It took the Egyptian military establishment just over sixteen months to restore itself at the apex of the country’s political ladder. While he was in office, Hosni Mubarak symbolized that power. What the military had come to represent after Gamal Abdul Nasser had seized power in 1952 went far beyond the disgraced Mubarak and his regime. His ousting by the generals in Cairo was a calculated act of political expediency. The former dictator had become so sullied that his army ‘brothers’ simply cut him loose, and did not try to save him from the ignominy of a deeply humiliating public trial. Mubarak, by the time of his ouster from office, had become a liability that, conceivably, could have threatened the entire military establishment. Faced with a choice on his political future, the generals appear to have decided that they would jump rather than be pushed. It was with the retention of military control rather than with Mubarak’s rule that the generals were primarily concerned. He may have once been an Air Force General but the institution superseded the man.
After that the soldiers turned their attention to cooling the ardour of a ‘revolution,’ elements of which were beginning to call for the creation of an Islamic state. Of course it could not countenance an Islamic state. If the Egyptian revolution had been allowed to proceed in that direction it was the military that would have had the most to lose. What the generals did was to truncate the revolution and keep its hold on power. That much now seems clear.
With hindsight the Egyptian people appears not to have gotten much out of their ‘revolution’ beyond the removal of Hosni Mubarak from office. It was not that they trusted the military’s promise to deliver a post-Mubarak political environment that would result in democratic government; it was they had no realistic option. Egypt’s military of more than 450,000 men under arms is one of the best-equipped in the region. It far exceeds the actual security needs of the country and in the absence of any external wars to fight it has become a powerful piece on the country’s domestic political chessboard.
More than that, in a country where loyalties are separated by issues of sect, race, religion and other such considerations, its strength reposes in the singleness of its purpose. If the Egyptian people had refused to accept the military’s undertaking on the issue of democratic elections, the soldiers might have sought to crush the revolution. The other key issue of course is that while the United States did eventually come to terms with having to cut Mubarak loose, its strategic interests would not have countenanced extending the termination of the Mubarak regime to the creation of an Islamic state in Egypt.
With the removal of some of the key powers of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo the military has retained for itself some of the key levers of power. Mohamed Morsi’s swearing in as President at the end of June was muted, lacked the euphoria of a triumph and bore an uncanny resemblance to a halting step in a particular direction rather than confident arrival at a predetermined place.
Morsi is sandwiched between an Egyptian military determined not to let its grip on power slip even if it has found itself having to relinquish direct political rule for the first time in six decades, and the clamour of the throngs that re-assembled at Tahrir Square and elsewhere across the country accusing the military of throttling their revolution. Were Morsi to wrest back from the military the full authority of the presidency, much of the groundwork work would have been laid already for a push towards what is believed to be that sought-after Islamic state. That is not what the Egyptian military wants; that is not what Washington wants and that, most assuredly, is not what Israel wants.
President Morsi had appeared to challenge the military directly when he ordered parliament to reconvene after the generals had dissolved it following a court ruling. Reports suggest, however, that both sides do not seem anxious at the moment for a confrontation, and indeed, the President has been quoted as describing the military as the “shield and sword of the nation.” Exactly what will emerge from the current impasse is by no means certain, although it is possible that some kind of modus vivendi will be worked out, that allows the army to retain political control in real terms.
There are those among Mosi’s countrymen, of course, who would take the view that when the past sixty years are taken account of, the military’s role in domestic Egyptian politics has been confined largely to keeping the soldiers in power and strangling democracy in Egypt. The Egyptian uprising that toppled Mubarak may have ended a succession of three military dictators beginning with Nasser in 1952. In most other respects the political status quo remains unaffected.
