Standing at a lectern, speaking to anxious and expectant listeners throughout the Arab world, United States President Barack Obama uttered these words:"[I] have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed, confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people, [and]the freedom to live as you choose. ... Governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them."

Sadly, these words were not spoken in response to the recent protests in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere throughout the Middle East, but they were instead part of the president's June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo. After an initial period of painful waffling, the Obama Administration has done what it does best-emit a lot of noble-sounding hot air while settling for an agreement negotiated behind closed doors. Perhaps this is inevitable in politics, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

But the administration's policy, championing "stability" and "security" over democracy since large-scale protests began in Egypt, is based on a faulty presumption. Egypt is not about to become Iran or Gaza 2.0; people on the streets are demanding freedom and democracy, not Islamic theocracy (an unlikely prospect in a country with a large Christian minority and widespread secularist sentiment). Allowing Mubarak to dally increases the sense of political crisis and ennobles the radical elements of the opposition. It is probably true that a more democratic Egypt would be less friendly towards Israel, like a democratic Turkey and a quasi-democratic Lebanon. But the army and middle class are and will remain a force for moderation; these voices will be more legitimate without patronage from the Mubarak regime.

Our post-World War II geopolitical interests have convinced most of the world that for all our talk about freedom and democracy, when push comes to shove, we will always back the anti-Communist/anti-Islamist/pro-business faction within a country, no matter how unsavory its methods of enforcing these policies.

The current protest movements in the Middle East are providing us with an opportunity to make good on decades of empty promises, but only if we are willing to break with our outdated assumptions about this region and about the value of reluctant alliances with the likes of Mubarak. Our president is fond of speaking about "turning pages" on "new chapters" in history, but this is impossible as long as he keeps reading from the same old textbooks.

Instead, he should try reading the history of the end of European empires in the decades following World War II. Like Britain and France in the years after World War II, the United States can no longer afford to maintain an empire while at the same time trying to spur domestic economic recovery and development. Within 25 years of the end of World War II, the British and French empires had almost completely vanished as independence movements used these countries' rhetoric of democracy against them.

The U.S. is in a nearly identical position today. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, which seemingly marked the apex of American domination in the Middle East, now ironically looks as if it only diminished our ability to dictate the course of events in the region. American hegemony will continue to decrease as emerging economies, particularly China, become the preferred customers of oil-producing nations.

The Middle East really may be entering its own springtime of nations, akin to Europe's revolutions in 1848 and 1989 or the aforementioned anticolonial movements from the 1940s to the 1960s. There are both structural and commonplace political reasons for this-young populations facing high unemployment and crushing inflation on the one hand, fatigue with decades of sclerotic dictatorial rule on the other.

The Middle East is changing; American power in the region is declining. We should use what remains of our "soft power" to push for immediate reforms in these countries and thereby make good on decades of moralizing. The alternative is to reinforce the dictators and drop the pretense that we are anything but a self-interested imperial power. Either way, these regimes will soon collapse, and that is change we should all believe in.

Editor's note: The writer is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the History department.