Quick takes // by Ben FrankelEgypt: The Gaullist option
The seizure of power in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood would be, in Leslie Gelb’s words, calamitous for U.S. security; the supreme U.S. interest is to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power; this, in the end, may not be possible; we should, at least, not delude ourselves the way Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance did when contemplating the coming of the ayatollahs to power in Iran three decades ago; we should also recognize that free and fair elections should be the final step in turning a society into a democracy, not the first one; if we make elections the first step on the road to democracy — a proclivity of U.S. administrations from Carter to Bush — we allow the bad, but better organized, forces to exploit the democratic opening to come to power and impose their will
The unrest in Egypt, and its consequences, are of great importance to the Middle East and to U.S. interests in it. Here are four quick comments.
1. The center cannot hold
The choice in Egypt — as was the choice in Iran thirty years ago — is not between an authoritarian regime, supported by the military, on the one hand, and a centrist, liberal, tolerant, pro-Western regime, on the other hand.
If there are truly free and fair elections in Egypt, it will be decided not by the few tens of thousands of educated, English-speaking participants in the demonstrations — especially not those eager to be interviewed on CNN. The elections, rather, would be decided by 70 million or so Egyptians who live in small villages or in the dusty outskirts of the larger cities.
They will vote for the Muslim Brotherhood, because they believe that the Brotherhood would be more likely to provide them with drinking water, flour, jobs, and housing than the divided, elitist, liberal parties. In the run-up to the elections these parties may get more time on CNN, but the Brotherhood speaks the idiom of the masses.
2. Abiding tradition
The masses may not be fundamentalist Islamists, but they are Muslims — religiously, culturally. The Brotherhood may be too pious for many, but it speaks a language which is closer to their sensibilities than the various liberal and socialist parties, the appeal of which is limited to the educated circles in the big cities.
It may well be that a post-Mubarak transitional government is led by the liberals — Mohammad el Baradei is one of them — but his fate, and the fate of those around him, is likely to be similar to that of Shapour Bakhtiar and Mehdi Bazatgan in Iran three decades ago. President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance truly believed that these two represented a moderate, democratic, liberal alternative to the discredited Shah, but the ayatollahs swept them from power within months. The lucky ones escaped to Paris. The unlucky ones found themselves dangling from the end of a rope.
