Niall Ferguson was recently on MSNBC's Morning Joe talking about Egypt and had a very pessimistic view on Egypt. He also made the same argument that conservatives are making right now about how democracy in Egypt is somehow "bad" for us. Video below the fold along with my lengthy response.
Ferguson is absolutely wrong about what is happening in Egypt. While I question his quality as a historian, I’ll leave that out and go after his substantive points.
First, he criticizes the Obama administration’s handling of the situation. The Obama administration did everything right. What happened in Egypt was a difficult game to play foreign policy-wise because on one hand the US did support Mubarak and couldn’t immediately abandon him in case he didn’t leave because it would destroy our relationship with him. But on the other hand we can’t just come out and say we’re completely behind the protesters because then they will lose legitimacy and be crushed (as they were in Iran a couple years ago when everyone complained then that the US wasn’t supporting them enough). Obama did just fine on handling this. Furthermore, the issue of whether or not we should be supporting Mubarak comes down to values. Do we as a nation support democracy or are we going to prop up dictators that are friendly towards us but abuse their citizens and commit massive human rights abuses? I’d like to think that we support democracy, but that debate is why US policy during the protests was a little incoherent.
Second, on the issue that no one saw this coming, I think it is absolutely unfair to blame the administration for not seeing this coming. No one saw it coming. And of all the countries in the region least likely to fall, Egypt was pretty high on that list. Mubarak had been in power for 30 years, there was no reason to expect that there could even be the remote possibility that he could fall until after Tunisia. No one saw this coming because popular mobilization in the Middle East is largely nonexistent. This issue has confounded political scientists for the past few decades, why the Middle East just doesn’t have popular mobilization against the government and why authoritarianism is so persistent.
Third, on the question of Israel’s security, Israel has nothing to worry about. Egypt isn’t going to break the peace treaty because if they do it means they lose $1.3 billion in military aid. And since the only group that can break the treaty and restart conflict is the military, that isn’t going to happen. Even a future civilian government is unlikely to break the peace treaty. The threat against Israel from Egypt is mostly rhetorical; the people there are more concerned about their own personal well-being than fighting another war. This revolution was about bread prices, wages, and corruption, not about how Mubarak isn’t bombing Israel. Also, I think this will be a good thing for the peace process because it forces Israel’s hand a little that they need to hurry about and strike a deal because now there is pressure, before they could stall and keep expanding the settlements with few repercussions. (And on another note, I think this might bring down the Netanyahu government in a few years, I think Israel might take a turn back to the left and the peace process.)
Fourth, Ferguson talks about how the military is in charge for six months before a civilian government can take over. What he neglects to mention is that the military has been running Egypt since 1952, so this really isn’t a change in the status quo. And this leads to my fifth point, that the military in Egypt (and some other Arab states), is seen by the people as a modernizing force that helped them break out of colonialism. The Egyptian people (and the Tunisian people as well) have confidence in the military as an institution as a whole, even if there have been problems with the leadership (although in Egypt the military proper is separate from the Free officers that became Egypt’s leaders like Mubarak). Now, another aspect to this is that the military can’t hold on to power again. With this revolution one of the things that forced the Supreme Military Council (a group that has only met 3 or 4 times ever) is that lower officers threatened to rebel and join the protesters. So the military knows that if they don’t transition then there will be another round of protests.
Now finally to my last point. The Muslim Brotherhood boogeyman. The threat of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt is nonexistent. Egypt isn’t Iran 1979. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t have a majority of support in the country, and even if they did, they aren’t the group they once were. They’re willing to work for change within the system now and after getting crushed by Mubarak so many times, their tactics are rather tame and timid. They aren’t violent, and they didn’t even join the protests until about half way in because they wanted to make sure they weren’t going to get crushed. And this whole issue of the Caliphate being resurrected is so 10 years ago and discredited. No one in the region really cares about it anymore. The only group still harping on about it is al Qaeda, and they’ve killed so many Muslims that they’ve lost credibility. Furthermore, and the biggest reason why you should ignore the Caliphate and Muslim Brotherhood scare tactic is that Egypt is the home of Arab nationalism. It’s the country of Nasser and of the idea of modernizing the country, moving beyond old ideas of religion, creating a modern socialist country, and bringing together all Arabs. In no way is Egypt about to turn into a theocracy. And the protest at large was largely nonreligious. Muslims and Christians both turned out together against the government.
Sigh, so after that long rant, I think Ferguson is wrong, but it is still okay to exercise caution with Egypt. I’m cautiously optimistic, I think this is the beginning of good things for them (and Tunisia), so long as the military makes concrete steps towards democratic transition. When they do get civilian rule, it will probably be a diminished form of democracy for a little while, but you have to give it time. Even the US didn’t become a liberal democracy by today’s standards until the 1960’s, so there is no reason we should expect other countries to turn into the US over night.