NewsBreakingOnline

The echo of Egypt’s revolution is rocking despotic regimes from Algiers to Damascus It is just one extraordinary week since the fall of the Egyptian president. For 30 years Hosni Mubarak had been the region’s representative figure of the west’s way of doing business. Like the ocean after an earthquake, the shock waves of his fall have grown in violence until now they are rocking despotic regimes from Algiers to Damascus. Some of the UK’s closest allies – old friends in Gulf states like Bahrain and new ones like Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi – are brutally repressing protests, potentially using teargas and other material legitimately imported from British companies. This looks like a street-level Arab revolt, each uprising different in origin but all sharing the common denominator of youth and the inspiration of Tunis and Cairo relayed by text message and internet. The protesters are confronting rulers who have been courted by generations of western politicians. The result is an almost unprecedented challenge to postwar foreign policy. It demands a response which recognises that there will be no return to business as usual, and that the conversation can no longer be restricted to a narrow elite. It is time to substitute a new era of shared values for the old one of national interest. It is too soon to try to say how that response should be framed. At least the foreign secretary, William Hague, and his minister Alistair Burt have promised that export licences will be closely scrutinised from now on. They have rightly called on Arab leaders to show restraint and reform, but the real power lies in Washington, where the dilemma of how far and how fast to withdraw support is visibly straining the administration. All the same, the events of the past month have once again drawn attention to the seamier side of the realpolitik that has always shaped Britain’s approach to the Middle East. As the former foreign office minister Kim Howells has argued, the flip side of supporting stability is repressing democracy. Focused on the threat of Islam, we have, it appears, been too slow to appreciate the simmering secular unrest, let alone to try to pre-empt it. If it is too soon to be prescriptive, however, one thing is clear. It is barely a month since the BBC announced that its Arabic short-wave service would, with Russian language services, bear the brunt of overseas cuts. Happily, it is a decision it is not too late to reverse . Meanwhile, tough new controls on the number of overseas students will mean fewer young people able to take advantage of higher education in the UK. The British Council faces cuts too. Yet we can no longer sustain our strategic interests through the barrel of a gun. Britain is in a unique position to project soft power. It is only part of the answer. But it has to be a reasonable starting point for a new Middle East policy. Egypt Middle East Arab and Middle East protests Bahrain Yemen Libya BBC Foreign policy guardian.co.uk