The Plan: Erase Arab Spring

The way it works is that things happen. Events take place. We read about them online or in the newspaper. Sometimes we are told that there is a pattern unfolding, but usually the news is presented without much rhyme or reason. Holders of great wealth and the large governments that bolster such interests prefer that the "deep politics" stay buried.

Reading this morning two stories in the New York Times national edition -- Robert F. Worth's "Egypt is Arena for Influence of Arab Rivals" and David Kirkpatrick's "Egypt Leaders’ Transition Plan Meets With Swift Criticism" -- it's pretty obvious what the plan is: Return to the days before the Arab Spring.

A lot is being made recently about the sudden decline in influence of the Qataris, who backed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and took the lead in organizing jihadists to fight in Syria, and the return of Saudi Arabia as the dominant regional player. I think this is a sidebar.

The Arab Spring is about more than monarchical Gulf states jockeying for influence and the electoral prowess of long-repressed Islamist organizations; it's about the aspirations of the young for gainful employment and a seat at the table where decisions are made. None of these aspirations are being met nor will they be. Take a look at the new Egyptian prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi. He's a neoliberal economist. This is from David Kirkpatrick's story:

The new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, is a prominent economist who served as finance minister under an earlier interim government. A founding member of the Social Democratic Party, he has criticized former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi as failing to move fast enough to open up the economy, reform Egypt’s bloated and unaffordable subsidy programs and provide for the poor. 

Mr. Beblawi, 77, is ideally suited to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund over a package of changes tied to a pending $4.8 billion loan, a deal that seemed out of reach after Mr. Morsi’s ouster but is still considered essential to save the economy. With a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, Mr. Beblawi has written three books on Middle East economics, worked as a senior official of the United Nations and advised the Arab Monetary Fund. He resigned after four months as finance minister under the previous military-led transitional government — after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster — after soldiers shot dozens of mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators and the generals blamed them for scaring their troops. 

Before the current crackdown, Mr. Beblawi had also welcomed the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak as providing an opportunity for Islamists to enter the democratic process. “The positive thing that resulted from this was that it gave a chance for the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam, which have always been persecuted and wrongfully treated for a long time,” he said in an interview published last month in an English language-newspaper here.

So this is the narrative we're being fed now: "Arab Spring meant that it was time to let political Islam have a shot at governance. We gave it a year, several if you factor in the transition. Now it's time to go back to the way things were." This is what the leaders in Jeddah and Tel Aviv and D.C. and Brussels are banking on. And it seems to me to be awfully weak. Certainly they must know that this is not going to fly with the masses. But I suppose that their calculation is that the only popular forces organized enough to pose a problem are the Islamist parties. (The holy warriors of Al Qaeda are in the pocket of the GCC member states, so no problem there.) The youthful masses who want economic justice and clean government but lack organization can be dealt with by force. Crackdown hard and they'll shut up and fall into line. This is the plan apparently. And I don't think it's a wise one.

If you want to send an email to Congress and the President, telling them to obey the law and call a coup a coup and cut aid to Egypt, you can go to the Just Foreign Policy web site.