Hosni Mubarak, through a mixture of repression, political maneuvering and subsedizing, had… Hosni Mubarak, through a mixture of repression, political maneuvering and subsedizing, had managed to keep an iron grip on Egypt since 1981, with a quiet and sullen order broken only by protests in 1995 that ended with broken protestors. It looked like the Dictators’ Hall of Fame, which inducts members for dying of natural causes while still in power, was sure to gain a new member.

But a popular uprising in Tunisia against another strongman, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, led that nation’s former leader to take an extended vacation in Saudi Arabia. All of a sudden, it looked plausible that Hosni Mubarak might be ousted as well. After three weeks of protests in Egypt, Mubarak is out and the nation is being led by a military junta that is moving toward a democratic transition. We hope. What happens next is anybody’s guess, and the United States must maneuver carefully. Egypt was a U.S. ally under Mubarak and is one of the few Arab states that maintains relations with Israel. How true these facts will remain under new management has yet to be seen.

As you see the headlines pouring out of Egypt, you might ask yourself an important question: Why should any of this matter to me? Whether Egypt democratizes doesn’t make an obvious difference to us in the short term. It won’t get us an iPad, it won’t affect our own liberties, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the price of tea in China. And yet questions of foreign policy are important to each and every one of us, and it is vital that we understand things that happen halfway around the world.

There are multiple outcomes possible in Egypt, and some of them would end up being very bad. For example, there are concerns that Islamic radicals might take power using means which might or might not be democratic, making Egypt the next Iran. This second Iran could become a major source of aid to terrorists as well as an existential threat to Israel. A state that provides aid and comfort to terrorists would make it easier for Islamic extremists to carry out attacks in Europe and the United States. If you plan to hang out in Europe or the U.S., this might just affect you.

Of course, the outcome doesn’t have to be bad. Moderate elements could prevail and Egypt could become another Turkey, a more-or-less democratic state that is kept secular by the implicit threat of military coup. As the Egyptian army has close ties to the United States’ forces, and its officer corps has absorbed at least some Americanideas about how the military should relate to the government, this isn’t a vain hope.

Yet even discounting Islamic radicalism, Egypt is still important. The Suez Canal that slices through Egypt is a major thoroughfare for merchant shipping as well as half a million barrels of oil a day. A pipeline that roughly parallels it carries an additional million barrels per day. If things go wrong in Egypt, that could all be disrupted, and all of a sudden you’ll be paying $4.50 a gallon at the gas pump. The canal is important for more than just oil. According to the Egyptiangovernment, roughly 1,400 ships pass through the canal every month, accounting for about 8 percent of world shipping. The detour that ships would have to take in the event of a disruption to the Suez would be thousands of miles around Africa, increasing shipping costs and making consumer goods more expensive. Recognizing the Suez Canal’s strategic significance, there is always the possibility of foreign intervention to try to keep it open to international shipping. This might sound silly, but the British and French actually did intervene in just such a way during the Suez Crisis of 1956.

The action in Egypt is also important in a larger context. Egypt is the largest Arab nation and, under Gamal Abdel Nasser in the ’50s and ’60s, was a major proponent of Arab nationalism. As such, Egypt has a lot of influence on the whole Middle East. Copycat protests have sprung up in Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Algeria and Libya, and there is enough corruption, unemployment and lack of liberty in many other states to translate into more movements along the Egyptian model for badly needed reform. These protestors would be emboldened by the fact that what looked like an impressive edifice of goons, guns and secret police that held Mubarak in power turned out to be an edifice no more impressive than a house of cards. It is this hope that is partly responsible for the revival of Iran’s opposition Green Movement. These protests hold great risks and opportunities for the United States and the world. We might end up with greater liberty in the Middle East, which could lead to marginalization of extremists. Or we might end up with regimes that absolutely hate our guts and wish to do us ill at every turn. In the near term, we might see climbing oil prices, with a ripple effect in everything that we do. Whatever happens, the protests could upend the current order in the Middle East and might end up defining the region for the next 20 years. If we pay attention to and understand what is happening now, it will make it easier to understand what’s happening in those coming 20 years.

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