<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" OPEN SECRETS /// Protests continued in Tahrir Square on Sunday, even as members of the Egyptian government claimed to be making progress in talks with leaders of the democratic movement. The former senator says the U.S. cannot trade expediency for ideals in its own negotiations. Wise powers \u2014 and those tend to be the ones that endure \u2014 learn from revolutions. Though United States foreign policy in the past has tended more toward the pragmatic than the systematic, there are lessons from the incipient Egyptian revolution now underway that could well be applicable to U.S. crisis management in the early part of the twenty-first century. First, no repressive government lasts forever. Successive U.S. administrations seemed to assume that Hosni Mubarak would last a good deal longer and then his son, his hand-picked successor, would take over and maintain Egypt&amp;#039;s friendship with America and support our policies in the Middle East. Thinking this, there does not seem to be a Plan B in place to deal with the kind of contingencies we now face \u2014 a popular uprising, regime change, and a struggle for power that could continue without our guidance for considerable time to come. The State Department&amp;#039;s strategic-planning staff should this very minute be considering what to do with future Egypts, including Saudi Arabia, just in case. Second, sooner or later we will have to decide whether the expediency of political realism or the principles and ideals upon which our Constitution and nation were founded will guide our role in the world. We simply delude ourselves when we think we can talk the talk of our ideals and walk the walk of expediency. Egyptian young people have been assaulted by Egyptian troops carrying weapons marked &amp;quot;made in the USA.&amp;quot; President Obama had the youth of the Arab world on his side and our side with his speech, ironically, in Cairo. But they rose up against the ruler we supported and are now holding us accountable for Mubarak&amp;#039;s repressions. Third, the largest single collection of our military power is dedicated to the protection of Persian Gulf oil supplies. Though we will not admit that oil has anything to do with it, we have invaded the region twice in a dozen years, and the world knows that the deployment of our forces is directly related to our reliance on oil from the region. Independence from Persian Gulf oil would liberate our foreign policy, limit our military presence where it is most despised, and help us regain a degree of moral authority and integrity. Finally, we have yet to grasp the tremendous impact that new media and communication systems have on power structures. It is now commonplace to mention that the current Egyptian uprising could not have happened without the advent of the Al Jazeera television network and cell phones. Oligarchies and authoritarian governments held power in part by controlling information. No longer. Information is no longer vertical \u2014 it is horizontal. The sixteenth century Machiavelli would have grasped this quicker than we have. It did not require WikiLeaks to open the door to the hitherto secret world of former times. U.S. policy makers must grasp this one central truth: Secrets may be exchanged behind traditional diplomatic closed doors, but in the meantime, the twenty-first century reality is making them instantaneously redundant. No one on earth, including the President of the United States, knows how the Egyptian revolution will turn out, near-term or long-term. The real question is whether we are able to take lessons from it, even as it unfolds. Gary Hart, a former U.S. senator, is the Scholar in Residence at the University of Colorado. He is also the author of these recent books: The Thunder and the Sunshine: Four Seasons in a Burnished Life, The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats, and Under the Eagle&amp;#039;s Wing: A National Security Strategy for the United States. CLICK HERE FOR CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE REVOLUTION IN EGYPT &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a9355/gary-hart-egypt-5194101/>