"It's 1989 ... But we are the USSR!"

"... An exaggeration? Certainly. But there is enough truth in the analogy to explain why both the US and the European Union are uneasy about revolutions that – on one level – promote core western values, such as democracy and individual rights........there is no doubting that rulers such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia have been key western allies. In the classic formulation of the cold war, they were “our sons-of-bitches”. Or, as a writer in The Washington Times lamented last week: “Mr Mubarak may have been a tinpot dictator, but he supported America.”

Earlier this year, the Obama administration made it clear to Mr Mubarak that the US would not accept the violent suppression of the Egyptian uprising; just as in 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, told the East German leadership that he would not support the murder of peaceful demonstrators in Leipzig. In both cases – Egypt and East Germany – the withdrawal of superpower support helped to tip the regimes over the edge, and to spread turmoil across a whole region....

The Europeans have a similar dilemma. The French and British eagerness to intervene in Libya reflected a desire to put themselves on the “right side of history” – and to bury an embarrassing record of co-operation with the old regimes in Tunisia and Libya. But backing the democratic uprisings in north Africa was a relatively easy call for the western powers, compared with the strategic and economic dilemmas thrown up in the Gulf, which is the most important oil-producing region in the world and a key base for al-Qaeda.

America has been noticeably reticent about supporting challenges to the ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. It has called on the government of Bahrain to reform; but the US barely protested when Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain to help repress an uprising there. Robert Gates, US defence secretary, has said that his top priority in Yemen is the “war on terror” and praised Mr Saleh for his co-operation with America. Only after months of demonstrations, and bloodshed on the streets of Yemen, has the US apparently concluded that Mr Saleh is another old ally who will have to go.

Saudi Arabia itself represents the ultimate dilemma. More than 30 years ago, the US made clear that it would regard a threat to oil supplies from the Gulf as justification for military intervention. The “Carter doctrine”, announced in January 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, proclaimed that: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” A peaceful transition to a more liberal political system in Saudi Arabia would clearly not breach the Carter doctrine. But something more chaotic and violent that opened the way to increased influence for al-Qaeda or Iran? Who knows?..."