Now, after demanding Egypt’s President Husni Mubarak resign “now,” the Egyptian strongman scorned the demand and grimly hugs on to power, backed by the security organs and business oligarchy.
Obama has again been openly scorned by a Mideast leader.

This writer reported last April that the US had selected Egypt’s then intelligence chief, Gen. Omar Suleiman, to replace President Mubarak. Washington’s hope was for an orderly transition, but the popular intifada
derailed that plan.

While unsure which way to move for the time being, Washington is hoping that General and now Vice President Suleiman will assume full leadership of Egypt with the backing of the ministers of defense and interior, and senior army generals. While the US clearly wants this outcome, most Egyptians just as clearly do not.

Now that the initial shock over Egypt’s uprising has subsided, powerful special interests here in the United States are preparing to throw their support behind VP Suleiman or even continuation of President Mubarak’s rule.

The Israel lobby, the most powerful in Washington, is trumpeting exaggerated fears, fanned by neoconservatives and Israel, that Egypt is about to turn into a second Iran. Behind these wild claims is the real concern that the US-brokered phony “peace” engineered by the US between Egypt and Israel will be rejected by Egyptians, who regard it as treason and betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

The military-industrial complex, which sells Egypt $1.5 billion worth of arms each year – money that comes from US aid – worry that a popular, democratic Egyptian government will divert military spending into urgent social needs. America’s powerful farm lobby frets that tens of millions of US wheat sales to Egypt, again paid for by US aid, may be jeopardized.

Finally, the imperial-minded national security complex in Washington and New York is very worried that its most important Mideast ally may be on the way out. If Egypt’s current US-backed and financed regime goes, America’s entire security architecture for the Mideast will be in peril. Also throw Pakistan into the equation as most Pakistanis are watching events in Egypt and other Arab autocratic states with avid interest and envy.

Overlooked so far in the reporting over the crisis in Egypt is the fact that no matter how much Egyptians would like to loosen pervasive American influence over their nation, Egypt remains dependant on the US for food, as do many other Arab nations.

For the past forty years, US foreign aid programs have provided at least half or more of Egypt’s grain imports. Egypt’s limited fertile land cannot feed its growing population of 84 million. So Egypt must import grain to provide its people subsidized bread. The US supplied Egypt, the world’s leading grain importer, with some 3 million tons last year.

Since Egypt cannot pay for these imports, it must rely on aid authorized each year by the US Congress. But Congress is under the influence of the Israel lobby. If Cairo angers the US or Israel, it always faces the threat of a cutoff of essential food aid as well as spare parts and munitions for its 500,000-man military.

These considerations will weigh heavily on any new government in Cairo. Everyone remembers Egypt’s violent food riots during the 1970’s. In a sense, Egypt is linked to America by golden handcuffs – unless it can find a new food benefactor in Russia, the European Union or China.

Back in the late 1960’s, Egypt’s then leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, wanted to break his nation’s growing dependence on the Soviet Union. He was stopped from doing so by anguished pleas from his defense minister, Marshall Amer: `spare parts, Gamal, spare parts! We can’t live without Soviet spare parts.’

Sixty years later, Egypt’s basic problems remain the same.

Nervous Chinese officials are expressing deep concern over the safety of the billions worth of US securities held by China and investments in America. Washington has been steadily engineering the devaluation of the US dollar by printing money, a process known under the euphemism of “quantitative easing,” and by keeping interest rates artificially low.

China has a lot to worry about. Most economists and money men foresee a much lower US dollar in 2011, perhaps by as much as 10%. Washington is reducing its huge debts to China by devaluing its money.

How long will Beijing hold on to sharply depreciating securities? Perhaps a long time. China seems to have little choice: the alternatives are the Euro and Yen, both suffering their own woes.

President Hu will also face intense annoyance in Washington over China’s arms buildup and claims by American conservatives that China increasingly threatens its Asian neighbors and the United States.

China has indeed been modernizing its military, particularly its air and naval forces, transforming its former coastal, brown-water navy into a true blue-water fleet. But China has also decreased the size of its 1.6 million-man army to pay for modernization and mechanization.

So is China a military threat? Yes, theoretically, to Taiwan and Vietnam. But not to the rest of Asia, and certainly not to the United States, which spends ten times more than China on the military.

China continues to follow the cautious foreign policy advocated by its brilliant former leader, Deng Xioping: build economic power and avoid frightening the world.

Critics say this is merely a ploy to mask China’s domineering ambitions. But history and current Chinese thinking suggest otherwise.

Even China’s most radical and often bloodthirsty leader, Mao Zedong, did not advocate territorial expansion except to “liberate ” former parts of China: Tibet, Sinkiang, Taiwan. China fought short border wars with India and Vietnam, but withdrew after “teaching them a lesson.”

Throughout its history, China has generally preferred to accept the obedience, submission and deference of neighbor states rather than occupying them. Vast areas of China, mostly arid or mountainous, remain uninhabited even today. Expansion is not a priority.

China has settled its outstanding border disputes with Russia, though it does have serious, unresolved ones in the Eastern Himalayas with India. Meanwhile, China is boldly expanding its political and economic influence in Central and South Asia, but not, so far, military capabilities.

If China’s land borders are largely fixed, its sphere of maritime influence remains unresolved and of growing concern to its Asian neighbors and the United States, which considers the Pacific Ocean an American preserve.

China’s growing dependence on Mideast oil requires it to develop powerful, long-ranged naval forces, backed by naval aviation, to protect its oil routes. In effect, China is starting to echo similar American claims about the need to safeguard its maritime trade.

None of this yet means Chinese armies are on the march, just a rising great power flexing its economic muscles.

It is essential to avoid militarizing US-Chinese relations and putting them in context of former Cold War rivalry – though Washington’s national security establishment that would like to do just this and redefine China as an inevitable threat to the United States.

These hardliners (and I used to be one – I even have a Pentagon certificate hailing me as a “cold warrior”) are making precisely the same error that Britain’s German-hating Imperialists made before World War I, demonizing a commercial competitor into a demon that had to be destroyed at all costs.

The British Empire destroyed itself by fighting Germany in two world wars. Hopefully, the United States will be more far-sighted, cautious, and generous in dealing with rising China – and China will keep following Deng’s excellent advice.

Sino-American relations must be led by diplomats; they are far too important to be left to generals and admirals.

But this news has been the biggest cause of dismay to the US Navy since a Chinese attack submarine embarrassingly popped up in the middle of a US Navy fleet exercise off China.

China has also managed to deploy 60 modern submarines, a small number nuclear-powered, that are silent and deadly, in contrast to China’s older generation of noisy, vulnerable subs.

Adding to US concerns, China has completed an unfinished Soviet aircraft carrier, “Varyag,” that it brought from Ukraine a decade ago. I have been observing its completion at the northern Chinese port of Dalian.

Two new, 50,000-ton aircraft carriers are being built in Shanghai, to be launched 2014 and 2020. The new Chinese carriers will likely be equipped with Chinese-made naval fighters or naval versions of the formidable Russian Sukhoi warplanes.

Developing aircraft carriers and properly training their crews can take generations. China is only at the first day in school.

US carriers are one of the world’s most elaborate creations: 100,000 ton floating cities with a million gallons of fuel in their holds, massive amounts of explosives, and highly skilled c rews operating 24/7 like clockwork. I sailed aboard the US carrier “Abraham Lincoln” and was awed by the professionalism and skill of its crew and complexity of this gigantic creation.

But the US Navy is more concerned about China’s rapidly-growing arsenal of anti-ship missiles than its aircraft carriers. Last year’s impressive military parade at Beijing displayed a new generation of powerful anti-ship missiles that can be launched from land, sea, air, and underwater.

In addition, the US Navy is very worried about China’s work on a new ballistic missile, the DF-21D, that can reportedly be launched from mobile, shore-based launchers and hit large, moving targets at sea. The DF-21D is said to be vectored into its target by satellite, aircraft, submarines or drone aircraft.

Even with doubtful accuracy, such anti-ship ballistic missiles could keep the US Navy far away from the North Pacific coasts – which is just China’s intention. Carriers and their escorts cost $25 billion – they are too expensive and fragile to risk. Yet these mighty carriers are the ultimate expression of American power in the region.

Over the past decade, China has been slowly building the capability to force the US Navy away from its coasts and deep in the Pacific. Beijing was horrified and ashamed when during the 1996 Taiwan crisis, a US battle group led by the carrier “Nimitz” sailed down the Taiwan Strait almost within sight of mainland China.

Imagine if a Chinese naval battle group sailed into Chesapeake Bay near Washington, into the Florida Strait off Cuba, or up to New Orleans? The US would erupt in fury. But this is what the US Navy has been doing in China since 1945.

Now, Beijing’ new anti-ship missiles are putting US carrier battle groups at grave risk if they come too close to the mainland. This writer has conducted numerous naval simulation war games and can attest that no surface vessels, particularly not huge carriers, can withstand barrages of high-speed anti-ship missiles fired from 360 degrees.

However, the US Navy is run by carrier admirals who are as loathe to junk their flattops as were battleship admirals early in World War II. The answer clearly is less super-carriers and more small vessels with remotely piloted aircraft. But that sea change will only come slowly.

Meanwhile, the US must clearly adjust to China’s growing military strength. The days when the US Navy could rule China’s coasts and rivers are long gone. China is set on enforcing a 300-mile strategic maritime limit and is increasingly pressing claims to large areas of its coastal waters that has alarmed its neighbors and Washington.

The US and China are likely headed towards naval clashes until Washington pulls its Pacific fleet away from China’ coasts . But that will be a bitter pill for the mighty US Navy to swallow.