(January 8, 2026)

Egypt’s quiet is easy to explain. Cairo receives roughly $1.3bn a year in US military financing. Its hardware, maintenance chain and spare parts depend on American gatekeepers. Public outrage is a cost it cannot afford.

The UAE sits in a different position, but it faces another version of the same risk. It is a financial hub built on access, compliance and credibility. In a world where Washington can turn political conflict into legal exposure, the safest posture is often silence.

Algeria was supposed to be the outlier: despite a diplomatic relationship dating back to its 1795 treaty with George Washington, it has long defined itself through deep ties with Moscow and a fierce anti-imperial vocabulary.

If any Arab state had the ideological space to speak about sovereignty as a principle, it was Algeria. It stayed quiet anyway. That is the lesson: the distance non-aligned regimes claim is thinner than it looks when your trade, energy and finance run through chokepoints Washington can pressure.