Egypt’s unfinished revolution is going through rapid developments. A dizzying array of class forces are engaged in a struggle whose outcome will determine the fate of the country. The military’s removal of Mohamed Morsi followed days of mass protests demanding that he step down from the presidency. The huge protests, numbering in the millions, were by some accounts even larger than the ones that led to the overthrow of U.S. client Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
On July 3, the army’s top commander, Gen. Abdul Fatah Saeed al-Sisi, removed Morsi from power and appointed Hazem Al Beblawi as interim prime minister. Beblawi has since formed a cabinet that will serve until the next elections. He has also promoted al-Sisi to first deputy prime minister in addition to keeping him in his post as defense minister. Among other noteworthy members of Beblawi’s cabinet is Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who will serve under the interim president, Adly Mansour.
Given the long history of U.S. invasions, occupations and other forms of intervention in the region, one must ask whether this was a U.S.-engineered coup. To answer this question, it is helpful to take a broad look at variations over time in the strength of U.S. influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
U.S. role in the Middle East and North Africa
In the period immediately following the overthrow of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. imperialism saw its path to global dominance unimpeded. From the end of WWII through the 1970s, many formerly colonized countries around the world had won their independence through national liberation movements, often with significant support from the socialist bloc. Now, U.S. imperialist strategists thought, there was nothing stopping the U.S. from bringing those countries back into its sphere of influence.
But the Iraq war showed the limits of U.S. power even after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. What Washington expected to be a “cakewalk” occupation of Iraq in 2003 turned into an eight-year war, with the outcome anything but a resounding victory for the U.S. To prevent a catastrophic defeat, the U.S. was forced to strike deals and form alliances with forces that had been fighting against its occupation. And the end result was far from what imperialism had hoped for: a client regime similar to the Gulf monarchies.
Today, the Iraqi government is playing a significant role in supporting the Assad government in Syria, in opposition to the U.S.-supported rebels. Baghdad is also signing large oil contracts with China, not handing all the mega-deals to Exxon-Mobil and other oil giants. This is not what the U.S. government had envisioned for post-occupation Iraq.
After 12 years of occupation, the U.S. position in Afghanistan is certainly not that of a confident victor that has crushed the resistance of a poor country with limited resources. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the U.S. is not seeking an outright victory, which is out of reach, but avoidance of the appearance of defeat. Repeated overtures to what the U.S. hopes are the more conciliatory elements of the Taliban are evidence of the U.S. challenge.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have once again shattered the myth that the U.S. Empire is invincible. And this has had reverberations far beyond the region. Even client states on whose loyalty Washington could once count on are now more willing to go their own way sometimes. While not severing their subservient ties to the U.S., some of these client states are jockeying for regional influence, competing against other states. At times they are out of synch with the U.S. They see no reason to perfectly align their policies with those of U.S. imperialism. Whether or not the U.S. will get its way is now a question, not a foregone conclusion.
Hence, we see Turkey, a member of NATO, willing to mix it up with Israel, attempting to regain some of the lost influence of the days of the Ottoman Empire. Similarly, we see reactionary Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar competing for influence in Egypt and within Syria’s right-wing opposition. The recent election of Ahmad Assi Jarba as the leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, for example, is seen as a victory for Saudi Arabia and a defeat for Qatar, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both U.S. client states.
It is in this context that we should analyze the U.S. role in Egypt. Contrary to what has at times been stated, there is no indication that the July 3 military takeover in Egypt was a U.S. initiative. Reported phone contacts between Egypt’s top military commander, General Al-Sisi, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in the week preceding the coup were more likely Sisi reassuring Hegel that the military had matters under control, not an exchange of operational plans.
Morsi and the U.S.
There is no question that, in his one year in power as president, Mohamed Morsi worked well with the U.S. Morsi played a key role in brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas in late 2012, when Israel and the U.S. were in desperate need of a graceful way out of the conflict, after their latest massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
In the conflict in Syria, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were solidly behind the U.S. effort to overthrow the Syrian state. In addition to making statements like: “The Egyptian people and the army are supporting the Syrian uprising,” on June 15, Morsi broke diplomatic relations with Syria and shut down the Syrian embassy in Cairo. Morsi even encouraged Egyptians to go to Syria to be martyred in the fight against Syrian troops.
Regarding domestic affairs, the Brotherhood’s single most decisive act was passing a constitution that was strongly opposed by all secular forces. The constitution trampled the rights of women and laid the basis for the oppression of religious minorities—10 percent of Egypt’s population of 85 million are Christians. Far from creating a consensus of the wide array of forces that overthrew the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, the Brotherhood codified its own reactionary social policies into the constitution. And Morsi did nothing to challenge or destabilize Egypt’s capitalist economy and the stranglehold of international financial institutions over it.
So Washington would have had no incentive to orchestrate a military coup to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood. All indications are that Morsi’s removal was the initiative of the Egyptian military, which saw an opportunity to take advantage of mass uprisings against Morsi to promote their own agenda. Washington could live with Morsi, but it obviously has no problems with Egypt’s military—a military it has propped up with at least $1.3 billion a year.
Like all observers of the Egyptian revolution, from the left and the right, the U.S. cannot predict the future, given the dynamic process of class struggle unfolding in Egypt. But the developments following July 3 have been as promising for the U.S. as they have been troubling for revolutionaries. The U.S. hopes, as do the Egyptian generals, that the removal of Morsi will usher in a period of reestablishing control, moving towards the repression of the mass movement.
Since the military removed the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Morsi from power on July 3, supporters have staged protests and sit-ins in many cities across Egypt. On July 16, seven supporters of ousted president Morsi were killed by the police. A week earlier, on July 9, as 1,000 people protested outside the Republican Guard headquarters, over 50 protesters were killed by the security forces. An estimated 99 Brotherhood supporters have been killed to date. The Brotherhood has called for an uprising against the military.
The bloody military repression of the Brotherhood supporters is to be strongly condemned by all progressive forces. The repression may be directly pointed at the Brotherhood today, but the violent repression may well expand to many other forces in the months to come. There is no question that the military would like nothing more than to crush the mass movement in all its manifestations, send people home and return things to the days of the Mubarak regime, albeit without the person of Mubarak and with some superficial reforms.
International reaction
Reaction of various states to the military removal of Morsi has been mixed and confusing. The United States and the European Union have expressed the formally required concerns and encouraged a swift return to democracy, while refusing to call it a coup or condemn the repression. Diplomatic language aside, they have been essentially supportive of Egypt’s military. Saudi Arabia and most Gulf monarchies have been equally supportive.
Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, has been enthusiastically supportive of the overthrow of the Brotherhood, given Morsi’s overt support for the Syrian rebels and the fact that Syria’s Brotherhood is one of the main forces that receives Western (and Gulf Arab) support. On this issue, independent Syria and one of the key funders of its opposition rebels, Saudi Arabia, have the same position. Unlike Saudi Arabia and others, Qatar, another reactionary Gulf monarchy, which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood both in Egypt and Syria, has condemned the coup.
Turkey has taken the strongest position on condemnation of the “unacceptable coup.” In his July 19 statements, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan chided the West: “Those who extol democracy when they meet with us, saying ‘one must not compromise on democracy’, we want to see their backbone.” Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a history quite distinct from that of the Muslim Brotherhood and lacks an ideology with regional Islamic aspirations. However, similar to the Brotherhood, the AKP serves the class role of providing a religious, pseudo-independent façade for a capitalist client state, but one of which the military is not supportive.
If not U.S.-engineered, what motivated the coup?
It is not that the military wants to rule directly. What al-Sisi and other military commanders want to do is to channel mass protests in a direction that is safe for the system. The leadership of individuals like ElBaradei, the former head of the IAEA and a person of international prominence, is an acceptable alternative for the military, as is the case for various other “democratic” politicians and technocrats.
But the fact is that a capitalist politician will not be able to resolve the fundamental problems of society. Egypt’s debt is a staggering 88 percent of its GDP—that is, 88 percent of the value of all the goods and services produced in the country for an entire year. The problem is not that Morsi mismanaged the economy. Mubarak’s regime was already deeply in debt and the economy already in dire straits. With the collapse in tourism revenues and significant capital flight over the past two years, it is not good management that can solve the problems of society for the working class.
It will take a revolutionary path, led by socialists, to solve the contradictions society faces. What could begin to address the economic problems would be the refusal to pay the international financial institutions, and expropriation of capital to benefit Egypt’s working class. And that is not something that the “right” person elected to office can do. Large loans from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies will not fundamentally change the state of affairs.
There are several possibilities for the course of future developments. It is possible that the crisis for the ruling class will continue. Elections could go forward and whichever capitalist candidate gets elected will not be able to meet the people’s demands, no matter how democratic the elections and no matter how many political rights are enjoyed by the population. And the masses could be back in the streets. This, from a revolutionary perspective, is the best possibility, because it leaves open the possibility of the revolution advancing further.
There is also a possibility that the military and the old ruling elite can manage to re-establish the old order and repress the movement. For instance, if the Muslim Brotherhood engages in a long, intense struggle against the military, protracted civil war could be possible.
A long confrontation with the military on one side and Brotherhood supporters on the other could yield a situation where the people in the streets right now will be sidelined. And, of course, there are many other possibilities for future developments, as class struggle is a dynamic process.
Lessons of the struggle in Egypt
Revolutionary socialists, struggling to make the working class the ruling class, must always learn the appropriate lessons from each revolutionary movement, in victory and in defeat. We can learn many lessons from the Egyptian revolution. But the key lesson is that we should strive to make sure that the vanguard party already exists by the time a revolutionary situation comes around.
The vanguard party, a party with skills and consciousness that can exercise its leadership, must already have been formed through struggle because by the time a revolutionary situation occurs, there is usually not enough time. Building a revolutionary working-class party is the task of revolutionary socialists not just during revolutionary times, but most critically during non-revolutionary periods.
In Egypt, extreme repression under the Mubarak dictatorship made the formation of a revolutionary vanguard party extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, Egypt has now gone through over two years of revolutionary upheaval with the possibility of this period extending into the future. The continuation of the revolutionary period could make possible the forging of a revolutionary party that will bring together the struggle of the masses with a working-class program.
It is possible that revolutionary alternatives could form within the lower ranks of the military, either the lower ranks of the officer corps or the rank and file or both. There have been many such examples in history, none more relevant than the Free Officers movement in Egypt itself. The Free Officers took power in 1952, led a nationalist revolution that became a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world, and, under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. As long as the Egyptian masses remain active in the streets, the possibilities for revolutionary achievement are endless.
