what's the rush I don't get it I mean why are people jumping with conclusion and the next day he's on a plane out of the country the unpredictability I think helps shape it but the manifestation in each country is both unpredictable but also shaped by the specific conditions in that country which are very different from country to country there's one final question here and because our time is running out but let me ask each of you and I'll start with you doctor what is a successful outcome here and will we will we know it when we see it pass can I come back on Saturday at least tomorrow is a big day right yes very good it's a big day and I think a big part of the answer to the question hinges on what happens tomorrow I mean the ideal scenario is that it would pass off peacefully the expectation after what we've seen in the last 24 hours is that it's not going to pass off peacefully we may see some more clashes among Egyptians the other two scenarios that I see is that either the army intervenes and puts down the revolution uprising whatever you want to call it bloodily and I think that would launch Egypt down the long and painful pathway of chaos for a long time and the region with it or and I want to quickly go back to what I said earlier the army does manage to control the situation in one way or another but the temptation for it to take Egypt back not just two months but many many many years that temptation will be on I think my sense is that the Arab world will not go back to where it was two months ago and that's not a judgment of value I'm not saying the Arab the prospects are very good good or bad there's no going back to where the Arab world was two months ago Nancy just some closing thoughts here I'm feeling ambitious I'm going to try to tackle that first question and I come from it as a personal perspective the successful outcome to me is an Egypt where you don't have well educated men smart men graduating college in their 20s and staring at a lifetime of hopelessness you've had a whole generation do that I think one of the reasons you're seeing these men come up and take to the streets is they're they've seen their fathers do it and they don't want to do the same it's it's what the prospect of that is what brought my father here it's what I see in so many of my relatives going forward so I don't know what the outcome is strategically or politically but my hope and the best outcome for me is that Egypt that offers offers those youth something other than a lifetime of hopelessness John I agree Nancy I think the good outcome is one that leads to a genuine incorporation more people into a political process that improves outcomes that gives people a sense that they're vested in the society and creates a more resilient country and my fear is that the country may be on the brink of heading in the opposite direction I hope with all my heart is not sure do you believe that tomorrow is the is the crucial day I think tomorrow could be crucial if it were extremely violent it could be crucial if it were extremely massive and disciplined it could be crucial my own guess is we won't really know how this is going for another two months that there is going to be some sort of ongoing process and at some point people will say is this process at all genuine or is it a complete fraud and you know it will be hard to recapture the momentum of the days but I think there's bitterness the worst outcome clearly is that you have a sustained period of conflict that leads to polarization radicalization I think that's what leads us to extremely negative outcomes either a very hard line secular military led government or a hard line religious led government I think that's certainly one of the things the government the U.S. government has been saying all along we're trying to avoid all right well on behalf of TCU and the Schieffer School of Journalism and CSIS thank you all