Baker Institute founding director Edward P. Djerejian is interviewed about the crisis in Egypt. For more institute coverage of the situation in the Middle East, please visit the Baker Institute website.
The spontaneous popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt represent a tectonic shift in the political landscape in the Middle East. No matter what happens in Egypt, a major crossroads has been reached, in which the legitimacy of Middle Eastern regimes will be more directly tested in light of well-known political, economic, humanitarian and education deficits in the region. These “deficits” are written all over the faces of the swath of people demonstrating in the streets of Egypt’s cities. The high unemployment rates, especially among the youth, the limited educational opportunities, the great disparities of wealth between the rich and poor, the systemic corruption, and the lack of real political participation are the backdrop to the calls for political change in Egypt and beyond.
Because of Egypt’s geopolitical importance — and its role as the pillar of Arab-Israeli relations given the historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979 — how the current crisis is managed will be crucial for the region as a whole and will have important consequences for United States policy and interests.
How President Hosni Mubarak faces this mass challenge to his regime is the key question. His government was obviously caught off guard by the rapidity and scale of the reaction in Egypt to the events in Tunisia.
Mubarak now faces the most critical political decisions of his 30-year tenure. He could stubbornly defy the street and try to hold on to power, which would result in continuing political instability and violence with unforeseen consequences. He could opt for trying to maintain control through the military and enforcing law and order while orchestrating another political succession from the ranks of the military — most likely newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman himself — which has been the history of Egypt since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power in the 1950s.
Or he could step aside and allow the military to put in place an orderly political transition to a post-Mubarak era. This could involve the establishment of a truly independent commission with broad representation from the Egyptian body politic to oversee free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections open to all political parties and organizations.
This may be the most hopeful scenario, but the pace of events in Egypt may dictate Mubarak’s early departure from the political scene and the mantle of responsibility for the political transition being placed in others’ hands.
In this latter respect, U.S. policymakers must take fully into consideration the complex political, economic and social forces at play in Egyptian society. In any political transition, the military will play a central role to assure stability and national security. Egypt’s political parties and organizations, civil society, professional associations, unions and private enterprise sector, all have roles to play in crafting Egypt’s political future.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, gained over 20 percent of Egypt’s 454-member parliament in 2005 and will seek its place in the political spectrum, despite its poor performance in last year’s elections. The United States must start thinking if it is prepared to engage with them, along with the secular parties in Egypt. Here the key challenge will be if the Brotherhood is truly prepared and willing to play by the rules of the democratic process and accepts the principles of pluralism and the alternation of power (i.e., not “One man, one vote, one time.”) The Egyptian secular parties should make this a key requirement to avoid a scenario whereby the Brotherhood might eventually try to establish another autocratic regime in Egypt, this time with a religious garb.
Every effort must be made by the Egyptians themselves, as well as the United States and the international community, to steer Egypt toward an orderly transfer of power and political transition that is responsive to the needs of its people, providing them with both security and justice, and maintaining Egypt’s key regional and international commitments and responsibilities.
Edward P. Djerejian is the founding director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, former U.S. ambassador to Syria and to Israel, and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. He is the author of “Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador’s Journey Through the Middle East” (Simon & Schuster Threshold Editions, September 2008).