Egypt: The Gaullist option

3. Calamity

The seizure of power in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood would be, in Leslie Gelb’s words, calamitous for U.S. security. He writes: “What’s more, the [MB’s] current defenders don’t really argue that point, as much as they seem to dismiss it as not important or something we can live with. The MB supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli agreement of 1979, widely regarded as the foundation of peace in the Mideast. Above all, the MB would endanger counter-terrorism efforts in the region and worldwide. That is a very big deal.”

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 Carter and Vance did when contemplating the coming of the ayatollahs to power.

4. The Gaullist alternative

Mubarak has been in power for thirty years, but Egypt is ruled not only by Mubarak, but by the equally enduring senior military and intelligence officials — among them, Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s intelligence chief whom he recently designated as Egypt’s vice president; Ahmed Shafik, the former chief of the Egyptian Air Force and former head of civil aviation, perhaps his closest confidante and now his newly designated prime minister; and Lt. Gen. Sami Annan, the chief of staff of the armed forces, who was meeting with his American counterparts in Washington, D.C. when the protests turned violent and he returned to Cairo.

For the sake of U.S. interests in the region, and for the sake of Egypt itself, the U.S. should promote what I would term the Gaullist option: De Gaulle left power in 1946 and went into retirement after concluding that the political structure of the Fourth Republic was hopelessly dysfunctional. When, in 1958, he was called back to power, he conditioned his return on sweeping constitutional changes to strengthen the presidency and the executive branch; weaken the fractious parliament; and create more of a space between politics and policy making.

Egypt is no France, but still: the United States should encourage Suleiman, Shafik, and Annan to serve as a collective De Gaulle. They should take over power for the purpose of methodically but slowly — I would say five years or so — take measures to encourage the emergence of civil society in Egypt: fight corruption, strengthen the independence of the judiciary, weaken the stifling hand of the bureaucracy, encourage the emergence of parties, civic association, and trade unions; invest in education, electrify rural Egypt, improve health standards, develop micro-lending schemes, and more.

The United States can help by increasing its non-military aid to Egypt (we currently give Egypt about $1.2 billion in military aid, but only $250 million in non-military assistance). Moreover, we should make sure that this aid reaches to right programs.

Free and fair election 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.

Is there a viable Gaullist option in Egypt? We should hope there is.

Ben Frankel is editor of Homeland Security NewsWire