Unromantic Notes on Egypt
Those of you who listened to the podcast Judith and I recorded yesterday to the end know that I'm not a cynic about recent events in the Middle East--anything but. But the points Barry Rubin makes here are reality, not cynicism, and his concluding sentence is key: "If one side is sophisticated and realistic while the other engages in fantasies, who do you expect to win?"
If we have a side--and we do--and we want it to win--and we do--we have to be exceedingly realistic about what has actually happened. "Let's remember," he writes,
something that nobody wants to hear right now. The revolution in Egypt succeeded because the army didn't want President Husni Mubarak any more. When people say things like: The army wouldn't shoot down its own people. Why? It has done so before.
The army, he notes, had reasons of its own for deciding it wouldn't shoot; these probably were not confined to a sudden swelling of solidarity with the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people. It was shrewder and more rational to sacrifice Mubarak, and in many ways suited them quite nicely. In other countries where the military concludes it would be good for them to shoot the protesters instead of the symbols of the regime, they quite likely will.
"History," he concludes,
has not ended in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood will continue to maneuver patiently for power. The military will set limits and implement them. All the radical dictatorships and movements that hate America, the West, Israel, and real democracy are still working all-out (and far more cleverly than their Western opponents) around the clock.
He's right. A lot has changed. A lot has also stayed the same. Having contact with reality gives any player to these events a significant advantage.
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May '10
Re: Unromantic Notes on Egypt
Contact with reality like, say, assuming a military-controlled government in transition won't take kindly to unions protesting for higher pay. If Egypt's economy doesn't get moving soon, there will be a lot more pressure from all sides.
Just what the Muslim Brotherhood wants?