Walter Russell Mead: Will Egypt Have A Revolution?

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.

The Arab Spring has reached its first autumn, and it is still not clear whether Egypt will have a revolution.  In my view, it hasn’t had one yet.  The Mubarak family attempted a revolution of its own early in the year, replacing the military-business regime that has ruled the country since the 1950s with a dynastic dictatorship.  The military beat that revolution back with the help of popular demonstrations; the Mubaraks are gone, but the military state at the core of Eygptian power since Nasser’s time lives on.

The most recent demonstrations in Tahrir Square are trying to change that.  Both liberal and Islamic groups fear that the army will continue to rule by stuffing the parliament with cronies who have roots in the old regime.  Those fears seem well judged; that is presumably exactly what those who rule Egypt hope to accomplish.

So far, what Turks would call the “deep state” of Egypt — the institutions and individuals who hold the real power, whatever that pretty constitution says — have been able to stave off a direct conflict between the military and the popular forces.  My guess is that both sides know that at this point the military would win a direct battle for power and that public opinion, beyond the hard core of Islamists and liberals, would acquiesce.  Egypt is not yet in a pre-revolutionary state.

What we are seeing in the streets of Cairo is less a revolution seeking to take shape than a haggling process.  The leaders of the Egyptian political parties want to be able to choose all the parliamentary candidates through naming them to parliamentary lists.  That would make party leaders the chief power brokers in a parliamentary regime.  The military wants more MPs to be elected as individuals, weakening the parties and making it easier for the real powers in the country to manipulate the parliamentary process....