In America, we're conditioned to the notion that everybody in the world is yearning to experience American-style democracy and tend to view these things through that lens. And undoubtedly most of these movements have that desire at their heart. But it's always those who already have a power base who come out on top, and they don't often share those same motivations.

It will be very interesting to see how this turns out, especially how the police (very corrupt, feared by the population and not loved like the army) fit into it.

One of the sort of indicitive anecdotes I heard recently was that a man went to give the customary palmgrease to a police officer, and the officer laughed it off, saying "No, no, that was the old Egypt."

We should be a great model for them, the military-industrial complex does astoundingly well under our "democracy."

UW's own Ells Goldberg has a new piece in Foreign Affairs, "Mubarakism Without Mubarak: Why Egypt's Military Will Not Embrace Democracy". Well worth a read.

The Mubarak regime as it has existed for the last decade -- an increasingly corrupt and incompetent government that has conferred immense economic advantages on a handful of politically connected businessmen -- has been shattered. A more open political system and a responsive government that ensures its own safety by trimming back the power and privileges of the military could still emerge. And the army may step in as a transitional power and recognize that, as much as it might like to, it cannot return to complete control. The Egyptian military is far more professional and educated than it was in the 1950s, so many officers may recognize the benefits of a democracy. More likely, however, is the culmination of the slow-motion coup and the return of the somewhat austere military authoritarianism of decades past.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/6…