Second, Egypt is at a crucial moment in its history. The wrong turn could spell civil war, a breakdown of governance structures or the ultimate arrival in power of a much more radical and extreme leader than Morsi. The right turn could allow the military takeover ultimately to be seen as a helpful step in the path of the Arab world’s bellwether state towards stability and democracy.
We have models of both of these kinds of events in the Islamic world in recent years. Algeria and Iran have provided examples of the first, more troubling political evolutions. Indonesia and Morocco have provided, each in its own way, more of the second and happier set of trends. Pakistan and Turkey have experienced a little of both. So we know that many scenarios are possible, based on key decisions in the days and weeks and months ahead. These decisions will be made mostly by Egyptians, but the international community’s role is huge — and Egyptians know it, because they will need aid and tourism and investment and trade if any future government is to have any hope of directing the ship of state in a happier direction than it has been headed. Indeed, young Egyptians yearn for the opportunities that closer connections to the global economy can bring them.
Americans are currently debating, as they should, whether Egypt’s army did the right thing. For all his flaws, Morsi had been elected president in a free and fair contest. He governed poorly — alienating many with a “my way or the highway” style, failing to stem Egypt’s economic bleeding, attacking his critics as “foreign hands” and pushing laws that would have cracked down on basic rights. But whatever his faults, the army’s actions meet the classic definition of a coup.
Yet the coup only codified what might be described as a popular impeachment of Morsi. Supposedly, 22 million Egyptians had signed petitions calling for his resignation. By some estimates, more than 10 million participated in the demonstrations this week calling for his ouster, out of a population of some 80 million. If roughly accurate, that would make them among the largest demonstrations ever. The magnitude of the demand for change is hard to comprehend from this distance. And the army, seeing the potential for a breakdown of law and order, understandably felt that if it stood aside, the state could literally melt down around it.
Morsi will not return to power; Egypt has already moved on, with the naming of Supreme Constitutional Court Judge Adly Mansour as interim leader and plans for future elections as well as a different sort of process for creating a new constitution. The military must now prove its intentions to quickly return Egypt to democratic rule — and in the meantime, its appointed authorities must govern with restraint and avoid a wholesale purge of the Muslim Brotherhood. After all, the Egyptians who supported Morsi’s movement also must be represented in the new system if it is to be more stable than the last.
The role for the international community will require a great deal of attentiveness, flexibility and finesse in the months ahead. But the broad contours of our approach are not hard to discern. And they must be a bit different than the last time.
First, we must avoid ever again hinging our hopes for Egypt on a single party or ruler — instead, we must reach out to engage all of Egypt’s political actors, be clear about our interests in Egypt, and forge a coalition of mutual interests in good U.S.-Egyptian ties. We need more tools to provide incentives for the future Egyptian government to do three things right: maintain political inclusiveness, overhaul the abusive police and security services, and pursue economic reform as well as recovery. Only in these ways can civil conflict and future extremism be reliably avoided.
Among other things, we need to help create a larger international package of aid and trade benefits for Egypt to demonstrate the benefits of moving toward democracy and open markets. Egypt’s size and geostrategic location mean that its stability or failure will have huge impact on American interests — and our investment in Egypt should reflect what’s at stake. It need not involve massive American sums like those that went to Iraq or Afghanistan, but the recent levels of $1.3 billion a year in U.S. aid may need to double given the magnitude of the challenge — that is, if we can get others to offer similar help themselves.
But we should not give all the aid right away. Providing this assistance in full measure must be conditional. We need to watch the actions of the future Egyptian state and calibrate our generosity as a result. The idea is not to take away Egypt’s sovereign rights to govern itself as it chooses. The goal, rather, is to respect the sovereign will of the great masses of Egyptian people who have loudly told their fellow Egyptians, and the world, what sort of country they want and demand for themselves.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Tamara Wittes, a senior fellow and the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, served as deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from November of 2009 to January 2012. USAToday