It has taken just six weeks for the arrest of a fruit-and-vegetable seller in Tunisia to spark a chain of events that now threatens to topple the government of Egypt. Watching the revolt against autocracy spread across the Arab world is exciting, uplifting – and also deeply alarming for the world’s major powers, all of which are, in different ways, fond of the status quo.
The discomfort of the US is obvious and much remarked upon. As the world’s only superpower and President Hosni Mubarak’s main outside sponsor, it is the US that everybody is looking to. But the turmoil in Egypt will also be a source of anxiety for European and even Chinese leaders.
Europeans have long been acutely aware that theirs is an ageing continent, separated by a narrow sea from a much poorer, much younger north African and Arab world. They have wrung their hands about the economic and political stagnation in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt – while co-operating closely with those countries’ leaderships, in an effort to combat everything from terrorism to illegal immigration. Now, Europeans are left cringing at the old photos of their leaders embracing the likes of President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia.
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