Bureaucratic Factors in Barack Obama’s Policy Towards Egypt’s Protests in January-February 2011

There is a dearth in the literature on the White days of the street protests in Cairo which overthrew former Egyptian President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. During the eighteen days, members of the Barack Hussein Obama House‘s decision making process during the eighteen Administrations disagreed over the extent to which they should support their strategic ally Mubarak on the one hand or the protesters‘ demands for democratization on the other hand. Foreign policy theories, such as the Bureaucratic Politics Model (BPM), may potentially be used to explain the reaction of different members of the Obama Administration. Testing the reaction of the Obama Administration during the eighteen days of the protests in Cairo against the main assumptions of the BPM, this paper argues that the BPM‘s explanation of Obama‘s policies was not strong enough. It was ultimately President Obama‘s personal beliefs and ideas which determined the American foreign policy towards Cairo during these protests.