The Daily Mail is picking up on reports out of Egypt. Hopefully, it’s not that bad.
The Mubarak regime and then the SCAF after Mubarak’s fall were the only entities acting like a lid upon most Egyptians beneath the regime: a majority who live in grinding poverty, who were accustomed to deep bureaucratic corruption and oppression while forced to rely on that bureaucracy and regime for order, and who have little to no institutions otherwise. The habits and institutions of rule by the people, which we in the West are generally familiar, are not there for many reasons.
The business and educated class had many foreign ties, and it’s safe to say that they were and are a smaller minority in Egypt. Many, too, had to get in good enough with Mubarak or the regime if they were high-profile enough to survive. After Morsi won the election, it was a struggle between the remnants of the old regime and the SCAF, and Morsi’s Brotherhood-led coalition.
Now, it’s looking pretty grim if the reports are true.
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From Nancy Okail’s guest post at Adam Garfinkle’s blog:
‘However, the more serious problem is that over the past 18 months the decrees issued by the SCAF, and later by Morsi, have not been founded on legal or constitutional grounds; rather, they indicate that the transitional path has been merely the continuation of haphazard, interest-based populist decisions. With the continued absence of rule of law and the gravity of the problems that Egyptians face, it is far from certain that things will remain calm. There are no guarantees that the civil divorce will remain civil’
Indeed.
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Addition: From Foreign Affairs:
‘It thus stands to reason that Morsi’s sacking of Egypt’s top national security and defense officials might in part represent a shift in Egyptian foreign policy away from the United States. Toward what country, however, remains unclear. There is no other power that could be Egypt’s patron, yet Cairo might not need one.’
This could make U.S. Foreign Policy much more difficult, and hopefully not as antagonistic as Iran after the Revolution.
Related On This Site: From Al Jazeera English: ‘Morsi Wins Egypt’s Presidential Election’…Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest on Egypt: ‘Still More of the Same—and Something New’…are we still on a liberalizing, Westernizing trajectory?, however slow the pace? Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’
From Abu Muqawama: ‘Mubarak And Me’…From Michael Totten: ‘The New Egyptian Underground’…Michael Totten At The American Interest: “A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood”
Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest Online: ‘Political Order in Egypt’
Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest: ‘Mubaraks, Mamelukes, Modernizers and Muslims’……James Kirchik At The American Interest: ‘Egyptian Liberals Against the Revolution’
