Whatever the eventual outcomes of popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Islamic countries in the region, historians likely will mark January 2011 as the month the political tectonic plates suddenly shifted in the Islamic world. Will they note also that it was when Islamic fundamentalism began wresting power from pro-Western, secular, albeit autocratic, governments; or will they record it as the indigenous birth of freedom and democracy?

As we watch events unfold in Egypt and listen to pundits and Middle East experts explain them to us on television, we get the sense that no one really knows for sure what’s happening. We hear talk that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is behind the street protests. Whoever comes to power when President Hosni Mubarak leaves office, many believe, the MB will become the ultimate beneficiary. They most certainly will be a major player in the longer term struggle for power.

To the contrary, we hear that the protesters are motivated by socio-economic discontent—low wages, high unemployment, and the police-state tactics of the Mubarak government. Inspired by the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, they seek freedom of expression, opposition political parties, and democracy. Mohamed El Baradei, former Nobel laurite Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), seeks to play a leading role in Egypt's transition.

Whatever the situation, the region will never be the same. The question for the U.S. Government is what can it do to move Egypt toward the latter rather than the former outcome and insure peace, stability, and U.S. access and influence in the years ahead? This is a moment in history when what the U.S. does makes an enormous difference.

President Barack Obama is certainly in a difficult position. Whatever his administration has done since his June 2009 Cairo Speech, in which he addressed human rights and the aspirations of the Egyptian people, to encourage Egyptian government reforms behind the scene, the U.S. is seen by most Egyptians as having helped keep President Mubarak in power. It is noteworthy, however, that we are not seeing images of Egyptians burning American flags.

President Obama and his administration, as they obviously are attempting to do, must walk a tightrope. They are attempting not to precipitously pull the rug out from under Mubarak, as President Jimmy Carter did with the Shah of Iran. At the same time they want to avoid the perception that Washington is ignoring the concerns of the Egyptian people by sitting on its hands as it did during the June 2009 Iranian Green Revolution. But the administration's position is evolving. On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged President Mubarak to move toward an orderly transition. What more can the administration do?

The U.S. is not without levers of influence in Egypt. The U.S. and Egyptian armed forces have close ties; and the Egyptian Army, with its tanks and armored personnel carriers already on the streets in Egypt, will play a decisive role in how the current situation plays out.

When protesters took to the streets last week, the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Anan was in the Pentagon for regular high-level meetings. With $30 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) assistance to the EAF since the Camp David Accords of September 1978, thousands of Egyptian military officers have received professional military education in the U.S. and interact daily with their U.S. military counterparts. The EAF does not wish to see this relationship damaged, and neither does Washington. Egypt has been a major player in Middle East peace and stability and an important counterweight in the region to Iran.

At last Friday’s White House press conference, however, Robert Gibbs said that the Obama administration was “reviewing our assistance posture” toward Egypt. Under U.S. law, Washington must suspend military assistance to ministries of defense involved in a military coup d’etat. That would mean suspending the $1.3 billion annual FMF to the EAF. As a matter of policy, the administration does not have to wait for legal sanctions to kick in. President Obama can do that by executive order if he chooses as President George H.W. Bush did in June 1989 following the Tiananmen protests in China before Congress acted.

Until such time as the Egyptian military begins shooting and killing protesters, the isolated incident notwithstanding, or an Egyptian general takes control of the government, the last thing the U.S. should do is suspend military assistance to the EAF. Once suspended, as we have learned with other countries, it will take a very long time, if ever, to reinstate it. By suspending military assistance we only reduce the incentive for the EAF to stabilize the situation and support a peaceful and positive outcome in the weeks and months ahead.

Reports coming out of Egypt indicate that the EAF has had its concerns about Mubarak’s son Gamal Mubarak succeeding him; and garnering the EAF’s support may be the principal reason President Mubarak appointed intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as his vice president. Suleiman is well liked by the military. This, however, does not necessarily mean, even if Mubarak steps down and is replaced by Suleiman, that EAF won’t support steps toward free and open democratic elections next September if they can be conducted in an atmosphere conducive to the democratic process and not unduly subject to exploitation by the MB or other non-democratic forces. Certainly there are members of the EAF rank and file who are sympathetic to the MB and other such Islamic organizations, but it’s what the EAF leadership does that counts.