Tag: Islamism

Worst-case scenario in Egypt

On By Martin Kramer

A Muslim Brother, Muhammad Morsi, has entered Egypt’s presidential palace and taken his seat in the chair once occupied by Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. This is a stunning development—a slow-motion Islamic revolution that few envisioned back in January 2011, when the crowds filled Tahrir Square.

The experts systematically underestimated the Muslim Brotherhood for a simple reason: they saw the revolution as they wanted it to be, not as it was. The distorted optic of the Tahrir stage seduced and misled them. But it was even more than that: the Muslim Brotherhood itself conducted a campaign of deliberate deception. They claimed they wouldn’t try to dominate the parliament, that they wouldn’t run candidates for every seat—and then they did. They said they wouldn’t run a presidential candidate of their own—and then they did. The credulous believed these reassurances—they seemed so rational and pragmatic. Marc Lynch, an estimable expert on these matters, actually chided the Brotherhood when it defied his analysis of its best interests and nominated a presidential candidate. It was, in his words, a “strategic blunder.”

In fact, it was a strategic master-stroke. From the beginning of the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood has understood that the fluid situation created by the fall of Mubarak won’t last forever, and that now is the time to seize every possible position they can, before alternatives take form. They want power, they crave power, and they won’t let it slip through their fingers by sitting out even a single contest. At the end of the day, all of the arguments for holding back have fallen by the wayside. They’re going for broke.

And have no doubt about the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood seeks to restore Egypt to the glory it once knew, by implementing Islamic social and legal norms. The translation of Islamic ideology into practice is the point of holding political power. The Brotherhood might not be able to effect an exact translation—that would be difficult—but a translation of ideology into practice it will be. This worries secular Egyptians, the international community, and Israel. At this early stage, many will say that such worries are overblown, that the Brotherhood will adapt and compromise. To consolidate power, it might. But at a later stage, many may regret having been so nonchalant.

No one can stop Brotherhood. You say: what about the military chiefs? The military, at times, has appeared to be winning. The revolution got rid of Gamal Mubarak, Husni Mubarak’s son and presumed successor, and that suited the military fine. The parliamentary elections, won by Islamists, demolished the liberals by revealing their weakness. That suited the military fine.

This left standing the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis. Everyone assumed that they wouldn’t dare put forth a candidate for the presidency. The new president was to have been a consensus personality above party politics—an ElBaradei or Amr Musa. It was the Brotherhood’s decision to run a presidential candidate that threw the military off-balance, and they have been scrambling ever since. The first Brotherhood candidate, the formidable deputy-guide Khayrat ash-Shater, was disqualified—he would have won a sweeping victory. His replacement, Muhammad Morsi, basically a stand-in, had less appeal, and against him, the unlikely Ahmad Shafik stood a chance. But it gradually became evident that even the stand-in might defeat Shafik, hence the drastic measures by the military chiefs, stripping the presidency of most of its powers even before the first ballot was counted.

The military’s efforts to contain the Muslim Brotherhood, at this late date, can only buy limited time. The parliament has been dissolved, but it will have to be reconstituted, and then what? The rewriting of the constitution can be delayed, but the constitution will have to be written and approved by the legislature, and then what? And if the president isn’t to be the supreme commander of the Egyptian armed forces, then who will be? The simple truth is that Egypt isn’t going to revert to military rule—it’s too late, the polls show that a vast majority of Egyptians want a transition to civilian, constitutional rule. For the military, the question is, what are the terms of this transition? What will guarantee their economic enterprises? What will assure them that they won’t be prosecuted and purged? This is now the core of Egyptian domestic politics: the terms on which the military will exit. And with each passing day, the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood is strengthened in this negotiation, because it grows more legitimate and the generals grow less legitimate. There are those who think that the Muslim Brotherhood can still be outmaneuvered by gerrymandering the system. In the long term, it can’t. Egypt is headed toward populist Islamist rule, and it is just a matter of time before the Brotherhood checkmates its opponents.

So how will the Muslim Brotherhood rule? It is the misfortune of the Muslim Brotherhood that, having waited more than 80 years for power, they have come to it at perhaps the lowest point in the modern history of Egypt. The country teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, the result of decades of bad decisions, corruption, and the absence of the rule of law. The Muslim Brotherhood is in a bind, because it has to deliver. For the masses of people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolution wasn’t about democracy and freedom. It was about bread and social justice.

The Brotherhood has a so-called “Renaissance” plan for the overhaul of the Egyptian economy. I won’t pretend to judge its feasibility. Could modernization of tax collection double or triple tax revenues? Can Egypt double the number of arriving tourists, even while contemplating limits on alcohol and bikinis? Can a renovation of the Suez Canal raise transit revenues from $6 billion a year to $100 billion? Can Egypt’s economy surpass the economies of Turkey and Malaysia within seven years? These are all claims made at various times by the economic thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood, who trumpet Egypt’s supposed potential for self-sufficiency.

If you think this is pie in the sky, then it isn’t difficult to imagine the “Plan B” of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is to find ways to raise the rent Egypt collects from the West and rich Arabs for its geopolitical position. Call it a shakedown, call it a bailout, it doesn’t matter. The message Egypt is sending is that it’s too big to fail, and that the world, and especially the United States, owes it. The deputy guide, Khayrat ash-Shater, put it directly: “We strongly advise the Americans and the Europeans to support Egypt during this critical period as compensation for the many years they supported a brutal dictatorship.” Egypt, which is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, is thus owed compensation.

A key part of this narrative is that Mubarak sold peace with Israel on the cheap. In Egypt it is believed that the $1.3 billion that Egypt receives a year in military aid, and hundreds of millions more in economic aid, are just a portion of what Egypt’s adherence to peace is worth. To get more, the plan of the Muslim Brotherhood is to persuade Washington that it can’t take Egypt for granted. The strategy will be to stimulate crises that will be amenable to resolution by the transfer of resources. No one can predict what those crises will look like. It’s hard to imagine that some of them won’t involve Israel.

So the question the United States faces will be this: is Egypt indeed too big to fail? Is the United States now not only going to talk the Muslim Brotherhood—which it is already doing—but actively work to help it succeed? The question comes at a time when the United States has become frugal. And there is no superpower rivalry that Egypt can exploit. When John Foster Dulles informed Nasser in 1956 that the United States wouldn’t finance his great dam at Aswan, Nasser went to Moscow. Today there aren’t any alternatives to the United States.

That being the case, the only way for Egypt to get the attention of Washington is to threaten to spin out of American orbit and into the opposing sphere of radical Islam. At no point will it be indisputable that the United States has “lost Egypt.” But at every point, Egypt’s loss will seem imminent. In that respect, the Muslim Brotherhood has already made its mark on history: from this day forward, Egypt can’t ever be taken for granted again.

For future reference, Marc Lynch stands by his analysis:

 

Yes, worry about the Islamists

On By Martin Kramer

A presentation made by Martin Kramer at the book launch of Reuel Marc Gerecht’s The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East, November 7, 2011. Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

Reuel is an old friend, a fellow student of the same teachers, so I’m delighted that he’s added another contribution to the shelf. But I know I was invited to dissent, so let’s begin.

Reuel’s thesis is that we should be glad to see the old authoritarian order implode, because it could never evolve; and we shouldn’t fear the inevitable triumph of Islamism through the ballot box, because this new order can evolve—eventually in the right direction.

Now I agree that the old order couldn’t evolve—Reuel is quite right. The old regimes can only perpetuate themselves, for some amount of time, until they weaken and someone figures out how to topple them. Of course, this isn’t an entirely new revelation. You can find it in Ibn Khaldun.

I also agree that the Islamists are going to have their moment. If Palestine and Turkey and Tunisia put Islamists in power through the ballot, you can bet it will happen in Egypt and Libya and Syria, when that day comes. So we have to weather this change, and do what little we can to forestall a worst-case scenario. I suppose that in order to do that, we also have to be seen as embracing change. If I were writing speeches for Barack Obama, I too would compare the makers of the “Arab Spring” to Boston’s patriots and Rosa Parks. And I suppose we have to say, as a State Department official said the other day, that if Egyptian elections are free and fair, and the Muslim Brotherhood wins, the United States will be, quote, “satisfied.”

But this is where I part with Reuel. I wouldn’t really be “satisfied” at all, but Reuel would. In fact, his book might have been subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Islamists.” What is it about former intel hands that they have this I-know-something-you-don’t approach to Islamists? I’m thinking about Graham Fuller, ex-CIA, Alastair Crooke, ex-MI6, Ephraim Halevy, ex-Mossad—each of them in his own quirky way tells us we can get what we want from Islamists, if we talk to them, stroke them, maybe even pay them off. Of course, this has a long history going back to the early Cold War. We used the Islamists against the Soviets, and many thought we should use them against Al Qaeda. Reuel is ex-CIA, and half the time, I thought he was winking at me, telling me: don’t worry, we’ve got their number. If Islamists win elections, it’ll be all right, because we’ve planted this democracy chip in their brains, they can’t get it out, and they’ll end up coming to Papa. (He even writes at one point that they have America in their bloodstream.)

Well, we shall see. Here’s a quote: “We are going to have a republic, a democracy. Every group is emphasizing the words ‘democratic’ and ‘republic’ as much as ‘Islamic.’”

That wasn’t said this year in Tunisia or Egypt. It was said in February 1979 by an Iranian revolutionary at a rally at Princeton University, where I heard it myself—I recently went back to the Daily Princetonian to see if I remembered it correctly. Reuel is wrong when he writes that “there was never any deception on the part of Khomeini.” There was a massive deception campaign, and it worked. I think we’re again witnessing campaigns of deception, and they’re working again.

Can movements that don’t practice democracy internally, that believe they answer to a power above the will of the people, that divide humanity between believers and unbelievers, build and sustain democracy? In saying yes, Reuel has written a very American book—a flattering paean to the power of an American idea. All I can say is, I hope he’s right. But let’s acknowledge that, however Americans try, they always seem to come up with some variation on modernization theory, which says the world wants what Americans want, in the way Americans want it. And let’s admit that this almost always sets up America for a fall.

Let me end, as I should, with a comment on the implications for Israel. Reuel has a passage that left me bewildered, coming as it does from an old intel hand: “Some Muslim autocracies have signed peace treaties with Israel. They may not guarantee all that much, but the signed paper does exist.”

Well, if that’s all you have to say about Israel’s relations with Egypt and Jordan, you aren’t an insider. The political, security, and intelligence relations with Egypt and Jordan have been intense and game-changing for Israel. There were no public expressions of warmth, but under Mubarak, no mobs stormed the Israeli embassy either. Israelis aren’t so daft as to think that some “evolution” of Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood is going to produce an improvement on what Israel had.

Reuel writes that “Israel’s security will be lasting only when Muslim peoples, not their ever-less popular governments, accept the Jewish homeland.” I don’t know what “lasting” means, but I do know that whether it’s governments or peoples, this acceptance is a function of Israeli power to defeat them. The governments appreciated that power. How does Reuel think Muslim peoples are going to reach the same understanding? Will Israel have to defeat them too? Will it have to do to Islamism what it did to Arab nationalism in 1967?

I’m also perplexed by his polisci Tom Friedman–style bromide, that “democracies eventually bring lasting peace, dictatorships don’t.” That was fine when the set of democracies included the United States and its dependencies. I believe the Middle East, with the Muslim Brotherhood setting the tone, is destined to disprove this slogan. That is, if Israel’s wars in 2006 and 2008—with those Arabs who’d cast the most ballots, Lebanese and Palestinians—didn’t disprove it already. Only Israel’s power, and fear of it, guarantees the peace. Whether Israel’s adversaries do or don’t drop ballots in boxes doesn’t make the slightest difference.

And the idea, in the afterword, that the Hashemite monarchy should turn over power to the Palestinians, is bizarre—because there’s no exploration whatsoever of its implications. We’re simply told that we must be consistent. As Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” We’re being pushed here to a foolish consistency. But if we’re going to be consistent, why not be so in the way Middle Easterners expect? That is, you reward your friends and punish your enemies. That’s how you win and keep friends. Given American values, standing by dictators might not always be advisable. But given American interests, neither is the overthrow of every single U.S. friend, ally, and proxy.

So we’re indebted to Reuel for a provocative book, which I enjoyed from beginning to end. I hope it sells well, gets him his fifteen minutes, and then disappears without a trace. No need to thank me, Reuel. What are friends for?

He walks with the Islamists, talks with the Islamists

On By Martin Kramer

If I consulted with quadrupeds
Think what fun we’d have asking over crocodiles for tea!
Or maybe lunch with two or three lions, walruses and sea lions
What a lovely place the world would be!

—Bobby Darin, lyrics from Talk to the Animals

You know things are headed downhill fast when Alastair Crooke warrants a profile in the New York Times, for his long-term project of “engaging” Hamas and Hezbollah. The profile flags his importance in these words: “Talking to Islamists is the new order of the day in Washington and London. The Obama administration wants a dialogue with Iran, and the British Foreign Office has decided to reopen diplomatic contacts with Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group.” And so on.

In 2005, I debated Crooke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. This seems like a perfect opportunity to point to my remarks: here. The CSIS summary of my remarks and his: here.