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I just received a copy of No Exit, Yoav Di-Capua's new book on Sartre and Arab intellectuals (it is essentially an intellectual history of the post-colonial Arab world) and its cover is very, very cool. I very much enjoyed Di-Capua's last book, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past, a great historiography and was happy to meet him in Austin (where he teaches at the University of Texas) on the sidelines of South By Southwest a few years ago. It'll be some more rigorous reading than I'm doing now (I've been devouring Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem sci-fi series, see great reviews here and here) but looking forward to it.

Also recently received are two books on Morocco (and Jordan) – it's relatively rare that you get serious and in-depth English-language scholarship on Morocco, so good to see that – and a collected volume edited by Alfred Stepan including many A-listers and friends (Rached Ghannouchi, Carrie Wickham, Nathan Brown, Monica Marks, Radwan Masmoudi, etc.) that looks at the Egypt vs. Tunisia question post-Arab Spring. With chapter titles like "The roots of Egypt's constitutional catastrophe", it's pure Arabist geek-bait.

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Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

The Atlantic Council translates a recent column by Amr Hamzawy -- one of the very few true liberals in Egypt --  in Shurouq newspaper:

From the mid-1900s until now, many different issues have been used to complete the argument that democracy must be postponed because “nothing is more important than such and such issue.” The issues that have completed this argument have included: national independence, development and preparing the people to practice democracy, socialism, the liberation of Palestine, confronting Zionism and imperialism, the battle to liberate the territory of the nation, economic well-being, stability, the preservation of the national state, and the war against terrorism. 

...

In turn, these tactics are used to propagate a third illusion that contributes to the current siege on the concept of democracy in Egypt: the illusion of “national necessity.” Through this illusion, authoritarianism can effectively ensure its continued grip on power.  Prior to and following the summer of 2013, my writings consistently warned of the authoritarian trend behind the claims that the military intervention in politics on July 3 was an “act of necessity” and that the former Minister of Defense, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, was participating in the presidential elections as the “candidate of necessity,” later to become the “president of necessity” following the announcement of the election results. These claims of “necessity” are truly authoritarian, as they – in the best of cases – justify departing from democracy, based on the pretext that there was no alternative to an intervention by the military establishment in politics, even when the alternative of holding early presidential elections certainly was possible. In the worst of cases, such claims of “necessity” effectively strip citizens of the right to freely choose their leaders through elections by legitimizing the presidential candidate backed by the system of rule (or its lists and candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections) as a matter of “national necessity.”

Yesterday, as a who's-who of Egyptian activists and human rights workers was harassed and detained for peacefully protesting, I thought back to US Secretary of State John Kerry's remarks when he visited Egypt earlier this. Kerry glibly subscribed to the version of events of a government that -- on the official state information service web site no less -- compares Morsi to Hitler and claims Egypt has "saved the world from terrorism," and spoke of progress and challenges and Egypt's oh-so-promising roadmap. I couldn't help annotating part of his joint statement with Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy:

Nothing will help bring the people of Egypt together more or provide more economic stability or provide more confidence in the future than an Egypt that is participating in a democratically elected government that is brought about through inclusive, free, and fair elections [There is a very strong chance the Muslim Brotherhood will be excluded from the upcoming elections and from political life generally. April 6, one of the country’s most respected grassroots youth groups, has been denied permission to monitor the elections]. And we will support the interim government and the Egyptian people in that end.

Minister Fahmy and I agreed on the need to ensure that Egyptians are afforded due process with fair and transparent trials, civilians tried in a civilian court [The constitutional assembly has approved an article in the new Egyptian constitution that allows military trials for civilians]. And we discussed the need for all violence to end. All acts of terror in Egypt must come to an end – all acts – for Egyptians to be able to exercise restraint and the need for accountability for those acts of violence.

I mentioned to the Minister that, obviously, part of the roadmap and part of the process of strengthening Egypt’s linkages to the rest of the world will be measured in the way in which the people of Egypt are sustained in their ability to have the right to assemble, the right to express themselves [a new law aggressively restricting the right to protest was issued Monday]. But even as they do that, we also agreed no one should be allowed to practice violence with impunity [Does that include police violence for which no one has been held accountable yet?].

Kerry avoided mentioning Rabaa, Morsi (whose trial was about to start) or indeed the Muslim Brotherhood at all. A few days later he apparently said they “stole” the revolution, a remark that was greeted with satisfaction by the interim government here and with indignation by the Brotherhood. 

The problem with saying the Brotherhood stole the revolution is that it’s a gross simplification (for one thing it doesn’t give credit to all the other dedicated thieves who have been at work the last three years) that completely contradicts US officials’ previous statements. 

June 24, 2012 White House Statement:

The United States congratulates Dr. Mohamed Morsi on his victory in Egypt’s Presidential election, and we congratulate the Egyptian people for this milestone in their transition to democracy.

We look forward to working together with President-elect Morsi and the government he forms, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States.  We believe that it is important for President-elect Morsi to take steps at this historic time to advance national unity by reaching out to all parties and constituencies in consultations about the formation of a new government. We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens – including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.  Millions of Egyptians voted in the election, and President-elect Morsi and the new Egyptian government have both the legitimacy and responsibility of representing a diverse and courageous citizenry.

Ambassador Anne Patterson, April 28, 2013

As Secretary Kerry said last week to our Congress, the Egyptian military deserves a lot of credit for turning over the government to civilians and returning to its core mission of protecting the country.  And, there is no going back, either to military rule -- which the highly professional Egyptian military rejects -- or to an authoritarian ruler who interferes in the daily life of Egyptians and curtails their freedoms.  Let me be clear: a military intervention is not the answer, as some would claim.  Neither the Egyptian military nor the Egyptian people will accept it as an outcome.

Ambassador Anne Patterson, June 8, 2013

This is the government that you and your fellow citizens elected.  Even if you voted for others, I don’t think the elected nature of this government is seriously in doubt.  Throughout Egypt’s post-revolution series of elections, the United States took the position that we would work with whoever won elections that met international standards, and this is what we have done. 

During his recent visit, Kerry also stepped away from concerns he and president Obama's had voiced just a few months before: 

President Obama, July 3 2013

Nevertheless, we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution. I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsy and his supporters. 

John Kerry, July 6

The only solution to the current impasse is for all parties to work together peacefully to address the many legitimate concerns and needs of the people and to ensure Egypt has a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the millions of Egyptians who have taken to the streets to demand a better future. Lasting stability in Egypt will only be achieved through a transparent and inclusive democratic process with participation from all sides and all political parties. This process must also ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected, including the right to peaceful assembly, due process, and free and fair trials in civilian courts.

The fact that democracy promotion is part of the US’ diplomatic rhetoric but actually low on the list of US priorities in Egypt -- and indeed anywhere -- is so blindingly obvious I’m embarrassed to restate the fact. The disingenuousness of our foreign policy is one of the reasons behind anti-US sentiment, although fomenting anti-Americanism is also a recurring, effective populist move here. 

US officials have largely let pass the abuses of Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the Morsi government, and the current army-backed government, in a rush to be on good working terms. The new Egyptian government has repeatedly ignored US criticism or exhortations, knowing we are not willing to damage our strategic relationship over niceties like human rights abuses. We are caught again and again mouthing principle and practicing expediency. 

There are two common misperceptions in Egypt vis-a-vis the United States. One is an overestimation of its power: because the US is powerful, it is assumed to be all-powerful. The other delusion is that the US cares enough about Egypt to actively take sides in its political struggles -- whereas all it cares about is that those struggles are resolved and a winner it can deal with emerges expeditiously. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, March 2009:

Secretary Clinton: I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.

Question: How do you view the presidency in Egypt, the future of the presidency in Egypt?

Clinton: That’s for the people of Egypt to decide. That is a very important issue that really is up to Egyptians.

Which meant then, as it does now: We’re going to wait and see if anyone can wrestle power from him. In which case we’ll get on board -- err, we’ll candidly discuss the challenges ahead on the path to democracy -- with that guy.

From David Runciman's essay on the European crisis, Will we be all right in the end?, in the LRB:

If elections are not the answer, then what explains the ability of the world’s leading democracies to survive crises, something which has been demonstrated time and again over the last century? My best guess is that their crucial advantage lies in being more politically flexible than the alternatives. That is, in a crisis democracies can experiment with autocracy but autocracies can’t experiment with democracy, not even in small doses. They daren’t, for fear of losing control. This is the real problem for the Chinese system. At some point, perhaps at some point quite soon, China’s leaders will face a critical situation in which they would be better off if they could find an outlet for popular dissatisfaction with the regime. But they will be extremely nervous of opening that door for fear of what lies behind it. So they will be stuck. Democracies can put democracy on hold and get away with it; if autocrats suspend their autocratic powers, they tend not to get them back.

That’s the good news for democracy. People who have announced that Europe’s current experiments with technocracy are a fundamental betrayal of democratic principles are being premature: it could work. But here’s the bad news: there is no guarantee that it will work. The conditions have to be right. The historical evidence suggests that democracies can be flexible only under certain circumstances. To start with, they must not be too poor. In countries where per capita GDP falls below a certain level (usually estimated at around US $7000), democratic experiments with emergency rule often end in disaster. It’s the temporary autocrats who don’t give power back. Political scientists take these thresholds very seriously. Above the line, democracies appear pretty much invulnerable, but below it, even safe-looking democracies might suddenly collapse into something worse. During the economic contraction of the mid-1970s per capita GDP in New Zealand fell perilously close to the cut-off point (it got down to about $10,000). It is hard to imagine what a military coup in 1970s New Zealand would have looked like. But it’s not impossible to imagine. And it’s certainly not hard to imagine what a military coup in 1970s Greece would have looked like.

My academic friends Josh Stacher and Jason Brownlee, both noted students of contemporary Egypt and its authoritarianism, have a new piece in Comparative Democratization, a journal of the American Political Science Association. It's available as a PDF here. They set out the case that Egypt's prospects for a democratic transition are poor because there has not really been a split in the country's elite. (It's a lot more complicated than that, but it's difficult to pull out a representative passage as it's an academic piece — so best to read it all.)

I am much more optimistic than they are — and I suspect they might have been a bit more optimistic too had they had written their paper a month or so later (it looks like it was filed in April). They described the referendum as an endorsement of the SCAF but that narrative is now being reconsidered and debated, notably on the question of the SCAF's disingenuous use of the referendum as an endorsement of its transition plan (rather than, strictly speaking, nine amendments to the constitution). The fight regarding security officials and leading party members is also continuing, receiving an important boost as far as the NDP is concerned after April 8. Everything about the current moment is in flux, and while one should not have unrealistic expectations, there is a real desire for an improvement.

To say, as they do, that the current interim regime is just as authoritarian eludes the fact that this is a necessarily extraordinary transitional moment in Egyptian politics. I just don't see how it can be compared to the Mubarak era, even if it's still far from democratic. Still, it's a piece well worth reading.