WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Egypt is at a crossroads. For eighteen days in 2011, a popular peaceful uprising spread across the country and ultimately forced President Hosni Mubarak to cede power to the military.

During the atrocities that enveloped the Balkans twenty years ago, the United States led in creating a war crimes tribunal to render justice. The Clinton administration asserted its leadership again in building tribunals to investigate atrocity crimes in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia.

Fawaz Gerges believes that Arabs are on the brink of a democratic wave similar to the ones that swept through Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The shifting balance of power in the Middle East and North Africa--recently demonstrated by a popular revolution in Tunisia, the pending division of Sudan, and popular uprising in Egypt--has left Arab leaders shaken and keen to improve relations with their publics.