What If They Gave a Revolution and No Regime Fell? Posted By Barry Rubin On February 10, 2011
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you Rudyard Kipling, If The time has come to advance a new thesis. Since I was just about the first person anywhere to warn publicly that the Egyptian revolution wasnt necessarily going to be a bed of roses, let me now suggest a daring idea that seems increasingly possible. I speak here as a political analyst and not as an advocate of any policy or outcome, neither cheering nor booing but merely observing. What if the regime in Egypt doesnt fall? What if it survives this crisis, with a change of leader (inevitable given Husni Mubaraks advanced age), some reforms, and some concessions? What if the revolution fizzles? After all, by standing firm, the regime has kept the upheaval from growing bigger and spreading farther. With the army at its side, the regime does not have to surrender at all. In addition, this is not some one-man reign in a tiny Third World country. The government is not the Mubarak regime but the Nasser-Sadat-Mubarak regime, now approaching its sixtieth anniversary. In addition, there is a huge bureaucracy, powerful economic interests, and the entire military hierarchy tied to the regime. They are willing to let Mubarak go but why should this huge sector give up its wealth, power, and privileges when it doesnt have to do so? Moreover, lets remember something rather important. Aside from (well-deserved) fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is the broader concern over anarchy and violence. If you are a member of this political-economic-military elite, you could not only lose your job but all your wealth and even your life. Who knows if the new rulers at some point would start executing people? I am certainly not saying that its all over nor am I suggesting anyone should rejoice. A tragedy is a situation in which there is no easy way out and perhaps no good way out at all. At any rate, the only thing that really matters is what happens in Egypt itself. And that we will have to watch to see. Nevertheless, a new variable must be considered: non-revolution. Of course, the Obama administration never should have thought the regime would crumble like a house of cards. Threatened with the downfall of them all (and not just Mubarak) they seem to have decided: lets stick together and outlast the demonstrators. Let people get tired of chaos, ready to return to work, eager to have the army (which the opposition keeps reminding people is beloved by the Egyptian people) restore order. After all, the elite was never in love with the idea of having Husnis son, Gamal, take over. Many will say that this is the silver lining of the revolutionary disorder. Indeed, it proves why he was incapable of doing the jobrunning off, in contrast to his fatherthe moment things got scary. Now, they figure, they can put someone relatively competent into power. Speaking of having someone competent in power, this brings us to the question of U.S. policy. I cant get the story of Lord Jim, the great Joseph Conrad novel, out of my mind. The main character is a professional sailor who is one of the officers aboard a broken-down freighter carrying hundreds of poor Muslim pilgrims from the East Indies to Mecca. The ship hits something and a storm is approaching. The crew decide, without checking properly, that the ship is going to sink. They panic and take to the lifeboats, betraying their duty and leaving the Muslims on board to die. But the ship doesnt sink at all and the passengers are rescued by a passing naval vessel. The crew is put on trial and disgraced, losing their licenses. The humiliated young man can only restore his honor by acts of great bravery, which is the rest of the novel. Within hours of the start of Egypts crisis, Barack Obama panicked and took to the lifeboats or, to use the contemporary phrase, was ready to throw the regime under the bus. Here, Im not judging on a basis of human rights, national interests, morality, or anything else: Im just stating a fact. In a world that, at least outside of Western Europe, favors strong leaders, Obama came off as more Wayne Newton than John Wayne. For comparisons sake, here are some appropriate John Wayne quotes: A lot of guys make mistakes, I guess, but every one we make and some guy dont walk away forevermore, he dont walk away. Sands of Iwo Jima. Well, there are some things a man just cant run away from. Stagecoach This kind of war, youve gotta believe in what youre fighting for. Back to Bataan Now here <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-from-the-President-on- Iran/> s Obama, at the height of the Iranian democratic demonstrations against a regime far more brutal than Mubaraks: We are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness. Well, you get the picture. Who do you want in your foxhole? So how is Obama going to look if the ship stays afloat? After all, this is an American government that a few days ago ordered Egypts government to go, starting now, even starting yesterday. One of several bad decisions was a failure to distinguish between Mubarak and the regime. These people still dont realize what they did wrong: Privately counseling the Egyptian elite to get rid of Mubarak might well have worked; publicly yelling at them to disband themselves was asking them to commit suicide. Obviously, they were not likely to do so. Perhaps the most interesting single sentence spoken by anyone during this crisis was when Mubarak said that Obama doesnt understand Arab culture. What did he mean? Heres my interpretation: In Western society, you can compromise and make concessions so that your opponent or potential partner says: What a great person! Hes so reasonable. I, too, will make concessions and we will have a win-win solution! For decades naïve Westerners have been trying to apply this to the Middle East. It doesnt work. The more you concede the more the other side concludes you are weak. The more you give, the more they take. Appetite grows with the feeding. And theres more. If people think that the other side is stronger, is winning, and you are losing credibility, more and more of them will join that other side out of opportunism or survival. This is precisely whats happening in the Middle East. As the United States apologizes and makes unilateral concessions, people are attracted by Irans posing as the strong horse, ranting, roaring, threatening, and killing. If you throw some of your friends under the bus (Lebanese moderates, Iranian and Turkish oppositionists, Israel, southern Sudan?, etc.), many others will get on the bus. And the sign on the bus says: The Islamist express. On the back is a bumper sticker that says: We brake for terrorists. So Mubarak was saying don't let them see you be afraid or, as the motto of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy puts it, "Dont panic." Yes, Mubarak has been a nasty dictator though less nasty than Irans rulers, Syrias rulers, Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Muammar Qadhafi in Libya, and the regime in the Sudan. Hes even less brutal than his regimes founder, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tortured and killed while being wildly popular. The West, then, interpreted events in Egypt in its own image: Mubarak as Darth Vader (or Dick Cheney, whichever you think is worse), the revolutionaries as heroic strugglers (which is why we werent permitted to point out that many of them were Islamists who wanted to set up a worse dictatorship), and Obama as the moral, all-seeing president who knows Americas interests are best served by taking a leap in the dark with no strategy, no serious evaluation, and no clearly defined goal. Is this a tragedy for all those Egyptians who really do want a moderate, secular democracy? You bet it is. But one day, when there are enough people like that, they will succeed. As I pointed out earlier, the crew of Lord Jim's broken-down freighter was disgraced by panicking. But theres at least one important difference between them and the U.S.-Egypt events: Those men werent responsible for their ship being broken down. In terms of U.S. Middle East policy, a lot of leaks in the ship of state can be attributed to its current captain. Notes: the title of this article is a play on the 1960s' saying, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" Wayne Newton is an American singer; John Wayne is a macho American actor known especially for his roles portraying cowboys and soldiers. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The GLORIA Center's site is http://www.gloria-center.org/ and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com. _____ Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/02/10/what-if-they-gave-a-revolution-and-no -regime-fell/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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