The Committee to Nuke Elysium

So who are the players in Egypt’s drama? Sayyid Qutb, decades dead, is one: an angry young man sent from Egypt to America by friends who wanted him to loosen up, he underwent instead a kind of transformation. His journey through early 20th Century America as a man who was obviously not white, and who was inclined towards a conservative and faith-based perception, so appalled him that he crafted a synthesis of modern revolutionary ideas and Islam which effectively took the evils of capitalism as the evils of unrighteousness and substituted the deity for socialism or anarchy. That synthesis is one of the foundations of modern Islamism (and the Muslim Brotherhood), and of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Above all, their strength is in a clear, simple rhetoric and a pre-existing power structure.

Democrats, for sure: basic assumption is that they’re urban and educated middle class people, cosmopolitan in outlook and desperate for prosperity and gentle social progression (but not too much of it). A powerful, intellectual minority, but not a power base in and of themselves. And nuance plays badly in revolution.
The army, inevitably: classically the poorer and less well-educated people from rural and urban-poor backgrounds. Are they largely secular or moderate, or do they tend towards the Muslim Brotherhood? The officer class may have sympathies with the democrats or may be vested in Mubarak’s regime, depending on their own culpability and their assessment of the threat from within.
The rural and urban lower classes – farmers and manual workers. The ‘real people’. Historically – in other cases, which may or may not be similar – they know when they can’t take any more, and what they need – but which way will they break? Absent a charismatic and powerful leader emerging from this group and creating his or her own structures, they will be channelled by a nearby, compelling narrative. The slogan will be akin to ‘food, peace, freedom’, and the new regime will have either to delivery very fast or suppress the inevitable cries of outrage and betrayal. This is where the Russian February Revolution fell and the October Revolution changed the course of Russia from nascent distributed democracy to one-party state.
External forces – the US, EU, Israel, Pakistan, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the other Arab states. All or any of the above may seek to influence events and any such attempt will change what happens, but not necessarily in a predictable way.
So, yes, Mubarak’s regime is nasty. But given Egypt’s place in the world and the powers in play, it’s not clear to me that its fall is going to take us anywhere good. Given that it’s happening, of course, we will have to be in the mix, trying to get an outcome which suits us. The trouble is, again looking at history, our power brokers will prefer a strongman to a democrat vulnerable to being unseated by a religious ideologue. Someone, somewhere, is even now submitting a recommendation to back such a person over and above a genuine democrat, and if that course is followed we will yet again be in the business of supporting a monster for fear of a worse one, and the reputation of the developed northwest will sink further in the eyes of the Arab world – and, indeed, anyone else who’s paying attention.