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Egypt’s new autocracy

Motives can be hard to discern, especially if those who hold them say little.  So far, the Egyptian army has not said much.  It merely claims its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is intended to fight threats to the nation, in particular terrorism.

But most of the violence against security forces came after the crackdown, not before.  And there is no evidence that brutality of this sort will stem a terrorist movement or insurgency.  To the contrary, few insurgencies yield to force.  Most yield to law enforcement or negotiation.

We can try to infer the Army’s objectives from its behavior.  The largely indiscriminate violence by the security forces suggests that the intention is not merely to disperse particular demonstrations but rather to intimidate.  The target is not only the Muslim Brotherhood but the entire Egyptian population.  The army is trying to reestablish the autocracy that fell in February 2011, with new leadership.  That requires frightening all the citizens, not just the Muslim Brotherhood.

But it also requires chasing the Brotherhood out of the political game.  Even under Hosni Mubarak, there were elections.  Under strong international pressure, the army will have to hold elections sometime next year, if not earlier.  What it cannot afford is for the Brotherhood to participate and gain a significant slice of the electorate, maybe even a plurality.

This may seem unlikely given the popular demonstrations against President Morsi, but it is entirely possible.  The non-Islamists in Egypt seem hopelessly divided.  The longer the army postpones elections, the more likely it is Egyptians will be disappointed with its rule, which has no real prospect of solving the economic and social ills that sent Egyptians into the street calling for Morsi to step down.  The Brotherhood has a loyal and organized core following.  A free and fair electoral contest in a year’s time might well have unpleasant surprises for General Sissi.

The way to avoid this is to make sure the Brotherhood goes underground and is unable or unwilling to participate in the electoral process.  It won’t be surprising if the army declares the Brotherhood illegal, but it may not have to do so.  Morsi and his minions are likely to say they won’t participate because the process is illegitimate.  But there are less militant Brothers and supporters.  The tougher the crackdown, the less likely a Brotherhood electoral effort in any guise will emerge.  The Egyptian army knows Turkish history well:  the Islamists returned repeatedly after military interventions, gained control of the state and are now taking revenge on some of their military antagonists.

Leaving aside the fate of the Brotherhood, can autocracy be reimposed?

The odds are pretty good.  The more moderate Islamists and secular liberals in Egypt were never very good at getting votes.  They will be glad to see the Brotherhood out of the competition.  The Salafists are in a more difficult spot, but their all too apparent sympathies with the Brotherhood demonstrators have not yet made them split definitively from at least nominal acceptance of the military coup.  Offered an opportunity to compete at the polls without the Brotherhood in play, the Salafists may well play along.  Few non-Brotherhood Egyptians of any stripe are going to stand up for the Brotherhood, especially if it continues to resist the crackdown with ineffective violence of its own.

Of course the new autocracy won’t be the same as Mubarak’s.  It is likely to allow greater freedom of the press, a safety valve that many autocracies find useful.  It would be smart to allow broader distribution of the economic goodies than Mubarak did, building a real constituency of its own in the business community.  It might well get smart about providing for the poorest of the poor, who don’t get much out of Egypt’s subsidies to middle class commodities like gasoline that they don’t use.

But autocracy it will still be, with clear limits on political organizing, protection for the army’s privileges and status, and a truncated ideological spectrum that tries to consign any but the most moderate Islamism to the margins.  It will not be democratic in any absolute sense, but it may be a bit more open than the old autocracy.  The question now is how many people the army will have to kill to make it happen.