By C J Burton

He knew his audience. In August, Texas Governor Rick Perry convened the Response, a seven-hour prayer rally in Houston. In his drawling sermon, Perry quoted Isaiah and Ephesians. Invoking the prophet Joel, however, drew perhaps the most emotional reaction from his listeners. “Blow the trumpet in Zion,” Perry quoted from Joel 2, “declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.” Knowing murmurs and amens rang out at Reliant Stadium. They loved the message–and the messenger.

The cheers, though, may have had as much to do with what he didn’t read as with what he did. The context of Joel 2 is the prophet’s call for repentance to avert calamity before “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” The fate of the nation then lies in the hands of the faithful.

By citing Joel, Perry was drawing on imagery familiar to Christian dominionists. Driven in part by the verse in Genesis giving man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth,” devoted dominionists believe it their obligation to control (the hard-line term) or influence (the softer version) what are called the “seven mountains” of business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. The more extreme elements of this movement seek conquest and theocracy. Others insist they want only to transform the culture into something more in keeping with God’s kingdom of justice and mercy.

Dominionism draws on sundry strands of American Evangelicalism. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, a contemporary of Billy Graham’s, believed in preparing Evangelical ambassadors for the wider world. After Roe v. Wade, Jerry Falwell and others abandoned their civil-rights-era aversion to politics and hurled themselves into the nation’s partisan wars. Add a theology of witness and evangelism–a key text for dominionists is a literal reading of Jesus’ Great Commission to his apostles to go to make disciples of “all nations”–and you wind up with a theologically and politically militant culture whose language about their ambitions for authority does not always seem metaphorical.

Such dominionist themes echo those of other schools of Christian thought that argue that the laws of civil society should be biblically based. (Imagine courts with the power to enforce the Ten Commandments or punish gays and you get the idea.) A defining text of the cause is by a leading figure in the spread of the Christian homeschooling movement, Rousas John Rushdoony, who published The Institutes of Biblical Law in 1973; a popular dominionist vehicle is the Call ministry, led by Lou Engle, who has played prominent roles in anti-gay measures in California and Uganda.

There is an ironic dynamic at work: the traditional religious right’s failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school. With so little to show for its four decades of political engagement, some strains of religious conservatism have become more strident, not less–a reaction, I think, to the defeat of the Falwell–Pat Robertson generation’s agenda. For the true believers left behind, it is more comforting, oddly, to think that the right’s political difficulties are not about democracy but about demonic possession.

Rick Perry has never said anything to embrace dominionism. A canny politician, he may be able to repeat the successes of Ronald Reagan, who managed to win Evangelical votes without many tangible concessions. Perry seems more interested in waging war against Mitt Romney than against Wagner’s satanic spheres of influence. God, Perry said in Houston, “is a wise, wise God, and he’s wise enough to not be affiliated with any political party, or for that matter, he’s wise enough to not be affiliated with any man-made institutions.” That’s a text Perry should keep close to heart.

Evangelicals and politics is a given in America. What is new in the 2012 race is the emergence of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which was named by C. Peter Wagner, a Colorado Springs–based minister who writes books with titles like Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World and believes the world is in the grip of evil. Even the Capitol–or at least the Democratic side of it–is considered under demonic control. The NAR’s mission: to achieve dominion over the darkness through Christian activism in politics and beyond. (It’s no surprise that Mormons and Jews don’t fare well in this system.) As Wagner sees it, the Lord is calling 21st century apostles like him to do God’s will on earth.

As the Texas Observer’s Forrest Wilder detailed, several of the figures who organized and headlined Perry’s August prayer rally come from the NAR fringe. Alice Patterson, who stood with Perry during his sermon, has written that the Democratic Party is controlled by a “demonic structure.”

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So far, however, the Obama administration has not wanted to think big and seriously consider joint technology development. This is a mistake. Short-term differences between India and the United States caused their estrangement during the Cold War. A similar rift now would not be in the long-term interest of either country.  

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Although opening a regional branch and acquiring franchises has reinforced the position of al Qaeda and its ability to present itself as both the senior and the most capable Islamist militant group, it approaches new mergers warily. Al Qaeda learned a lesson about overreach in 2006, when it attempted to bring splinter groups from the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group under its umbrella. In an ill-calculated move, it portrayed the joining of the splinter factions as formal mergers with al Qaeda, which elicited heavy criticism from both groups’ leaders, who opposed unification with al Qaeda. This criticism has, however, minimally impacted al Qaeda’s appeal with its target audience — those already radicalized to its cause but not yet part of the organization — and other groups still seek to join under al Qaeda’s banner. Al Qaeda is nonetheless wary of attracting criticism from other militants, so it is reticent to accept groups that have not demonstrated unified leadership within their areas of operation.

Al Shabab, a Somali militant group, has openly declared its allegiance to bin Laden in an effort to join al Qaeda as a franchise. But infighting between al Shabab and another group with historical ties to al Qaeda, Hizbul Islam, has thus far kept al Qaeda from accepting al Shabab. Recent reports that Hizbul Islam and al Shabab have unified may see a change in al Qaeda’s position. Due to the significant ties between AQAP and al Shabab, any future merger would likely be negotiated with AQAP’s assistance.

Should al Shabab’s popularity with foreign fighters continue to rise, and the group become more active in external operations planning, al Qaeda’s hand may be forced. In 2009, a small group of Australian extremists (mostly of Somali descent) sought the permission of al Shabab leaders to carry out an attack in Australia. Although the plot was foiled, al Qaeda views this type of extraregional activity as potential brand competition. If al Shabab carries out a successful attack somewhere in the West, al Qaeda might more quickly move to bring the group under its umbrella, in order to control al Shabab’s projection of power.

With the exception of al Shabab, al Qaeda is unlikely to acquire any new subsidiaries in the immediate future. It largely ignores Southeast Asia, despite the ongoing efforts of Islamist militants there to reach out to the organization. Al Qaeda was once linked to a splinter group of the Indonesian organization Jemaah Islamiyah, but Jemaah Islamiyah has since been decimated by Indonesian counterterrorism efforts. Should ties again be strengthened between al Qaeda and Indonesian militants — many of whom are now coalescing around a relatively new group, Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid — the relationship would likely be limited to material support. A training group dubbed “al Qaeda in Aceh,” which was linked to Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid, adopted the al Qaeda name without formal permission and probably as a means of attracting material support. Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid has its own robust and regionally focused manhaj, making a formal merger unlikely.

In Lebanon, meanwhile, after several failed attempts to gain influence over groups there and in the broader region, al Qaeda seems to have settled for working with a group active in the area. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which are led by Saleh al-Qarawi, a senior figure with links to AQAP, AQI, and al Qaeda’s core, are reportedly based in Lebanon but have a wide operational ambit in the broader region. The group has regional autonomy but ultimately answers to the central al Qaeda organization for strategic direction. Given the inability of the group to gain dominance in the region, it is unlikely to become an official franchise.

In the near term, aside from any efforts to bring al Shabab on board, al Qaeda is likely to focus on its existing subsidiaries. As it comes under continued pressure in Pakistan, al Qaeda will primarily focus on making sure that the centralization of the organization’s actions is maintained through the external operations carried out by its subsidiaries and that the subsidiaries stay on message. Doing so will ensure that in the event the central leadership suffers greater losses, al Qaeda will have alternative means to project power and maintain influence.

Because al Qaeda will continue to encourage its branch and franchises to carry out attacks and will continue to use the reactions they provoke to pursue its goals, it is important that the strategic picture of al Qaeda accurately reflect the organization’s broad operating dynamics instead of wishful thinking about the central organization’s degraded capacity. A large attack tomorrow orchestrated by the central leadership would prove wrong any assessments of diminished capabilities. Meanwhile, the enduring goals that drive al Qaeda’s strategies and tactics, which have allowed the group to expand during the past decade of war, continue to be overlooked. Until al Qaeda’s interaction with its branch and franchises is better comprehended and taken into consideration, assessments of its capacity and organizational health will continue to fall short.

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The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security.

 

In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

 

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.

 

The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel’s existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years.

 

The Historic Egyptian Threat to Israel

The center of gravity of Israel’s strategic challenge was always Egypt. The largest Arab country, with about 80 million people, Egypt could field the most substantial army. More to the point, Egypt could absorb casualties at a far higher rate than Israel. The danger that the Egyptian army posed was that it could close with the Israelis and engage in extended, high-intensity combat that would break the back of Israel Defense Forces by imposing a rate of attrition that Israel could not sustain. If Israel were to be simultaneously engaged with Syria, dividing its forces and its logistical capabilities, it could run out of troops long before Egypt, even if Egypt were absorbing far more casualties.

 

The solution for the Israelis was to initiate combat at a time and place of their own choosing, preferably with surprise, as they did in 1956 and 1967. Failing that, as they did in 1973, the Israelis would be forced into a holding action they could not sustain and forced onto an offensive in which the risks of failure — and the possibility — would be substantial.

 

It was to the great benefit of Israel that Egyptian forces were generally poorly commanded and trained and that Egyptian war-fighting doctrine, derived from Britain and the Soviet Union, was not suited to the battle problem Israel posed. In 1967, Israel won its most complete victory over Egypt, as well as Jordan and Syria. It appeared to the Israelis that the Arabs in general and Egyptians in particular were culturally incapable of mastering modern warfare.

 

Thus it was an extraordinary shock when, just six years after their 1967 defeat, the Egyptians mounted a two-army assault across the Suez, coordinated with a simultaneous Syrian attack on the Golan Heights. Even more stunning than the assault was the operational security the Egyptians maintained and the degree of surprise they achieved. One of Israel’s fundamental assumptions was that Israeli intelligence would provide ample warning of an attack. And one of the fundamental assumptions of Israeli intelligence was that Egypt could not mount an attack while Israel maintained air superiority. Both assumptions were wrong. But the most important error was the assumption that Egypt could not, by itself, coordinate a massive and complex military operation. In the end, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians, but at the cost of the confidence they achieved in 1967 and a recognition that comfortable assumptions were impermissible in warfare in general and regarding Egypt in particular.

 

The Egyptians had also learned lessons. The most important was that the existence of the state of Israel did not represent a challenge to Egypt’s national interest. Israel existed across a fairly wide and inhospitable buffer zone — the Sinai Peninsula. The logistical problems involved in deploying a massive force to the east had resulted in three major defeats, while the single partial victory took place on much shorter lines of supply. Holding or taking the Sinai was difficult and possible only with a massive infusion of weapons and supplies from the outside, from the Soviet Union. This meant that Egypt was a hostage to Soviet interests. Egypt had a greater interest in breaking its dependency on the Soviets than in defeating Israel. It could do the former more readily than the latter.

 

The Egyptian recognition that its interests in Israel were minimal and the Israeli recognition that eliminating the potential threat from Egypt guaranteed its national security have been the foundation of the regional balance since 1978. All other considerations — Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest — were trivial in comparison. Geography — the Sinai — made this strategic distancing possible. So did American aid to Egypt. The substitution of American weapons for Soviet ones in the years after the treaty achieved two things. First, they ended Egypt’s dependency on the Soviets. Second, they further guaranteed Israel’s security by creating an Egyptian army dependent on a steady flow of spare parts and contractors from the United States. Cut the flow and the Egyptian army would be crippled.

 

The governments of Anwar Sadat and then Hosni Mubarak were content with this arrangement. The generation that came to power with Gamal Nasser had fought four wars with Israel and had little stomach for any more. They had proved themselves in October 1973 on the Suez and had no appetite to fight again or to send their sons to war. It is not that they created an oasis of prosperity in Egypt. But they no longer had to go to war every few years, and they were able, as military officers, to live good lives. What is now regarded as corruption was then regarded as just rewards for bleeding in four wars against the Israelis.

 

Mubarak and the Military

But now is 33 years later, and the world has changed. The generation that fought is very old. Today’s Egyptian military trains with the Americans, and its officers pass through the American command and staff and war colleges. This generation has close ties to the United States, but not nearly as close ties to the British-trained generation that fought the Israelis or to Egypt’s former patrons, the Russians. Mubarak has locked the younger generation, in their fifties and sixties, out of senior command positions and away from the wealth his generation has accumulated. They want him out.

 

For this younger generation, the idea of Gamal Mubarak being allowed to take over the presidency was the last straw. They wanted the elder Mubarak to leave not only because he had ambitions for his son but also because he didn’t want to leave after more than a quarter century of pressure. Mubarak wanted guarantees that, if he left, his possessions, in addition to his honor, would remain intact. If Gamal could not be president, then no one’s promise had value. So Mubarak locked himself into position.

 

The cameras love demonstrations, but they are frequently not the real story. The demonstrators who wanted democracy are a real faction, but they don’t speak for the shopkeepers and peasants more interested in prosperity than wealth. Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the West freezes when anything happens, dreading the hand of Osama bin Laden. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was once a powerful force, and it might become one again someday, but right now it is a shadow of its former self. What is going on now is a struggle within the military, between generations, for the future of the Egyptian military and therefore the heart of the Egyptian regime. Mubarak will leave, the younger officers will emerge, the constitution will make some changes and life will continue.

The Israelis will return to their complacency. They should not. The usual first warning of a heart attack is death. Among the fortunate, it is a mild coronary followed by a dramatic change of life style. The events in Egypt should be taken as a mild coronary and treated with great relief by Israel that it wasn’t worse.

 

Reconsidering the Israeli Position

I have laid out the reasons the 1978 treaty is in Egypt’s national interest. I have left out two pieces. The first is ideology. The ideological tenor of the Middle East prior to 1978 was secular and socialist. Today it is increasingly Islamist. Egypt is not immune to this trend, even if the Muslim Brotherhood should not be seen as the embodiment of that threat. Second, military technology, skills and terrain have made Egypt a defensive power for the past 33 years. But military technology and skills can change, on both sides. Egyptian defensiveness is built on assumptions of Israeli military capability and interest. As Israeli ideology becomes more militant and as its capabilities grow, Egypt may be forced to reconsider its strategic posture. As new generations of officers arise, who have heard of war only from their grandfathers, the fear of war declines and the desire for glory grows. Combine that with ideology in Egypt and Israel and things change. They won’t change quickly — a generation of military transformation will be needed once regimes have changed and the decisions to prepare for war have been made — but they can change.

 

Two things from this should strike the Israelis. The first is how badly they need peace with Egypt. It is easy to forget what things were like 40 years back, but it is important to remember that the prosperity of Israel today depends in part on the treaty with Egypt. Iran is a distant abstraction, with anotional bomb whose completion date keeps moving. Israel can fight many wars with Egypt and win. It need lose only one. The second lesson is that Israel should do everything possible to make certain that the transfer of power in Egypt is from Mubarak to the next generation of military officers and that these officers maintain their credibility in Egypt. Whether Israel likes it or not, there is an Islamist movement in Egypt. Whether the new generation controls that movement as the previous one did or whether they succumb to it is the existential question for Israel. If the treaty with Egypt is the foundation of Israel’s national security, it is logical that the Israelis should do everything possible to preserve it.

 

This was not the fatal heart attack. It might not even have been more than indigestion. But recent events in Egypt point to a long-term problem with Israeli strategy. Given the strategic and ideological crosscurrents in Egypt, it is in Israel’s national interest to minimize the intensity of the ideological and make certain that Israel is not perceived as a threat. In Gaza, for example, Israel and Egypt may have shared a common interest in containing Hamas, and the next generation of Egyptian officers may share it as well. But what didn’t materialize in the streets this time could in the future: an Islamist rising. In that case, the Egyptian military might find it in its interest to preserve its power by accommodating the Islamists. At this point, Egypt becomes the problem and not part of the solution.

 

Keeping Egypt from coming to this is the imperative of military dispassion. If the long-term center of gravity of Israel’s national security is at least the neutrality of Egypt, then doing everything to maintain that is a military requirement. That military requirement must be carried out by political means. That requires the recognition of priorities. The future of Gaza or the precise borders of a Palestinian state are trivial compared to preserving the treaty with Egypt. If it is found that a particular political strategy undermines the strategic requirement, then that political strategy must be sacrificed.

 

In other words, the worst-case scenario for Israel would be a return to the pre-1978 relationship with Egypt without a settlement with the Palestinians. That would open the door for a potential two-front war with an intifada in the middle. To avoid that, the ideological pressure on Egypt must be eased, and that means a settlement with the Palestinians on less-than-optimal terms. The alternative is to stay the current course and let Israel take its chances. The question is where the greater safety lies. Israel has assumed that it lies with confrontation with the Palestinians. That’s true only if Egypt stays neutral. If the pressure on the Palestinians destabilizes Egypt, it is not the most prudent course.

 

There are those in Israel who would argue that any release in pressure on the Palestinians will be met with rejection. If that is true, then, in my view, that is catastrophic news for Israel. In due course, ideological shifts and recalculations of Israeli intentions will cause a change in Egyptian policy. This will take several decades to turn into effective military force, and the first conflicts may well end in Israeli victory. But, as I have said before, it must always be remembered that no matter how many times Israel wins, it need only lose once to be annihilated.

 

To some it means that Israel should remain as strong as possible. To me it means that Israel should avoid rolling the dice too often, regardless of how strong it thinks it is. The Mubarak affair might open a strategic reconsideration of the Israeli position.

 

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BETWEEN EUPHORIA AND REALITY: EGYPT

 

On Feb. 11, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned. A military council was named to govern in his place. On Feb. 11-12, the crowds that had gathered in Tahrir Square celebrated Mubarak’s fall and the triumph of democracy in Egypt. On Feb. 13, the military council abolished the constitution and dissolved parliament, promising a new constitution to be ratified by a referendum and stating that the military would rule for six months, or until the military decides it’s ready to hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

 

What we see is that while Mubarak is gone, the military regime in which he served has dramatically increased its power. This isn’t incompatible with democratic reform. Organizing elections, political parties and candidates is not something that can be done quickly. If the military is sincere in its intentions, it will have to do these things. The problem is that if the military is insincere it will do exactly the same things. Six months is a long time, passions can subside and promises can be forgotten.

 

At this point, we simply don’t know what will happen. But we do know what has happened.

Mubarak is out of office, the military regime remains intact and it is stronger than ever. This is not surprising, but the reality of what has happened in the last few days and the interpretation that much of the world media has placed on it are startlingly different. Power rests with the regime, not with the crowds. And if one has closely followed and analysed the events and news, the crowds never had nearly as much power as claimed by the media.

 

Certainly, there was a large crowd concentrated in a square in Cairo, and there were demonstrations in other cities. But the crowd was limited. It never got to be more than 300,000 people or so in Tahrir Square, and while that’s a lot of people, it is nothing like the crowds that turned out during the 1989 risings in Eastern Europe or the 1979 revolution in Iran. Those were massive social convulsions in which millions came out onto the streets. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.

 

In a genuine revolution, the police and military cannot contain the crowds. In Egypt, the military chose not to confront the demonstrators, not because the military itself was split,but because it agreed with the demonstrators’ core demand: getting rid of Mubarak. And since the military was the essence of the Egyptian regime, it is odd to consider this a revolution.

 

The crowd in Cairo, as telegenic as it was, was the backdrop to the drama, not the main feature. The main drama began months ago when it became apparent that Mubarak intended to make his reform-minded 47-year-old son, Gamal, lacking in military service, president of Egypt. This represented a direct challenge to the regime. In a way, Mubarak was the one trying to overthrow the regime.

 

The Egyptian regime was founded in a coup led by Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser and modeled after that of Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, basing it on the military. It was intended to be a secular regime with democratic elements, but it would be guaranteed and ultimately controlled by the military. Nasser believed that the military was the most modern and progressive element of Egyptian society and that it had to be given the responsibility and power to modernize Egypt.

 

While Nasser took off his uniform, the military remained the bulwark of the regime. Each successive president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, while formally elected in elections of varying dubiousness, was an officer in the Egyptian military who had removed his uniform when he entered political life.

 

Mubarak’s decision to name his son represented a direct challenge to the Egyptian regime. Gamal Mubarak was not a career military officer, nor was he linked to the military’s high command, which had been the real power in the regime. Mubarak’s desire to have his son succeed him appalled and enraged the Egyptian military, the defender of the regime. If he were to be appointed, then the military regime would be replaced by, in essence, a hereditary monarchy — what had ruled Egypt before the military. Large segments of the military had been maneuvering to block Mubarak’s ambitions and, with increasing intensity, wanted to see Mubarak step down in order to pave the way for an orderly succession using the elections scheduled for September, elections designed to affirm the regime by selecting a figure acceptable to the senior military men. Mubarak’s insistence on Gamal and his unwillingness to step down created a crisis for the regime. The military feared the regime could not survive Mubarak’s ambitions.

 

This is the key point to understand. There is a critical distinction between the regime and Hosni Mubarak. The regime consisted — and consists — of complex institutions centered on the military but also including the civilian bureaucracy controlled by the military. Hosni Mubarak was the leader of the regime, successor to Nasser and Sadat, who over time came to distinguish his interests from those of the regime. He was increasingly seen as a threat to the regime, and the regime turned on him.

 

The demonstrators never called for the downfall of the regime. They demanded that Mubarak step aside. This was the same demand that was being made by many if not most officers in the military months before the crowds gathered in the streets. The military did not like the spectacle of the crowds, which is not the way the military likes to handle political matters. At the same time, paradoxically, the military welcomed the demonstrations, since they created a crisis that put the question of Mubarak’s future on the table. They gave the military an opportunity to save the regime and preserve its own interests.

 

The Egyptian military is opaque. It isn’t clear who was reluctant to act and who was eager. We would guess that the people who now make up the ruling military council were reluctant to act. They were of the same generation as Hosni Mubarak, owed their careers to him and were his friends. Younger officers, who had joined the military after 1973 and had trained with the Americans rather than the Soviets, were the likely agitators for blocking Mubarak’s selection of Gamal as his heir, but there were also senior officers publicly expressing reservations. Who was on what side is a guess. What is known is that many in the military opposed Gamal, would not push the issue to a coup, and then staged a coup designed to save the regime after the demonstrations in Cairo were under way.

 

That is the point. What happened was not a revolution. The demonstrators never brought down Mubarak, let alone the regime. What happened was a military coup that used the cover of protests to force Mubarak out of office in order to preserve the regime. When it became clear Feb. 10 that Mubarak would not voluntarily step down, the military staged what amounted to a coup to force his resignation. Once he was forced out of office, the military took over the existing regime by creating a military council and taking control of critical ministries. The regime was always centered on the military. What happened on Feb. 11 was that the military took direct control.

 

Again, as a guess, the older officers, friends of Mubarak, found themselves under pressure from other officers and the United States to act. They finally did, taking the major positions for themselves. The demonstrations were the backdrop for this drama and the justification for the military’s actions, but they were not a revolution in the streets. It was a military coup designed to preserve a military-dominated regime. And that was what the crowds were demanding as well.

 

We now face the question of whether the coup will turn into a revolution. The demonstrators demanded — and the military has agreed to hold — genuinely democratic elections and to stop repression. It is not clear that the new leaders mean what they have said or were simply saying it to get the crowds to go home. But there are deeper problems in the democratization of Egypt. First, Mubarak’s repression had wrecked civil society. The formation of coherent political parties able to find and run candidates will take a while. Second, the military is deeply enmeshed in running the country. Backing them out of that position, with the best will in the world, will require time. The military bought time Feb. 13, but it is not clear that six months is enough time, and it is not clear that, in the end, the military will want to leave the position it has held for more than half a century.

 

Of course, there is the feeling, as there was in 2009 with the Tehran demonstrations, that something unheard of has taken place, as U.S. President Barack Obama has implied. It is said to have something to do with Twitter and Facebook. We should recall that, in our time, genuine revolutions that destroyed regimes took place in 1989 and 1979, the latter even before there were PCs. Indeed, such revolutions go back to the 18th century. None of them required smartphones, and all of them were more thorough and profound than what has happened in Egypt so far. This revolution will not be “Twitterized.” The largest number of protesters arrived in Tahrir Square after the Internet was completely shut down.

 

The new government has promised to honor all foreign commitments, which obviously include the most controversial one in Egypt, the treaty with Israel. During the celebrations the evening of Feb. 11 and morning of Feb. 12, the two chants were about democracy and Palestine. While the regime committed itself to maintaining the treaty with Israel, the crowds in the square seemed to have other thoughts, not yet clearly defined. But then, it is not clear that the demonstrators in the square represent the wishes of 80 million Egyptians. For all the chatter about the Egyptian people demanding democracy, the fact is that hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations, relative to the number of Egyptians there are, and no one really knows how the Egyptian people would vote on this issue.

 

The Egyptian government is hardly in a position to confront Israel, even if it wanted to. The Egyptian army has mostly American equipment and cannot function if the Americans don’t provide spare parts or contractors to maintain that equipment. There is no Soviet Union vying to replace the United States today. Re-equipping and training a military the size of Egypt’s is measured in decades, not weeks. Egypt is not going to war any time soon. But then the new rulers have declared that all prior treaties — such as with Israel — will remain in effect.

 

What Was Achieved?

Therefore, we face this reality. The Egyptian regime is still there, still controlled by old generals. They are committed to the same foreign policy as the man they forced out of office. They have promised democracy, but it is not clear that they mean it. If they mean it, it is not clear how they would do it, certainly not in a timeframe of a few months. Indeed, this means that the crowds may re-emerge demanding more rapid democratization, depending on who organized the crowds in the first place and what their intentions are now.

 

It is not that nothing happened in Egypt, and it is not that it isn’t important. It is simply that what happened was not what the media portrayed but a much more complex process, most of it not viewable on TV. Certainly, there was nothing unprecedented in what was achieved or how it was achieved. It is not even clear what was achieved. Nor is it clear that anything that has happened changes Egyptian foreign or domestic policy. It is not even clear that those policies could be changed in practical terms regardless of intent.

 

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe.

 

 Without trying to be killjoys now, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

 

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.

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