Egyptian army has issued a statement saying it will not use force against protesters, in line with the prediction in my first post.
To be clear, I'm not buying a plane ticket to go visit on this basis. The outcome will remain unknown for a long time to come, and there is still a huge potential for a bloodbath. To reiterate, it's possible that some military forces will splinter from the main group and follow other orders. Or that the entire military could later turn hostile toward civilians as developments unfold. But for the time being, the army seems to be making official what we've inferred from its behavior since day one of its deployment in the cities (last Friday), which is that it's not going to massacre its own people. Cairo just ain't Hama.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Getting with Reality
For the first time since unrest began, Egyptian state TV is broadcasting scenes from Tahrir Square.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
From the Front Lines
Recommend that everyone follow postings by Steven Cook, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and husband of a SAIS classmate of mine. He's in the right place at the right time to provide excellent insight:
"At this point, there is very little Washington can do to shape events in a decisive way."
"At this point, there is very little Washington can do to shape events in a decisive way."
No Time for Blame Game
Pro-Israel friends have been quick to lambaste President Obama for his handling of the situation. I agree there have been serious missteps and there remains room for improvement in the Administration's posture and actions. But I've also been wondering WWWD - What Would W (Dubya) Do?
Bush 43 has received credit from some quarters this week for setting in motion a dynamic that may have directly contributed to the Arab uprisings against autocratic regimes we've seen in recent weeks. I certainly agree with Abrams' conclusion, that "supporting freedom is the best policy of all." But if the Egypt uprising had taken place during Bush's term, how would the Bush White House have responded differently than Obama has? Would Bush have immediately sided with the demonstrators and called on Mubarak to relinquish power? Would he have announced a suspension in US military aid until the protesters' demands for democratic reforms were met? Abrams rightly criticizes Obama for giving up on the oppressed in the Arab world, but stops short of concrete recommendations that both uphold universal human rights and also promote the vital national security interests of the United States.
Should we leave it at "we'll never know?" As far as I'm concerned, retirement doesn't disqualify Bush from opining even today - what is his advice for implementing the Bush Doctrine in the case of Egypt facing us today? Obama should not stand on ceremony: pick up the phone and ask 43 (and even 42 ... maybe) to drop by the old stomping grounds for some group brainstorming. He's going to need all the help he can get.
Bush 43 has received credit from some quarters this week for setting in motion a dynamic that may have directly contributed to the Arab uprisings against autocratic regimes we've seen in recent weeks. I certainly agree with Abrams' conclusion, that "supporting freedom is the best policy of all." But if the Egypt uprising had taken place during Bush's term, how would the Bush White House have responded differently than Obama has? Would Bush have immediately sided with the demonstrators and called on Mubarak to relinquish power? Would he have announced a suspension in US military aid until the protesters' demands for democratic reforms were met? Abrams rightly criticizes Obama for giving up on the oppressed in the Arab world, but stops short of concrete recommendations that both uphold universal human rights and also promote the vital national security interests of the United States.
Should we leave it at "we'll never know?" As far as I'm concerned, retirement doesn't disqualify Bush from opining even today - what is his advice for implementing the Bush Doctrine in the case of Egypt facing us today? Obama should not stand on ceremony: pick up the phone and ask 43 (and even 42 ... maybe) to drop by the old stomping grounds for some group brainstorming. He's going to need all the help he can get.
What It Means for Israel
At the annual fundraiser dinner for one Houston area Jewish day school yesterday, What It Means for Israel was the question everyone was asking. The answer is "everything."
As a senior official told the New York Times, "For the United States, Egypt is the keystone of its Middle East policy,” a senior official said. “For Israel, it’s the whole arch.” More from the article:
A Hostile Egypt with Sinai Would Turn Back the Clock 38 Years
The last time Israel and Egypt battled it out was in 1973. Because Israel had captured the strategic Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in 1967, the Egyptians began their attack from the west side of the Suez Canal, one of the best anti-tank barriers in the world. Moreover, the front line at the Suez Canal was about 130 miles from the Israeli border, with transit through the desert possible through only a few mountain passes. Egypt sent about 1,600 tanks across the canal and quickly overwhelmed the sparse Israeli forces defending the vaunted Bar Lev Line of fortifications.
The key takeaway from this history lesson is that the strategic depth of the Sinai Peninsula bought Israel enough time to mobilize its reserves and deploy them against the Egyptians before they could continue toward Israel. But today the strategic situation is far different. Sinai again belongs to Egypt. Although the peace treaty limits the number of forces that Egypt can deploy there (250 tanks in the western-most zone, called Zone A in the following graphic), Egypt would enjoy a huge advantage should it ever decide to violate the treaty and advance armored forces toward the border with Israel. It is in this context that Israel apparently scrutinized with a wary eye today's media reports of Egyptian forces moving into Sharm el-Sheikh at the southernmost tip of Sinai. Sharm is outside the zone in which Egypt is allowed to maintain army forces, in a zone for UN personnel and Egyptian civil police armed with light weapons only.
Far From Combat Ready in South
Israel's disadvantaged strategic posture toward Egypt is not limited to Egyptian control of Sinai. Its entire national security doctrine is based on the premise that Egypt is out of the fight. It maintains very few combat-ready forces facing the Egyptian frontier, and Israel's military plans and training probably very rarely if ever deal with potential war with Egypt. Instead, in recent years, Israel's Southern Command has devoted nearly all its attention and resources to the situation in Gaza. Skirmishes like the June 2006 attack by Hamas gunmen on an Israeli military position that led to the (ongoing) captivity of soldier Gilad Shalit, and the persistent rocket fire launched from Gaza against Sderot and Ashkelon- which was not halted by the 3-week Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2008 - have been the focus of Southern Command in recent years. It's in no condition to battle Egyptian tanks, even if Israel did still hold the buffer zone of the Sinai Peninsula.
To bring it back from the history lesson to the Big Picture - the question of what does it mean for Israel goes way beyond number of tanks and distances from the border. It's no exaggeration to say that Israel would not be the Israel we know today without the peace with Egypt. More from the NYT article:
Bottom line: if Israel's security and prosperity are dependent on keeping 80 million Egyptians under dictatorship, and if this dictatorship (like others before it and others currently existing in the Arab world) is destined to fall, then Israel has a big problem.
As a senior official told the New York Times, "For the United States, Egypt is the keystone of its Middle East policy,” a senior official said. “For Israel, it’s the whole arch.” More from the article:
For the military here, a serious change in Egypt means a strategic shift in planning. Giora Eiland, a former national security advisor and senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said even if Egypt did not cancel its peace treaty with Israel tomorrow or in five years, a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood would mean “you can’t exclude the possibility of a war with Egypt. During the last 30 years, when we had any military confrontation, whether in the first or second Lebanon wars, the intifadas, in all those events we could be confident that Egypt would not try to intervene militarily.”
Understanding the military equation means going back a few decades to recall the balance of power before the Israel-Egypt peace treaty was signed in 1979.
The last time Israel and Egypt battled it out was in 1973. Because Israel had captured the strategic Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in 1967, the Egyptians began their attack from the west side of the Suez Canal, one of the best anti-tank barriers in the world. Moreover, the front line at the Suez Canal was about 130 miles from the Israeli border, with transit through the desert possible through only a few mountain passes. Egypt sent about 1,600 tanks across the canal and quickly overwhelmed the sparse Israeli forces defending the vaunted Bar Lev Line of fortifications.
The key takeaway from this history lesson is that the strategic depth of the Sinai Peninsula bought Israel enough time to mobilize its reserves and deploy them against the Egyptians before they could continue toward Israel. But today the strategic situation is far different. Sinai again belongs to Egypt. Although the peace treaty limits the number of forces that Egypt can deploy there (250 tanks in the western-most zone, called Zone A in the following graphic), Egypt would enjoy a huge advantage should it ever decide to violate the treaty and advance armored forces toward the border with Israel. It is in this context that Israel apparently scrutinized with a wary eye today's media reports of Egyptian forces moving into Sharm el-Sheikh at the southernmost tip of Sinai. Sharm is outside the zone in which Egypt is allowed to maintain army forces, in a zone for UN personnel and Egyptian civil police armed with light weapons only.
Far From Combat Ready in South
Israel's disadvantaged strategic posture toward Egypt is not limited to Egyptian control of Sinai. Its entire national security doctrine is based on the premise that Egypt is out of the fight. It maintains very few combat-ready forces facing the Egyptian frontier, and Israel's military plans and training probably very rarely if ever deal with potential war with Egypt. Instead, in recent years, Israel's Southern Command has devoted nearly all its attention and resources to the situation in Gaza. Skirmishes like the June 2006 attack by Hamas gunmen on an Israeli military position that led to the (ongoing) captivity of soldier Gilad Shalit, and the persistent rocket fire launched from Gaza against Sderot and Ashkelon- which was not halted by the 3-week Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2008 - have been the focus of Southern Command in recent years. It's in no condition to battle Egyptian tanks, even if Israel did still hold the buffer zone of the Sinai Peninsula.
To bring it back from the history lesson to the Big Picture - the question of what does it mean for Israel goes way beyond number of tanks and distances from the border. It's no exaggeration to say that Israel would not be the Israel we know today without the peace with Egypt. More from the NYT article:
Dan Schueftan, director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, said thanks to its treaty with Egypt, Israel had reduced its defense expenditure from 23 percent of its gross national product in the 1970s to 9 percent today and made serious cuts in its army. The relationship with Egypt also allowed Israel to withdraw from Gaza in 2005 since Egypt covered Gaza from the south.
Bottom line: if Israel's security and prosperity are dependent on keeping 80 million Egyptians under dictatorship, and if this dictatorship (like others before it and others currently existing in the Arab world) is destined to fall, then Israel has a big problem.
el Baradei reportedly assuming leadership
al Jazeera reporting that el Baradei is en route to Tahrir Square to become leader of the protests, should know more later this hour.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Speaking of SAIS ...
Don't always agree w my former teacher, but this one is good: Rebellion in the Land of the Pharaohs http://on.wsj.com/e35044
Opening Thoughts: Egypt 2011
During the last few days, numerous friends have asked me to analyze the situation in Egypt and its ramifications. It's nice to know that so many remember that, in addition to my 13 year career in the energy industry, I am indeed educated in Middle Eastern affairs, with a masters degree in the field from Johns Hopkins University. Especially gratifying since I'm still paying off that freakin student loan!
For many who follow the Middle East and know its history, the recent events in Egypt and elsewhere are truly thrilling - both in a good way and a bad way. Good in the sense that there is hope for people living under autocratic rule to - very occasionally -- rise up and assert their desire to be free. Bad in the sense that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and history is full of examples of noble acts that spawned unintended, harmful consequences. The stakes that ride on Middle East stability are as high as stakes can be.
First some perspective - the events in Egypt are unprecedented since the military regime seized control in 1952. There is something inspiring about watching the Egyptian masses - at least the middle class ones - moving to toss out an octogenarian dictator who became leader during the first Reagan Administration, and whose regime took power one year before President Eisenhower took office.
Today Egypt and the Middle East are in completely uncharted territory; the outcome for Egypt and region is unknown and will remain so for a long time to come. Apart from the very important human dimension, the outcome has enormous repercussions for Middle Eastern stability, which of course strongly influences the price of oil, which in turn affects the global economy and our way of life. Thus the events set in motion in Tunis and Cairo can and will affect Middle America - even if you never get off your couch.
The most direct issue is what happens to Egypt - leader of the Arab world, 80 million strong. As for the short term course of events, I think it will be difficult for President Mubarak to remain in power because I don’t think the army will crush the demonstrators. This is the subject of this first post.
"A Middle Eastern dictator's army that hesitates to crush an uprising?" you ask. "Are you totally ignorant of history?" Yes, there are so many apparent analogs in modern Arab history that at first glance seem instructive: Didn't the late Syrian President Hafez al Assad lay waste to the entire city of Hama to crush an uprising in 1982? Didn't Saddam massacre both Shia and Kurds to put down an insurrection after the 1991 Desert Storm? Didn't even the pro-Western King Hussein wipe out his opponents during Black September of 1970?
On close inspection, none of these other actions (massacres) really match the situation in Egypt today. First of all a technical point - each one of those insurgencies took place in certain cities, mostly on the periphery of the subject nation. Thus the regimes in those other cases were dealing with geographically limited insurgencies, making their containment far more feasible. In Egypt it is everywhere through and through, especially in the capital Cairo. But the far more important difference is in the nature of the relationship between the population rising up and the military being ordered to oppose it.
At Hama, al-Assad was being challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood, which considered his own Alawite sect to be apostates and sought to eliminate his ruling Baath Party. The Kurds and Shia that rose up against Saddam in 1991 had every intention of seceding from Baghdad's rule, thus splitting Iraq apart, separating Saddam's khams (tribal group) from Iraq's oil wealth and possibly threatening Baghdad as well. Saddam was a master at playing the 3 main ethnic/religious groups against one another, and his Sunni beneficiaries in the military and security services appreciated the mortal danger facing them should the insurgencies have prevailed. And in Black September, the Jordanian military put down an insurgency undertaken by the PLO - Palestinians from the west side of the Jordan River that were attempting to bring down the Kingdom of Jordan.
In all these other cases, the protagonists were from specific sects, nationalities or ethnic groups, while the armed forces were dominated by the regime’s own ethnic group. Those regimes and the military commanders saw the insurgents as aiming to kill them and their families - i.e. it was personal.
Obviously these precedents don't match the situation in Egypt, where the demonstrators are not from a different nationality, sect or ethnic group. In fact, they're exactly the same as the rank and file conscripts in the army, which Mubarak sent into the city streets on Friday. While high ranking officers possibly stand to lose benefits, graft and other perks of the job, that will not likely be enough to convince thousands of ground troops to open fire on their own civilian brothers and sisters - provided that the demonstrators remain peaceful and don't attack the troops. This is not to say that certain military units might not splinter and follow commanders in some cases that sing from a different sheet. Just saying that it appears unlikely that Mubarak would be obeyed throughout the chain of command if he ordered a Hama-type operation.
For many who follow the Middle East and know its history, the recent events in Egypt and elsewhere are truly thrilling - both in a good way and a bad way. Good in the sense that there is hope for people living under autocratic rule to - very occasionally -- rise up and assert their desire to be free. Bad in the sense that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and history is full of examples of noble acts that spawned unintended, harmful consequences. The stakes that ride on Middle East stability are as high as stakes can be.
First some perspective - the events in Egypt are unprecedented since the military regime seized control in 1952. There is something inspiring about watching the Egyptian masses - at least the middle class ones - moving to toss out an octogenarian dictator who became leader during the first Reagan Administration, and whose regime took power one year before President Eisenhower took office.
Today Egypt and the Middle East are in completely uncharted territory; the outcome for Egypt and region is unknown and will remain so for a long time to come. Apart from the very important human dimension, the outcome has enormous repercussions for Middle Eastern stability, which of course strongly influences the price of oil, which in turn affects the global economy and our way of life. Thus the events set in motion in Tunis and Cairo can and will affect Middle America - even if you never get off your couch.
The most direct issue is what happens to Egypt - leader of the Arab world, 80 million strong. As for the short term course of events, I think it will be difficult for President Mubarak to remain in power because I don’t think the army will crush the demonstrators. This is the subject of this first post.
"A Middle Eastern dictator's army that hesitates to crush an uprising?" you ask. "Are you totally ignorant of history?" Yes, there are so many apparent analogs in modern Arab history that at first glance seem instructive: Didn't the late Syrian President Hafez al Assad lay waste to the entire city of Hama to crush an uprising in 1982? Didn't Saddam massacre both Shia and Kurds to put down an insurrection after the 1991 Desert Storm? Didn't even the pro-Western King Hussein wipe out his opponents during Black September of 1970?
On close inspection, none of these other actions (massacres) really match the situation in Egypt today. First of all a technical point - each one of those insurgencies took place in certain cities, mostly on the periphery of the subject nation. Thus the regimes in those other cases were dealing with geographically limited insurgencies, making their containment far more feasible. In Egypt it is everywhere through and through, especially in the capital Cairo. But the far more important difference is in the nature of the relationship between the population rising up and the military being ordered to oppose it.
At Hama, al-Assad was being challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood, which considered his own Alawite sect to be apostates and sought to eliminate his ruling Baath Party. The Kurds and Shia that rose up against Saddam in 1991 had every intention of seceding from Baghdad's rule, thus splitting Iraq apart, separating Saddam's khams (tribal group) from Iraq's oil wealth and possibly threatening Baghdad as well. Saddam was a master at playing the 3 main ethnic/religious groups against one another, and his Sunni beneficiaries in the military and security services appreciated the mortal danger facing them should the insurgencies have prevailed. And in Black September, the Jordanian military put down an insurgency undertaken by the PLO - Palestinians from the west side of the Jordan River that were attempting to bring down the Kingdom of Jordan.
In all these other cases, the protagonists were from specific sects, nationalities or ethnic groups, while the armed forces were dominated by the regime’s own ethnic group. Those regimes and the military commanders saw the insurgents as aiming to kill them and their families - i.e. it was personal.
Obviously these precedents don't match the situation in Egypt, where the demonstrators are not from a different nationality, sect or ethnic group. In fact, they're exactly the same as the rank and file conscripts in the army, which Mubarak sent into the city streets on Friday. While high ranking officers possibly stand to lose benefits, graft and other perks of the job, that will not likely be enough to convince thousands of ground troops to open fire on their own civilian brothers and sisters - provided that the demonstrators remain peaceful and don't attack the troops. This is not to say that certain military units might not splinter and follow commanders in some cases that sing from a different sheet. Just saying that it appears unlikely that Mubarak would be obeyed throughout the chain of command if he ordered a Hama-type operation.
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