[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]

The Obama administration’s deer-in-the headlights policy toward Egypt will probably change if and when Mubarak & Co. leave and thereby introduce the risk of a Czar–Kerensky–Lenin or Estates-General–Paris Commune–Committee of Public Safety scenario — i.e., the better organized and militantly non-democratic forces coming to the fore amid loosely organized protest against prior oppression....

I suppose the West currently feels like someone watching a train approaching an abyss without much insight into how to prevent the train from going over the cliff. Our daily-evolving strategy apparently hinges on proper triangulation, shifting from prodding Mubarak to reform to calling on protesters to form a democratic government as Mubarak appears to weaken, all while allowing some leeway should he make a remarkable recovery....