Morsi

From Via Media: ‘Bambi Meets Godzilla In The Middle-East’

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‘The end of history, which AI founder Francis Fukuyama used to describe the historical implications of the Cold War, is to American political philosophy what the Second Coming is to Christians. In the end, almost all Americans devoutly believe, the liberal, market principles on which our country is built will triumph around the world’

and:

‘Meanwhile the President’s most ardent critics, both on the right and the left, believe that his biggest problem is that he isn’t exhibiting sufficient faith in the national credo. Since we know that liberal democracy is triumphing everywhere, if it isn’t working in Egypt it must be the President’s fault. There must have been some policy path, there must still be some policy path, by which the President can bring Egypt into the Promised Land.’

Worth reading.

It’s not a bad summation of the national credo.

I suspect Obama’s civil-rights alliance, the arc-of-history-bends-towards-justice thinking has placed him in an arguably more Left-of-Center, human rights advocacy position than even Jimmy Carter had placed himself.

It might be worth revisiting his Cairo Speech, as it’s clear Obama has a kind of global, universalist vision for the world and America’s role in it.  Call him secularly universal, anti-imperial, non-nationalist, but it’s clearly a vision of process and democracy promotion.  ‘Violent extremists’ is a curiously vague idea.

I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Obama, like Carter before him, is not only on the human-rights circuit at some point in the future, but may still be pushing his Organizing For Action in some capacity here at home:  A permanent civil-rights protest political machine with a particularly racial focus, perhaps aiming to unite the Left-Of-Center 60’s idealist coalitions under some vision of liberal managerialism.

Here’s a quote from Anne-Marie Slaughter, on liberal internationalism:

‘The central liberal internationalist premise is the value of a rules-based international order that restrains powerful states and thereby reassures their enemies and allies alike and allows weaker states to have sufficient voice in the system that they will not choose to exit’

Of course, a similarly human-rights focused policy didn’t turn out so well for U.S. in Iran, and here we are a few decades leader trying to strategize and stay ahead of the tide of Islamism and many other forces in the region.

As to foreign-policy, maybe we could return to some kind of realism, but that will take serious work, as the Republican party is quite split at the moment between pro-military nationalists, neo-cons, realists, the religious, pro-Israel right, all the way to the anti-Statist libertarian isolationists, with anti-war types among them.

Meanwhile, many decisions being made inside Egypt will likely affect our policy towards the region for generations to come.

What should we be doing, and why?  What can we do?  What’s already being done?

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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?’

Michael Totten Interviews Eric Trager: ‘The Truth About Egypt’

Michael Totten Interviews Eric Trager: ‘The Truth About Egypt’

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‘The United States has done a very poor job managing perceptions in Egypt. The administration assumed if it wasn’t critical about Morsi’s behavior domestically, they’d win his cooperation on foreign policy. The problem is that Morsi was only willing to cooperate with us on foreign policy in the short run. The Muslim Brotherhood wants to consolidate power in Egypt and then create a global Islamic state. It’s a key part of their ideology and their rhetoric. They talk about it with me. They can’t be our partners.

Worse, by not speaking up and criticizing Morsi as he tried to create unchecked power for himself, it created the impression that the United States wanted to replace Mubarak with the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s extremely damaging in a place like Egypt with such tumultuous politics’

We didn’t support the Brotherhood. We failed to speak up and manage perceptions. In the future, the only way to address this problem will be to make sure we don’t put all our eggs in one basket. We have to spread our risk by making sure we engage everybody.’

What kind of chance does the idea of democracy and democratic process have in Egypt given the endemic poverty, the oppression, and the lack of readiness in most of the people for it?

Placed against the backdrop of a longer-term Islamist resurgence in the Middle-East, pushing against Arab nationalism, and the answer is not too much.

Such a vision of ideal and pure one voice, one vote democracy in the most stable of countries can become a vehicle for majoritarian rule, leading to a quid pro quo politics of corruption, patronage, and vote-buying.

In Egypt, the democratic process was merely a stalking horse for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and now the military has cracked back down hard on the Brotherhood, and it’s getting bloodier.

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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?’

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Egypt Falls Back On The Military’

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Full post here.

Comments are worth a read.  The Army and President bluffing?

Stranger things have happened, but we are looking at country with grinding, nearly 3rd world poverty, in an economic spiral downwards.

Totten’s interview with a Muslim Brotherhood representative shows their rather nutty worldview and impracticality in the wake of Mubarak (not really people we can do business with), and any hope of stability is now being placed back upon the foreign-aid supported military.

The State Department and the Obama administration are still trying to convince the American people democracy has been brought to the Middle-East and be seen as having done so.  True, these were ‘democractic’ elections, but the conditions for any kind of democracy or liberalism the West would recognize were never ripe for the serious business of a power vacuum and the failure of Egypt’s institutions and conditions on the ground.

Spengler At PJ Media: Egypt Falls Back On The Military:

‘There is only {one} reason the military might do a better job than the Muslim Brotherhood or the liberal opposition, and that is because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states (besides tiny Qatar) might decide to provide funding for a military regime that suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudi regime rightly fears as a competitor to its medieval form of monarchy’

Adam Garfinkle’s Adbel Fattah al-Sisi-Memorize That Name:

‘This drama has never been about the fate of democracy or liberal attitudes and institutions. That was our passion play, not Egypt’s. This drama has always been about the fractionation and dissipation of traditional sources of social authority in a country that has tried and failed now at least three times since Napoleon’s 1799 invasion to come to terms with the press of modernity – ‘

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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 Via Media: ‘A Light Fails In Egypt’

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A piece well-worth reading.  We have a big stake in a stable Egypt, given the instability of the region, and Egypt’s ‘liberal’ class of educated folks is thinner on the ground, and not capable of supporting the broader kind of representative government we’d like to see.  There’s not enough wealth, education, opportunity and economic and institutional strength in Egypt to support it.

That was the dream. Morsi’s biggest problem never was, and still is not today, the twittering liberals of early Tahrir; western oriented secular liberalism has a long way to go before it can become a significant ideological force among the masses in Egypt. His greatest ideological opponents are cynicism and despair and he is in such deep trouble today because the collapsing economy and the general paralysis make him look like another snake oil salesmen selling a fake route to progress. What if Islamism like Nasser’s nationalism is a failure in Egypt? What then? What next?

The Islamist party hasn’t been capable of addressing these deep-rooted problems, nor leading very competently at all.

Millions of people are out in the streets.

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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?’

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Morsi In His Own Words’

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Discouraging, but unsurprising, quotes from two years ago at the link:

‘He’s a Muslim Brotherhood man, and this aggressively bigoted and warmongering attitude is de rigueur for that crowd.’

Morsi was probably deploying some political rhetoric as he is a politician, but there’s a lot to be worried about.

Our current administration understandably sat on the fence regarding whether or not to continue supporting Mubarrak and his regime.  There was a larger movement afoot in the Middle East and it was roiling Egypt as well.   Stability is always an attractive option for us, especially regarding Israel, and the Suez Canal.  It’s arguably worth many of billions of dollars.

But change did come, Mubarrak fell, and the deep poverty, the oppressed Brotherhood members and other Islamists, the smaller groups of liberals and the more Western-influenced and well-educated, the many reformers denied access to politics; all of them suddenly faced a vacuum.  The immediate prospect was the SCAF filling that vacuum and carrying on as before, installing another leader in Mubarrak’s wake.

There has since been a power struggle for control of the deep state and typically, the longer a power vacuum exists, the worse people there are to fill it.  Egyptians came and went from Tahrir Square, tensions rose and fell.  We took a hands-off approach, and tried to encourage an orderly process with free and fair elections, all based upon an ideal of democracy that is presumed to be universal.

Nevertheless, we are running into the realities of the Middle-East.

As I see it, the Muslim Brotherhood is better viewed as a member of a broader Islamic resurgence throughout the Levant.  They are the most stable front of this resurgence, but there is a revolutionary and ideological quality to their thinking akin to the patchwork of similar interests and neighbors who are generally anti-Western, anti-Israel, and pro-Islam.  Following the money, the guns, and the political power isn’t a bad rule of thumb to figure out what the future may hold.

As for Morsi, his political coalition is made up of Salafists and other Islamists in Egypt, and they’re taking over the old, corrupt and oppressive bureaucracy and controlling the public square with a rather narrow Constitution.

Islam has prescriptions not just for the religious and personal spheres, but for politics and the public square as well. Many Westerners can call Al-Qaeda the violent edge of a radical, impossibly purist, interpretation of Islam, trying to lay the blanket of Western humanism, idealism and multiculturalism over the Muslim world in order to blunt this sharp edge, but it will only cover so much.   Many Westerners can blame the West first for its colonial adventures, oil and money interests, trade and education interests, but that’s not tenable for the long-haul either.  Obama is continuing most of our government’s bureaucratic aims set up in the wake of 9/11: using our military, security agencies, special-ops, and drone-strikes in order to hunt out those who would do us harm.

The broader humanist approach sold as neoconservatism lite or a move away from “empire-building” should be held to some account, no matter the practicality of its realpolitik.

Where do we go from here?

My two cents.

Related On This Site:  From Al Jazeera: ‘Egypt Cracks Down On Satirists And Media’

Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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 Al Jazeera: ‘Egypt Cracks Down On Satirists And Media’

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There’s been a long battle for control of the deep state in the wake of an oppressive regime, between the SCAF after Mubarrak’s ouster, and Morsi’s new Islamist coalition:

‘Rivals accuse Morsi, who won Egypt’s first freely contested leadership election in June, of polarising society by foisting a divisive, Islamist-leaning constitution on the country.

In the case against the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm, the presidency accused the paper of “spreading false news representing a danger to civil peace, public security and affecting the presidency”, the paper said.’

It’s reasonable to envision the inertia of the old, corrupt, oppressive Egyptian bureaucracy slowly being taken over by the new Islamist coalition and being as, or more, illiberal.  It might be possible to leverage Morsi to make as broad a tent as possible, but the Egyptian Constitution will make that difficult.

Life’s going to get tougher for most of the Egyptians who pushed for social change, but didn’t necessarily have the full force of the minds of the people nor enough economic opportunity and education to control the forces unleashed.  A free people wasn’t necessarily ready to cleave to a broad constitution and sacrifice to make the institutions necessary to support freedom as we understand it.

Western ideas only go so far, and I suspect a major reason behind the Islamist resurgence in the Middle-East is that many Muslims feel overrun by Western ideas and interests, have low opinions of the West, and remain tribal and kinship based, with Islam as the glue.

Oftentimes, Muslims don’t really understand what we mean by individual liberty unless they’ve lived in the West.  Even then, some Muslims have reacted violently against it.  Many Muslims understandably resent our involvement in their backyard, and many clearly resent their own oppressive leadership (tribal, authoritarian, military dictatorship) exacerbated by an exploding youth demographic (a lot of what the ‘Arab Spring’ was about).

Many people in the West assume their ideas of freedom are universal.  It’s important to keep in mind that Islam hasn’t undergone a reformation (they’ve also never had a central authority like Rome) nor the challenge to Christian doctrine and earthy power that occurred during the Enlightenment.

Islam doesn’t leave it up to you to not drink, watch porn, go to stripclubs, ‘freely mix’ with women, lend money etc.  It prohibits these activities through strict control of the laws, politics and the public square.   Right now, rather extreme groups like the Salafists are seeking such very restrictions in Egypt, for everyone, as part of the ruling coalition.

We should make our foreign policy accordingly to deal with these strategic realities, and I believe we can still aim for broader understanding, for avoiding unnecessary war, for being smart about pursuing our interests and smarter about our partners.

My two cents.

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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 Foreign Affairs-’Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose on Charlie Rose’

 John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism (Israel can’t go on like this forever, the Israel lobby leads to bad U.S policy decisions): Repost: From Foreign Affairs Via The A & L Daily: ‘Conflict Or Cooperation: Three Visions Revisited’…From The American Interest Online: Francis Fukuyama On Samuel Huntington….is neoconservative foreign policy defunct…sleeping…how does a neoconservatism more comfortable with liberalism here at home translate into foreign policy?: Wilfred McClay At First Things: ‘The Enduring Irving Kristol’

From Foreign Policy: ‘Egypt: The President’s Six Hands’

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Full piece here.

What’s going on in Egypt?

‘The political disagreement, between the protesters and the government, has been compounded by another: between the opposition protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood foot soldiers. For the latter, though, the conflict isn’t political — it’s religious and moral.’

There is extreme poverty in Egypt, as well as an entrenched, corrupt bureaucracy and the oppression it laid for generations upon citizens and opposition groups. The Brotherhood’s ties throughout the region and their sudden responsibilities and many of their positions are aligning with the larger Islamist movement in the Arab world.  It’s not exactly spring.

Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…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?’

Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’

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Full piece here.

No great surprise.  Look for U.S. and Israeli relations with Egypt to deteriorate as Morsi consolidates power further.

‘In a more visually symbolic move, two days ago, Morsi’s government ordered that all of the revolutionary graffiti on the walls surrounding Tahrir Square should be wiped clean. For many families of those who have died during and since the 2011 uprising, the faces posted on the walls were the only recognition they received after the loss of their loved ones. For many other Egyptians, this graffiti was the only remaining evidence that a revolution had even taken place.’

The State Department is getting a little testy having to defend the party line on the Libyan embassy attacks.

Obama cancels bilateral Morsi meeting.

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 Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Egypt’s President Imitates Ayatollah Khomeini’

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This might be worth noting, as it was very likely that U.S.-Egyptian relations were going to get worse, but current events could be expediting that process:

‘David Frum at the Daily Beast thinks Morsi is “fabricating an international incident to mobilize religious passions as a weapon for his political grouping against more secular blocs in Egyptian society.” It’s hard to say for sure, but that’s probably right.

Morsi might stop framing the United States when he needs to mobilize his authoritarian shock troops if President Obama threatens to cut off his funding (which, at this point, we might want to consider doing regardless). Otherwise, Morsi will have no incentive whatsoever to stop. It would then be just a matter of time before more people get killed and Egyptian-American relations deteriorate anyway.’

Addition:  Totten has more here:  ‘Enough Appeasement Already.‘  I can envision what the Obama administration might be trying to do, after the policies it has laid down:  Appeal to a broader muslim group against extremists and Islamists, try to find a sweet spot of public sentiment in the Muslim world for a better path, and to make the Islamists look like the violent, dangerous, thugs they are and push them to irrelevance.  But you don’t appease.  You protect your own.  You let every field agent know that you’re working as hard, or even harder, for their safety and our interests.  You carry a big stick and you don’t meet incensed, fact derived crowds and planned attacks with weakness.

My two cents.

Another Addition:  NY Times piece on a conversation between Obama and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.  It’s ‘optimistic.’ There is a lot of pent-up anger, a lot of mobs, and a lot of it being directed all too easily at the American embassy in Egypt out of righteous indignation  according to the piece.  Will the Brotherhood use it as fuel and build what is fundamentally an anti-Mubarak, anti-military, anti-Jewish, anti-Western Muslim bloc…rounding up the furies unleashed into political expedience and necessary ties with other, often more extreme, groups in and outside of Egypt as well as the rest of the Islamist revival?  My guess is yes, it will.  That’s a matter of time.

In the meantime, I should hope there aren’t any more murders of our citizens, nor our diplomats.

Another Addition:  The Independent has more on who may have known what, when.  The Atlantic links to a world map displaying every current protest across the Muslim world, including London.

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 The Daily Mail: “Muslim Brotherhood Has ‘Started Crucifying Opponents Of New President’, Claims Website”

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Full piece here.

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.

—————-

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.

—————–

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?’