Clearly this is not going to be resolved as easily as many in the West had hoped. I suspect the situation has moved from the prospect of a change of government and a relaxation of strictures on rights and freedoms, to a fundamental upheaval which will change Egypt for ever. It may be as fundamental, but very different, from the transformation in Iran after the fall of the Shah. The difficulty in reading the situation is that there is nobody leading this revolution. The key players have yet to appear.
The Egyptian Army shrinks from seizing power and may be itself split. It is trying to emerge as a national guardian or guarantor that the revolutionary demands will be met, but it has announced no plan as to how this is to happen. It may be saying that it is up to the people to drive their own revolution and remove from power all vestiges of the old regime. It will not join in but it will not act against them either. I suspect the High command would like to act to restore order, but fears a coup from middle ranking officers. Remember when Nasser took over he was only a colonel. If the Republican Guard fire on demonstrators, sympathetic army units may fire back, whatever their orders. There will then be a state of civil conflict which could escalate to civil war.
The next few hours may be critical in a fine balance between resolution and chaos. What is very clear is that the whole dynamics of the Middle East have changed, none of the gulf Autocracies looks safe or anyway as safe as before and that the tide of democracy, may very well be surging in a direction the West, which has for so long promoted it, would rather not go. It will have no choice but to go with the flow. A thought may be disturbing sleep in Washington. If Osama Bin Laden stood for office in Saudi Arabia, he would most likely be elected.
When this chapter of history is written, it will be seen that over the last sixty years America and Israel, starting with all the cards, played their hands very badly indeed. They look set to lose a game. They may lose a rubber. They could even lose the match. Obama sees that. Clinton maybe. In the end this will not be about military power, but about people power. We will need to adjust ourselves to the idea that people in democracies may not see things our way. Cozying up to, or even bribing, an autocrat is easy. The same cannot be done with a people.