In light of the radical changes in the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab Spring, civil unrest has become an issue of utmost concern for policymakers, analysts and academics. Nowhere can the implications of ignored or improperly addressed public discontent be seen more clearly than in Syria’s brutal and potentially regionally destabilizing civil war. Widespread protests are also disrupting — and even overturning — the status quo in Brazil, Turkey and Egypt. In the final post of a seven-part Baker Institute Viewpoints series, we evaluate the impact that this new wave of civil unrest will have on international politics. In the coming days, institute experts will address the effects on U.S. foreign policy, unexpectedly stable regimes, analytical tools for understanding civil unrest and political philosophical conceptions of “just” societies.
Read other posts in this series:
- Turkey, Brazil and Egypt: The stakes for the United States by Joe Barnes, Bonner Means Baker Fellow
- Egypt and the Gulf: The illusion of stability? by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for Kuwait
- Chaos in the streets? Blame cyberspace! by Chris Bronk, fellow in information technology policy
- What civil unrest in Brazil portends for the international system by Nathan Jones, postdoctoral fellow in drug policy
- Civil unrest: Is Mexico next? by Tony Payan, fellow in Mexico studies
- A new wave of democracy in Turkey by Dina Shahrokhi, research associate for the Middle East
Interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour, the military-backed civilian leader who formerly headed the country’s judiciary, only recently finished putting together a new government. However, the original coalition that had pushed for the overthrow of President Muhammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood-supported government has begun peeling apart, with some criticizing powers set aside by the military for the new president. Moreover, the new government does not include any members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, raising the likelihood of more civil unrest in the near future.
Of all authoritarian regimes (military, single-party or single-ruler), military dictatorships have the shortest lease on life. However, with the destruction of the National Democratic Party in the early days of the Arab Spring, the dissolution of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the suspension of the recently ratified constitution, the military has few instruments with which to guarantee its interests once it returns to the barracks. The “Deep State” can continue to protect its interests through a combination of brute force and external assistance.
U.S. policy during this crucial moment for Egypt can be guided by insights from the third wave of democratization, which, though leapfrogging the Middle East, has been the most successful cascade of liberalization to date. History shows that military dictatorships can make successful transitions to democracy — if their interests are protected. Spain’s conversion was so successful that such a change was known for a time as the “Spanish model.” One of the central ingredients of the process was that King Juan Carlos and reformist Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez adeptly balanced carrots with sticks when dealing with the Francoist ancien regime. Suarez went to great lengths to guarantee the military’s interests after the transition, including the maintenance of the Bourbon monarchy, exclusion of communist participation in the government, an electoral system that was beneficial to rural areas and the creation of a second chamber of parliament elected by plurality with a handful of members appointed by the king. The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Manuel Gutierrez Mellado, also dismissed a high-ranking hardliner for publicly disagreeing with the Suarez government’s reform plans. Another example of successful changeover is Chile, where the 1989 presidential elections were held with opposition party participation while Augusto Pinochet was allowed to remain as head of the military.
Great powers’ support for autocratic regimes can allow these entities to persist in the face of domestic challenges. If a particular regime’s domestic population is viewed as hostile to a great power’s interests, the preservation of that state’s political status quo can come to be seen as central to a major power’s security. The maintenance of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic prerogatives came to be seen as integral to the preservation of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, hence the anxiety that ensued after the former was assassinated and the latter was forced to resign during the early days of the Arab Spring.
Martin Indyk, the Clinton-era ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for the Near East,recently called for the United States to engage with the new military regime in Egypt. While sensible, the Obama administration should not engage with the new government in Cairo to the exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such a policy would be short-sighted and, — when coupled with the military-backed regime’s measures against the Brotherhood’s senior leadership and their supporters, including the freezing of their assets — could effectively radicalize the Brotherhood and its supporters. While the Morsi government was not an ideal partner, it did nothing to indicate that it was going to renege on the 1979 peace treaty.
In order for the most powerful Arab state to make a successful democratic transition, a credible commitment has to be made to protect the armed forces’ stake in the Egyptian economy after the shift occurs. Such a problem could be solved through the creation of a political party that would guarantee a certain number of seats in both houses of Egypt’s parliament. Second, the military’s policy of cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to result in radicalizing the movement and further destabilizing an already fragile post-Mubarak Egypt. There are, however, a few instruments at the Obama administration’s disposal that allow the U.S. to contain civil unrest in the short- to medium-term in Egypt, starting with continued American engagement with the Brotherhood and its senior leadership, along with vocal, public condemnation of the military government’s repression.
Albert B. Wolf is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is currently completing his dissertation on peacemaking and authoritarian political survival in the Middle East. He has written extensively on Middle East issues, including the Iranian nuclear program and the crisis in Syria, as well as nuclear proliferation in East Asia and international relations theory more generally. His work has been published in International Security, Survival, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and World Policy Journal. Please note that the views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent those of the Baker Institute in any way.