If it seems that the Arab world is coming apart at the seams, it is not without good reason. There are protests in Yemen. Hezbollah effectively has control of Lebanon's government, Ben Ali of Tunisia has been toppled. And there are widespread riots in Egypt. Any loss of stability is a big problem for the United States, but by far the development with the worst possible consequences is the challenge to Mubarak.

After Israel, Egypt is the nation that collects the biggest wad of our foreign aid dollars.* To the extent that we have any staunch allies other than a few of the NATO countries, Egypt under Mubarak has been a friend of the United States. But like many of the world's leaders, Mubarak is an autocrat. He has had the country firmly in his grip since his predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat, was assassinated in 1981. In a few months Mubarak will be 83 years old, and it is not clear who will succeed him nor how the successor will be brought to power.

Egypt has always been an anomaly. It was Israel's enemy but is now its ally, particularly in dealings with the Palestinians. Egypt's people were early converts to Christianity,** but the country is now the home of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was a kingdom for millenia, but now it can't decide what it wants to be.

It has a very large and rapidly growing population, and economic mobility is getting better but is still limited. Because Mubarak has tight control of the political process, there is frustration that is eaily translated into radicalism. The riots have already spread, and they will become more violent, escalating confrontations with the Egyptian Army. Mubarak, who, as always in these situations, says little or nothing publicly and remains above the fray, lets police and military forces serve as the faces of his governance. This has worked in the past, but, unlike previous public unrest that resulted from problems such as rises in consumer prices, this violence is born of dissatisfaction with the entire governmental system. Ultimately the army may quell the visible manifestations of the unrest, but it is too late for Mubarak or anyone close to him to divorce himself from the public's ire.

For the United States, any instability is bad news because it has unappetizing consequences both immediate and longer-term. Oil, already expensive, will rise in price. {At this writing, it is up more than 4%. in one day.} The appearance of a strong leader to take the reins from Mubarak, somebody other than his son, may make things quiet for awhile, but it will not stop the underlying dissatisfaction from providing to radicals the malleable raw material for revolutionary change. Indeed, there are many within the ranks of the army and the police who are supportive of fundamentalists and others who want to install their own styles of restrictive government. None of these will be sympathetic to American interests or those of its allies.

The Egyptian army may gain control of the streets, but it will not be able to seize the minds of the population. Amid all this turmoil is the multiplicative effect of social media and other technology. Trouble in other politically closed Arab states is almost guaranteed. The United States is not happy with unrest in Yemen and Tunisia, and it is distraught over the situation in Egypt. But America's worst nightmare is a meltdown in Saudi Arabia, the nexus of oil production, where a very small number of people pocket an astonishingly high percentage of the country's GDP.

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*Pakistan, a catastrophe waiting to happen, is in third place.

**The transliteration of the Arabic name of the country is "Masr." The name "Egypt" is the English corruption of the word "Copt," which refers to the language of the country, used in the Catholic Church there, before the advent of Islam.