As if things aren't bad enough already, what with the Bulldogs having gone 6-7, the governor doing his damnedest to starve higher education in this state, and a winter that I wouldn't wish on the most obnoxious Yankee I ever met, now the Egyptians suddenly think it's time for them to start showing their fannies. This is one of those cases where the overheated media coverage makes you want to simply grab the remote and see how the "Real Housewives" are getting along. In reality, of course, although you may know more than you think you need to know about what's going on over there, you don't need to know much to know that it has all sorts of potentially ominous ramifications for us. My friend Greg and I were speculating just this morning about whether sinking a single ship in the Suez Canal would put gas at $10 a gallon. (In discussions such as this, of course, the overriding reality is that 90 percent of the things that could happen in that part of the world are likely to cause gas prices to go up, in much the same way that either a late spring cold snap or a warm February are going to make orange juice more expensive.) This is definitely one of those cases where the simplest disruption of a distant routine threatens our own routines and livelihoods in a major way.
This is hardly the first time that the Suez Canal has been a strategic pawn in a crisis with truly global implications. I remember sweating bullets back in 1956 as a fretful nine-year-old thoroughly convinced that there was a mushroom cloud in my future when Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser seized the canal, which at that point accounted for two-thirds of the oil shipped to Europe. Nasser had gotten fairly cozy with the Russkies, and when Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt, it looked like the Big One might really pop. Some heavy-duty behind-the-scenes bullying by the United States succeeded in getting the Brits, French, and Israelis to stand down, but, shades of the likely outcome of what's happening right now, in the eyes of many Egyptians at least, we were lumped with the bad guys while most of the credit went to the Soviets.
My friend Joe is our running group's resident expert on the Suez Canal, and he tells me that oil now accounts for only 18 percent or so of the traffic through it, and the New York Times, which I trust a lot less than Joe, says that what flows through the canal and an accompanying pipeline amounts to only 4.5 percent of the world's oil supply. That doesn't sound like much, and experts say there is a sufficient backup supply to handle any short-term interruption in the canal's operation. However, anything more protracted could be a problem because a shortage of any magnitude in the world oil market can produce almost exaggerated consequences, especially with growing Chinese demand for oil cycling somewhere between exponential and totally out-of-control. Moreover, any oil bound for the United States that can't be taken through the Suez Canal must take the scenic route via the tip of Africa, adding about 6,000 fairly expensive miles to the journey. Though, ironically enough, part of Egypt's problem is that it has actually become a net consumer rather than producer of oil, the fear is that the turmoil in that country is likely to spread to neighboring places like Saudi Arabia, which is currently the third largest source of U.S. oil imports.
It might seem something of a saving grace that the radical Islamic crowd doesn't appear to know exactly what to make of the Egyptian situation, in that the anti-Mubarak crew is less concerned about having a secular government than simply having a sorry and corrupt one. The problem for them is not so much that westernization has polluted their culture or faith but that it has failed to make them prosperous. This is not exactly a situation tailor-made for the jihadists whose main message is "get right with Allah," while, in so far as they have an economic philosophy, it would seem to run along the lines of "Take an ol' cold 'tater' and wait."
The puzzlement among these lunatics is fairly apparent in this attempt to recruit young folks to come to Egypt and join their cause:
"Hey, brothers, the fall of Egypt's tyrant is a fall of the earth's tyrants. . . . This is the time to slaughter the cow."
Say what?
In reality, the principal opportunity for the jihadists in this case seems to lie primarily in the turmoil and distraction this whole thing has generated, making it a great time, for example, to do something constructive, like blowing up the Arish-Askelon gas pipeline supplying Israel. Still, a power vacuum is a power vacuum, and an empty throne an empty throne. The key for them is finding a way that "Jihadists may then leap on that throne."
The Obama administration's awkward attempts to two-step themselves away from the dead-but-don't-know-it-yet Mr. Mubarak speak once again of the pitfalls of an age-old American practice of tying ourselves to foreign leaders on the basis of how loudly they profess their love for us and dedication to our interests, regardless of how detestable they might be as human beings, much less heads of state. The old "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB, " as FDR is reported to have said of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, works only so long as you can count on keeping a succession of such U.S. friendly SOBs in power. Once the chain is broken and folks are done wee-weeing on the last SOBs grave, their resentment toward the United States is easily exploited by anyone who clearly hates our guts. Does swapping the Shah for the Ayatollah Khomeini come to mind here? Or just for you real old-timers, Fulgencio Batista for Fidel?
Liberal optimists are in full-throated exaltation of this Egyptian demonstration of the irrepressible human desire for democracy, but although I suppose you can eat a ballot, I don't recall ever hearing of anyone surviving on a steady diet of them. Tourism is not sufficient to sustain prosperity in nations far smaller than Egypt, but 6 percent of GDP is 6 percent of GDP, and even as we wring our hands over this crisis, the rustle of people scratching the Great Pyramids off their bucket lists is deafening. Egypt is already one of the top recipients of American foreign aid, and it's hard to see that changing, even as our "unfavorables" with the Egyptian people rise in tandem with the assistance we provide.
It's hard to know what's the best we can hope for here, outcome-wise. At the very least, a big boost in gas prices is a surefire recovery killer if there ever was one. What's that I hear? The mobs are actually mussing up Anderson Cooper's hair now? This is starting to look r-e-a-l-l-y bad. We may even have to trade the Yukon in on a Prius.
