In their first semester of international relations studies students are taught that countries base their foreign policies on one of three major strategies. One is self-dependence, especially in such crucial areas as defence and sufficiency in essential goods and services. States that follow this strategy produce their own weapons and have extensive military manoeuvrability. They also have the production capacities to meet their own needs or, if they lack some essential resource or other, the money or clout to secure them from abroad. The second strategy is to try to neutralise major powers by playing them off against each other in the framework of their rivalry to expand their spheres of influence. This strategy of balancing major powers against each other has enabled some lesser powers to acquire some strengths and advantages that they would not have been able to achieve independently of the circumstances of the global power struggle between superpowers. The third strategy is for a state to attach itself to a more influential power or powers, thereby obtaining such advantages as military protection at a lower cost and international economic privileges in exchange for reasonable services. Arab nationalism and its drive towards Arab unity represented an attempt to pursue the first strategy. The ideology was driven by the belief that Arab states, together, could acquire international might by pooling their energies and resources, which would enable collective self-dependency. When this aim proved too difficult to obtain for various reasons that are unnecessary to enumerate here, Arab states opted for the second and third strategies. During the Cold War (1948-1989), which was the era of strategic equilibrium and competing spheres of influence between American and Soviet superpowers, a number of Arab regional powers shifted towards such policies as “positive neutrality” or “non-alignment” in which context they diversified their sources of arms and economic resources. For a time, these policies proved effective ways for some of these countries to attain considerable degrees international influence and to maximise their interests. The Arab-Israeli conflict played an important part in this context. The US-Western alliance with Israel was a major reason why some Arab powers turned to the Soviet Union and the Socialist Bloc for assistance with armaments and industrialisation. Other countries, such as Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey and Cuba went in the other direction. Instead of attempting to capitalise on the dynamics of the international strategic balances between the capitalist and socialist camps, these countries threw in their lot with either one camp or the other, so as to obtain the attendant benefits of a subsidiary ally. Naturally, countries rarely, if ever, pursued one of these strategies exclusively, consistently and in unadulterated form. Rather, they mixed and matched between the strategies according to the particular demands and exigencies of a given moment. Still, in spite of this element of flux, the Arab states generally geared themselves to a world of multiple polarities and balances, which is why they were entirely thrown off kilter when, suddenly, the US emerged as the world's sole superpower following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. For a while, many hopes in the Arab region were pinned on the emergence of a five-pronged multipolar order consisting of the US, Russia, the EU, Japan and China. In practical terms, such hopes were unrealistic as Europe and Japan were effectively part of the greater Western military, economic and democratic alliance, while Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union was a shadow of its former self and China not only still considered itself part of the Third World but also had no global policy to speak of. In all events, the Arabs soon accommodated themselves to the US's global supremacy, as practically declared in the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991 and subsequently in Washington's assumption of the management of the Arab-Israeli conflict and then in the US-led global war on terror that targeted the Arab region as much as Western countries. However, the two decades of attachment to the US and the West did not give the Arabs peace of mind. The search continued for a global strategic balance to play on and after conditions changed so radically in many Arab countries after January 2011, the search for another party in the international arena that could offset the Western bloc intensified. Evidently, BRIC (consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China) seemed a promising candidate for the desired strategy, as this bloc seemed to possess a number of features that looked like they could restrain the West's unfettered hand in the international arena. Egypt, which had avoided falling in with either of the two Cold War camps and, instead, joined the group of nations that had opted for “positive neutrality”, has perhaps been one of the more enthusiastic proponents of this new course in this post-revolutionary era. President Mohamed Morsi's visits to China, Russia, India, South Africa and, most recently, Brazil were intended as a message to those whom it may concern that Egypt is no longer captive to a relationship with a single camp. There are a number of emerging international powers out there that have the capacity to offer Egypt a considerable degree of manoeuvrability and flexibility, Cairo was saying, and on top of this, these countries have many lessons to impart with respect to economic development. Although it is still premature to assess whether this new orientation will serve the realisation of Egypt's goals, there are a number of objective limitations that need to be borne in mind. Firstly, BRIC is not a homogeneous military alliance in the manner of the Western alliance, whose constituent parties share similar political, economic and cultural systems, outlooks and values. Democracy in Brazil and South Africa is newly born, in India it is deeply rooted, in Russia it is hampered by the mixture of the ongoing legacy of the KGB mentality and the sway of the current political mafia, and in China, still dominated by Communist Party rule, it is non-existent. From the purely economic standpoint, although all BRIC countries with the exception of Russia enjoy relatively high economic growth rates, they also have very high poverty rates. In China, some 700 million people live below the poverty threshold and in India the number of poor is about the same. South Africa still has a long way to go until the wealth of the black population catches up with their newly acquired political power. Although Brazil has taken great strides in economic development, it still ranks among the worst countries in the world in terms of the distribution of wealth. Surprisingly, on this criterion Egypt fares not just better than Brazil but better than all the countries of BRIC. In addition, the average per capital income in Egypt, adjusted in dollars, is higher than in China and India and about half of the Brazilian per capital income. More importantly, none of the BRIC countries apart from Russia have an active Middle East policy and most of them are keener on maintaining good relations with the US than many Arabs imagine.
