Last week, I went down to Washington, D.C. to work with Egyptian pro-democracy dissidents on a series of briefings regarding Cairo’s ongoing crackdown against its liberal opponents. (My presentation before Hill appropriations staffers focused on the Mubarak regime’s infiltration of opposition parties and cooptation of liberal movements.) One evening, while discussing recent developments over coffee, the conversation suddenly shifted toward an entirely different part of the globe.

“What’s with Obama’s policy on China?” the director of a Cairo-based NGO asked.

I was a bit confused. I thought we were talking about Egypt.

“Yeah,” another democracy activist chimed in. “Hillary Clinton went to China and said that global warming is more important than human rights. How could she say something like that?” The rest of the dissidents agreed that they were deeply disappointed by Clinton’s remarks in Beijing, fearing that it signaled the Obama administration’s broader refusal to advance the cause of freedom — whether in China or in the Middle East.

Indeed, in an increasingly globalized world, a diplomatic victory for China’s leaders becomes a loss for Egyptian liberals. For this reason, the Obama administration needs to tread very carefully — too much enthusiasm for dictators anywhere easily translates into despair for pro-democratic forces everywhere.

Unfortunately, the administration is doing quite the opposite — it is chasing dictators like a desperate schoolgirl. The details of its courtships (and growing black book) read like tabloid fodder: the envoy dispatched to reassure Cairo and Damascus the very week that Obama was elected; the bow before Saudi King Abdullah; the smile with Hugo Chavez; the forthcoming visit of Hosni Mubarak; and, in the next few months, engagement with Iran — among the most repressive regimes on the planet (h/t Abe).

In turn, Egyptian dissidents — and presumably dissidents elsewhere — are quickly losing faith in our Agent of Change. Most amazingly, many of them quietly long for the Bush administration and its short-lived “freedom agenda,” which — at the very least — gave them sufficient hope to continue their struggle.