CAIRO >> In a televised speech, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a general turned president, warned Egyptians that they lived in a broken country surrounded by enemies who would never leave them alone.

“Take a good look at your country,” he said during the speech in May. “This is the semblance of a state, and not a real state.”

Egypt needed law and order and strong institutions if it was to reverse its downward spiral and become “a state that respects itself and is respected by the world,” he said.

While rare in its bluntness, el-Sissi’s assessment is widely shared by Egyptians.

After five years of political and economic turmoil, a sense of gloom hangs over the country. Traditionally a leader of the Arab world, politically and culturally, and home to a quarter of its population, Egypt has become inward-looking and politically marginalized in a way not seen for generations.

“In the past, Nasser was deciding war or peace. Sadat was deciding peace or war,” said Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, referring to two influential former presidents: Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Pan-Arab icon, and Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel. “The Arabs were running after us when we decided to do something.”

But no more, said Fahmy, who was foreign minister after the 2013 military ouster of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Egypt is overwhelmed by our domestic situation.”

With searing regional crises in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and the battle against the Islamic State, Egypt is seen as having little productive role to play. Saudi Arabia and Iran, fierce regional and sectarian rivals, have rushed to fill the void, launching into a potentially dangerous competition for regional dominance.

For Egypt, it is a sharp reversal, with no immediate prospects of reclaiming the country’s former status.

Since it made peace with Israel in 1979, Egypt has served as the fulcrum of American influence in the Arab world. The Egyptian and American militaries have cooperated closely for decades, and Egypt went to war against Saddam Hussein alongside U.S. forces in 1991. Cairo long served as an important mediator between Israel and the Palestinians (and among Palestinian factions), though it began to abdicate that role by backing Israel against Hamas in 2014.

But Egypt’s withdrawal from regional matters has diminished its value to the United States, which has provided it with over $76 billion in foreign aid since 1948.

“Egypt is primarily seen in Washington as a problem and not as a source of solutions,” said Issandr El Amrani, the North Africa project director for the International Crisis Group. “If it wasn’t for the military relationship and the Pentagon’s preference for having things like fast access through the Suez Canal, it’s clear there are elements of the Obama administration that don’t care much for Sissi and his regime and its domestic pattern of repression and human rights abuses.”

Egypt’s influence was long a product of both its military and cultural might. It was a beacon of Arab unity after the tide of European colonialism ebbed in the 20th century, helping build up its neighbors and founding the Arab League, a pioneering effort at regional cooperation that today is seldom effective. Its writers, artists and filmmakers became iconic in the region. Its judges and clerics decided important matters of Islamic law.

Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister and Arab League chief who ran for president in 2012, said he doubted there would be “any more foreign adventures,” given the “major problems we are facing.”

That has to change, he added. “The role of Egypt is a must,” he said. “It is a necessity in order to build a balance with Iran and with Turkey.” But the only way to do that, he said, “is the reform of Egypt itself and rebuilding its soft power.”

Before it can rebuild, though, Egypt will have to address a long list of problems. It is at war with a local affiliate of the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula. The economy veers from one crisis to the next, hobbled by the collapse of tourism.

The number of arriving tourists has dropped by 59.9 percent from last June, according to government figures. More than half the hotels in Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort once favored by package tour operators and peacemakers alike, have closed, according to the tourism federation.

Egypt has stayed afloat in part thanks to financial support from Persian Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia, which has given Cairo over $25 billion, though that lifeline is now threatened by plunging oil prices. Its alliance with the United States has been strained by disagreements over human rights abuses under el-Sissi and the removal of Morsi.

Fahmy, the former ambassador, said he considered quieting Western concerns over Morsi’s removal, portraying it as “defending the revolution,” to be one of the country’s foreign policy successes. Egypt’s relationship with Israel is also strong. But it has done little to respond to the growing list of regional crises.

“At the top leadership level, Egypt just doesn’t have the bandwidth or the luxury of focusing on regional affairs,” Amrani said. Top officials are focused more on immediate threats, like lawlessness next door in Libya and the construction of a Nile dam in Ethiopia.

In retrospect, Amrani added, Egypt may have played an outsize role in past years, as its close ties with the United States “boosted its role beyond its actual weight.”

While Washington has generally low expectations of Egypt in regional crises, it does think Cairo can be influential in neighboring Libya, where the el-Sissi administration wants a stable, non-Islamist state to emerge from the chaotic and fragmented political landscape. And it values Egypt’s ability to let U.S. ships and planes pass quickly through the Suez Canal or Egyptian airspace.

Moussa said he believed Egypt’s future might lie in an ever-closer relationship with Saudi Arabia, which, despite growing budgetary pressures, has become the country’s financial benefactor after deciding that “Egypt will have to be saved,” he said.

With a leadership vacuum in a chaotic region, Moussa said, Egypt and Saudi Arabia may be able to keep a non-Arab country like Iran, Turkey or Israel from calling the shots.

“I don’t believe that after the — I don’t want to say the withdrawal of Egypt — but the role of Egypt was not inherited,” he said. “There is no one single country that has emerged to say, ‘I can lead this region.’”