An account of the collapse of the Soviet Union relates that, “In December 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen countries.” And certainly that sense of amazement, reflecting the suddenness of events, was reflected in global reactions to the removal from power of President Hosni Mubarak, whether in small neighbours and allies like Jordan or large allies like the United States of America. Many governments in the Middle East and beyond saw Mubarak consolidate his power over the last thirty years, with the Egyptian armed forces as his principal instrument and bulwark.
The centrality of a stable Egypt to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestine issue came to be seen by many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere as a prerequisite for their own diplomacy in the area. And in a sense this mirrored the perception of Nasser’s Egypt-United Arab Republic by the radical forces and countries of the post 1956 period, with Egypt becoming one of the standard bearers of the Non-Aligned Movement. With the signing by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, in Washington in 1979, of the Israel-Egypt peace agreement, both the United States and Israel came to see Egypt under Sadat and then Mubarak, as the principal de facto ally in regulating the freedom of manoeuvre of PLO forces in and out of the area, and later the pace of their relations with the Palestinian Authority leadership. This line of policy was reinforced by the United States, in appreciation for Egypt’s support in the first Gulf War of 1991, and it has continued with support for the Palestinian Authority against the Hamas regime in Gaza.
That de facto alliance with Egypt has been one maintained by the NATO allies in general. The grouping has been increasingly unwilling to take on the Israeli refusal to be flexible in dealing with the situation in the Palestinian territories, a stance which Mubarak appeared to support. In the meantime, post-Soviet Russia, itself like other states caught in amazement at the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and its government’s persistent radicalization and determination to master nuclear technology, has, like emerging China, rather stood on the sidelines. They have not been willing to speak out publicly about the radicalism in the Middle East signalled by al Qaeda and the events of 9/11. Russia has its own preoccupations with the dynamics of change in the former Muslim republics of the Soviet Union, with trying to work out the effects of continuing turbulence in those areas and, in particular, their possible effects on those parts of Russia now bordering those countries. So on the whole, both the NATO allies and Russia and China have been content to see the status quo in the Middle East remain, with Egypt as its stabilizer, and with the Palestinians’ fate stalemated.
In that context, the United States in particular had not been too perturbed by President Mubarak’s increasing centralization of power, and the increasing elevation of the armed forces to a position of the leading state agency performing the role of major investor in the Egyptian economy. The US has been satisfied to see Mubarak accepting the advice and funding of the IMF that, in that context, there should be a certain liberalization of the Egyptian economy, involving in particular openness to international trade and investment (as against the old Nasser line). In the 1990s and into the present, that line of policy has seemed to pay off, as economic growth averaged between four and seven per cent over the period. But that economic growth brought a number of emerging forces: the rise of a new and well-educated middle class involved in the new economic activities characteristic of the period of globalization, and tuned in, in spite of widespread censorship, to developments in the wider world; a worsening, on the other hand of the capacity of the education system to absorb new entrants; a less-than required trickling down of the benefits of economic growth as, in recent times, inflation has risen up to 10%. So Egypt with its huge population relative to other Middle Eastern states, in spite of its growth record, has continued to maintain one of the lowest per capita income levels in the area, along with states like Jordan and Syria, which are not ranked as major beneficiaries of petroleum deposits.
As is often the case, the precipitating events to these dramatic upheavals came from outside, reflecting popular concerns that apply to more than one country. The recession largely in the Western world, and then the more recent rise in commodity prices, has precipitated dissatisfaction among the lower and middle classes in many countries, for which their governments are blamed. The dissatisfaction in Tunisia has exposed to Arab populations the extent of oppression that continues years after, for example, the oppressive military regimes of the 1970s-’80s in Latin America have disappeared. The signs are that the signals from Tunisia found receptivity among the dissatisfied emerging middle classes even more than among the strictly lumpenproletarian elements, and their ferocity seems to have persuaded the military to take a less than hard line against them. And it may be too, that the military would not necessarily have been satisfied with the prospect laid before them by Mubarak, of his son ascending to a throne voluntarily vacated by his father.
The early statements emanating from the United States will have indicated that the administration did not comprehend the extent of dissatisfaction with Mubarak at various levels; and that the US was concerned not so much with the precipitating concerns of the protesters, as with the possibility that Mubarak’s regime could only be replaced, in a virtual revolution, by radical Islamist forces. It seems to have taken President Obama some time to come to the conclusion, no doubt indicated by the Egyptian armed and intelligence forces as the people showed their determination, that the career of 82-year-old Mubarak had less value than the interests of an apparently determined populace dominated by young persons. In that regard, the initial US position was not unlike that of not only the United Kingdom and France, but of China which also showed much hesitancy in indicating that Mubarak was not indispensable.
The NATO powers’ initial misinterpretation of the events in Egypt reflects in some measure a policy position that has, over the last decade, placed the ‘war against al Qaeda and terrorism,’ as the centrepiece of its diplomacy towards the Middle East and parts of Asia in the post 9/11 period. Their attitude towards Turkey, a constitutionally secularist country now led by a Muslim-originating party, has indicated that they have not recognized that in those areas, there are contending forces which recognize the importance of social and cultural evolution in concert with economic evolution. The NATO allies’ response to Turkish indications that it would wish to play a role in the evolution of the Palestinian problem has not been positive; a stance reflected in their attitude to Turkey’s recent imbroglio with Israel over the refugee ship issue.
In the aftermath of the overturning of Mubarak, the US feels that its long relationship with the Egyptian military, assumed in the past to be grateful for so much aid, gives it a headstart in coping with the evolution of the situation in Egypt. But the Egyptian army must recognize now that it has another constituency whose interests it is necessary to cope with – the Egyptian people, who forced them to take the decisions leading to where the armed forces find themselves today.
