Why Egypt Matters

Reuters / Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Walter Russell Mead, American Interest: A Plague on Egypt’s Tourism

The tragic crash of the Russian airliner should serve as a wake-up call. Egypt matters, and we take it for granted at our peril.

Bomb or no bomb? UK flights have started to transport back to Britain some of the 20,000 British tourists who were stranded at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea after intelligence emerged that the Russian plane that crashed over the Sinai over the weekend was likely brought down by an explosive device. But at the same time, Russia has now stopped all Russian flights bound for Egypt, a sign that the country is increasingly taking seriously the possibility that a bomb caused the crash. That coheres with the U.S. intel; replying to calls for caution from the Egyptian foreign minister about jumping to conclusions, a senior U.S. intelligence official said, “He hasn’t seen the information we have.”

As the belief that a bomb was the cause of the crash grows, and as investigators sift the debris and listen to the black box recordings (and as we think of the families of the victims), it’s worth thinking about what the crash could mean for Egypt and the world—because trouble in Egypt could be more consequential than many people understand.

WNU Editor: In terms of importance for the West .... the countries of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are the critical ones .... and Egypt is the weakest of the three. If it should become a failed .... the reverberations throughout the Middle East and Europe will be felt for generations.