ABSTRACT
This study examined the essential part played by regime preservation in Egyptian foreign policy under the leadership of President Hosni Mubarak. It started with a number of assumptions. First, insecurity is central in understanding the domestic and international behavior of Third World states. There is a multiplicity of threats and of sources of threats facing Third World states, but it is the internal dimension that is most accountable for feelings of insecurity. It is this component that can threaten the leader's hold on power. Second, the traditional “balance of power” theory should be substituted with Walt's “balance of threat” theory, according to which states ally with, or against, those states that pose the greatest threats, rather than against or with stronger states. Third, since Third World states are faced with a combination of internal and external threats, they most often tend to “omnibalance” between both sets. This “omnibalancing” takes shape by appeasing the outside threat while focusing the state's energies on the most urgent internal threat(s). Low-level threats, however, are balanced. In other words, the level of threat affects the type of response made by the state. Fourth, when power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader, as in most Third World countries, this leader becomes a crucial unit of analysis. For any comprehensive study of the foreign policy of any Third World state, the type of leadership and the leader's personal idiosyncrasies must be identified and analyzed. Still, interests of the ruling coalition must also be taken into consideration. Fifth, the choice of strategy depends on the availability of regional and international allies; the more allies a state has, the higher the probability of balancing; the fewer allies, the higher the probability of bandwagoning. This is a general tendency, but variations may occur due to leadership idiosyncrasies and variations in a regime's social base.
