Egypt is burning in a well orchestrated popular uprising.
The popular revolution is unfolding as planned…
The hecatombs of civilian human rights victims have watered the tree of Freedom…
And the die seems to have been cast. Much talk and ink have been spilled by the high and mighty foreign policy ”priests” and the divinators of the high secrets of state – locally and abroad – having now chosen the prefered outcome of the popular rebellion.
We don’t know yet for certain the results of their conclave but we can guess.
Time will tell…
And here is the foreign intelligence brief. Americans should ponder this: It’s quite possible that if Mubarak had not been helped to rule Egypt as a dictator with an iron fist for the last 30 years, the World Trade Center would still be standing. If the Egyptian Islamists had been ground down fighting elections, and in the pursuit and cares of domestic politics, governance and policies, they would not be attacking the great western Satan…
It’s good to keep these things in mind now because there are five possible outcomes for Egypt when the dust settles down.
First, the statist regime might survive in a broken down form. Mubarak will have to go but another senior military official with the help of El Baradei and the majority parties and the left along with the Islamists might stabilize the situation, or more likely offer elections in a coalition scheme. Another possibility under this scenario of the regime’s survival is that there may be a coup by the lower echelons of the military with the promise of fair elections. Under this convenient scenario, most likely El Baradei will junk the military and forge a road to Democracy as soon as possible or when it’s safe to do so.
A second possibility is that the demonstrators might force immediate elections in which El Baradei along with the Islamists and the other parties could become the leader of these elections. If El Baradei then got elected and Egypt overthrew the statist model built by Nasser and proceed on the path of democracy, the prospects are really good for economic growth, Democracy and stability. Along the way he will have to rein in the Islamists and other parties through ongoing power struggles and eventually he will offer the leadership to a yet to be discovered national leader.
The third possibility is that the demonstrators force immediate elections, which El Baradei with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood of Islamists could win handily and move forward with a democratic yet Sunni orientated national agenda.
The fourth possibility is that Egypt will sink into a temporary political chaos. The most likely path out of this would be democratic elections that result in political grinding and gridlock in which a viable candidate cannot be elected but the people learn to live with the uncertainty of elections. Soon enough a viable candidate with electoral majorities will emerge and lead the nation out of the quagmire.
And the fifth and potentially last possible outcome is the ascendancy of the chaotic Theocratic regimental self organized leadership of the Islamic Brotherhood expressing the will of the People…
Many more iterations of the expression of People’s governance can be synthesized but this is a primer and not a Foreign Policy brief… So be aware of the thoughtful nature of the Egyptian people self organizing themselves.
But whatever happens in the next few days matters a great deal to Egyptians and a little bit to their neighbours and allies.
Because only some of the potential outcomes are significant to the world. Among radical Islamists, the prospect of a radicalized Sunni Egypt represents a liberation. For Iran, which is Shiite, such an outcome would be less pleasing since Iran is now the emerging center of radical leadership of Islam and it would not welcome competition from Egypt. Though it may be content with an Islamist Sunni Egypt that act is an Iranian worry. Because to make an ally between Sunni and Shiite is not something that would be easy by a long stretch.
For the United States, on the face of it, an Islamist leaning Egypt would be a strategic catastrophe.
But in reality it will prove to be a boon for it’s foreign policy.
Divide and Conquer is as old as the first global empire — the Hellenistic one of Alexander. And successful foreign and ”domestic” policy dictum works well to this day for all sizes and sorts of empires and empirical leaders in realpolitik. ”Divide et impera” was the fundamental basis of the vaunted Pax Romana. This was the real strength of the Byzantine empire,as it was the onus of the Islamic union of Salaheddin and the subsequent intricate inner workings of Pax Ottomanica.
That is the school where the well educated historically British Foreign Service based their empire’s working Modus Operandi. It helped build and maintain the vast British Empire where the sun never sets, across the seven seas and their successor American bipolar-monopolar world hegemony.
Now it appears to be the prefered working method for Egypt which incidentally happens to be the center of gravity in the Middle East and within the volatile Arab and Israeli world.
If there ever was to be a solution in the Palestinian crisis it would be generated out of a Democratic Egypt and an acquiescent Arab world. This Egyptian democratization would not only change the dynamic of the Arab world, it would reverse the ”failed” U.S. strategy since the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Failed because it has not delivered a credible Peace agreement.
And although after Nasser simplistic nationalistic failures, it was Sadat’s smart decision to reverse his alliance with the Soviets and form an alliance with the United States – this did not undermine significantly the Soviet ideological position in the Mediterranean and in the Arab world – but it strengthened the United States immeasurably. And more recently, the support of Egyptian intelligence with it’s secret jails, black torture programs and illegal extrajudicial arrests, kidnappings and tortuous imprisonment after 9/11 appeared as critical in blocking and undermining al Qaeda based on what Cheney’s Bush administration wanted us to believe. But in reality this nasty operative alliance, undermined massively the Democratic credibility of the United States as a beacon of Democracy, a staunch ally of the law and a constitutional republic. So in essence the US friendly and ready to torture Egyptian secret service and police republic that Mubarak fashioned, really hurt the US interests and public influence long term. Let alone the shellacking the American image received globally as sponsors of torture and assassinations. Were Egypt now to stop immediately that cooperation with the American spooks or become hostile, the old US anti-islamic strategy would be severely undermined and that would be a good thing for the US that already denounced secret prisons of torture and extrajudicial killings.
Still the great loser of such an Egyptian turn around, would be Israel. On the face of it… alone. Because Israel’s national security has rested on its treaty with Egypt, signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin with much criticism by the Israeli right and by the Egyptian military class and the fundamentalists. That policy will immediately be reversed unless El Baradei comes to power. Because the demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula not only protected Israel’s southern flank, but it meant that the survival of Israel was no longer at stake. Israel fought three hugely expensive in blood and treasure, existential wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973, where its very survival was challenged.
And the main threat was always from Egypt, because the Arabs and Palestinians always asked the Egyptians to die first against Israel — the ancient enemy from the biblical Exodus days. And without Egypt in the mix, no coalition of Arab regional powers could threaten Israel. That is excluding the now-distant possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons and Syrian nuclear ambitions. In all of the wars Israel fought after its treaty with Egypt such as the 1982 and 2006 wars in Lebanon – it was Israeli interests – but not it’s survival, that were at stake.
If Egypt were to abrogate the Camp David Accords and over time reconstruct its military into an effective force, the existential threat to Israel that existed before the treaty was signed would reemerge. This would not happen quickly, but Israel would have to deal with two realities. The first is that the Israeli military is not nearly large enough or strong enough to occupy and control Egypt. The second is that the development of Egypt’s military would impose substantial costs on Israel and limit its room for maneuvering and negotiations with it’s unwieldy neighbours.
But on the long term Israel really engaging in peaceful dialogue and solving it’s border problems long term would be towards it’s best interests. So the unfolding Egyptian rebellion might serve Israel’s strategic interests as well… having to negotiate with a Democratic republic and solving the Palestinian issues once and for all with credible neighbours in a win-win for all.
And it is precisely this scenario that will give US Pax Americana it’s best chance to solve this long standing Middle Eastern muddle of a foreign policy now that Israel might come to it’s senses again and realize it needs to negotiate in earnest for a mutually beneficial end to the conflict.
There is thus a scenario that would potentially strengthen the radical Islamists while putting the United States at a greater advantage and then placing Israel, the Arabs and potentially even Iran at a disadvantage, all for different reasons. That scenario emerges only if two things happen. First, the Muslim Brotherhood has to become the dominant political force in Egypt and second they turn out to be more responsible through the responsibilities of power and governance, and can help them evolve into something more solid for the welfare of the people and the country overall.
If the advocates for democracy win, and if they elect someone like El Baradei, it is likely that this scenario would take place in a couple of election rounds from now. The pro-Western democratic faction is primarily concerned with domestic issues, and are themselves secular and would not want to return to the wartime state prior to Camp David accords, because that would simply strengthen the military. If they win power, the geopolitical foreign policy arrangements would remain largely unchanged.
Similarly, the geopolitical arrangements would remain in place if the military regime retained power. If it was decided that the regime’s unpopularity could be mitigated by assuming a more anti-Western and anti-Israeli policy, the situation could evolve as a Muslim Brotherhood government would. Indeed, as hard as it is to imagine, there could be an alliance of the military with the Muslim Brotherhood designed to stabilize the regime and the governing elite of Egypt with a semi-religious mix. Stranger things have happened. Look at Lebanon or Syria or even for that matter Jordan and Saudi Arabia… Middle East is the land of miracles and stranger than Life.
When we look at the political dynamic of Egypt, and try to imagine its connection to the international system, we can see that there are several scenarios under which certain political outcomes would have profound effects on the way the world body politic works. That should not be surprising. When Egypt was a pro-Soviet Nasser style ultra nationalist state, the world was a very different place than it had been before Nasser. When Sadat changed his foreign policy the world changed with it.
The only solid advise for the meddling external powers is this: Support democracy.
Let Democracy bloom, and the peaceful transition to human rights and economic growth will follow.
The ensuing growth is guaranteeing that open markets will spread the wealth around society’s have nots.
This in turn will bring upwards mobility, a healthy middle class and then social stability will take care of itself.
Don’t meddle, and nobody will meddle with you.
International institutions will keep the peace.
No, balance-of-power politics will do it.
No interventionist shit is needed here and now.
Because history has a habit of making fools of you lot. And of all of us too.
If You make deals with dictators, you reap the whirlwinds of terror. If instead YOU promote democracy, you can watch people gain power and train for Democracy across the Arab world and the Middle East. That will bring stability. If you intervene in Egypt like in Afghanistan, You’ll end up trapped there, and stay with no end in sight…
As we watch Egypt’s people struggle for their country’s future, it’s obvious that their choices aren’t made in Washington even though America stands to benefit from these changes the most.
And if Egypt’s foreign policy changes – now – the world changes again. For the better.
Egypt is one of those countries that on the face of it – seems that – it’s own internal politics matter a lot more to the meddling outsiders than to its own citizens.
And of course that’s a desert mirage. An outdated idea left over from the colonial big game days of yore and – for that matter – it’s best they be left alone to sort it out now.
Mubarak’s time is up.
The old Paraoh is ”dead”
Let the people choose the next one. with a limited duration and a measured hold on power.
Never again let someone else ravage the country for three decades.
That’s not like the old wise Egyptian custom that through tradition deified mummies…
Let the mummification process for the museum and the pyramids but not for the leadership of the Republic.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
It’s time for a New Pharaoh.
So has the priestly class of the keepers of the secrets — decreed…
and the people agreed.
