The Five Stages of Egypt’s Revolution

It matters little who wins the presidency this weekend — a much bloodier uprising is inevitable.

BY CHARLES HOLMES | JUNE 15, 2012

CAIRO – I was put on the spot by a wise old friend of mine in Washington several years ago. He wanted my pitch on Egypt in 30 seconds or less. “This is a town beset with attention deficit disorder,” he said, “so what have you got?” I gulped and offered up the “three Ms of Egypt”: the military, the mosque, and the masses.

Despite the popular revolt against Hosni Mubarak’s regime last year, it remains true that the only political contest that counts in Egypt has pitted its military generals against the mosque’s imams and leaders. Both want control over the masses — 85 million Egyptians. The recent elections highlighted these three Ms: However depressing for many reformers and activists, the culmination of nearly 18 months of mass protest now pits the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi against Ahmed Shafiq, a retired military officer and former Mubarak prime minister.

Whether the military or the mosque wins the runoff this weekend, reformers and their supporters around the world need to consider some equally important potential futures scenarios. Their first step should be to dust off a copy of Crane Brinton’s An Anatomy of Revolution, a 1938 study that considers major revolutions in history, identifies the factors influencing them, and attempts to extrapolate certain “rules” for how such seismic political transitions play out. In the startling air of uncertainty pervading Egypt’s current impasse, it provides at least a framework — and often strangely accurate reference point — from which to contemplate events. And it serves as a guide, and a warning, to Egypt’s future. This week’s court ruling blessing Shafiq’s candidacy and dissolving parliament — reasserting the military’s grip on power and infuriating millions of Egyptians in the process — should only be taken as another sign that the center, hemorrhaging ever more legitimacy, ultimately cannot hold.

Brinton would tell you that in the long run, it actually doesn’t really matter who the next president of Egypt is. Morsi and Shafiq are doppelgangers: Both are ghosts of the past, circling each other, embedded in the old system that has defined and sustained them for decades. Of course, the man from the military and the man from the mosque each claim to be the true champion of the revolution. In truth, it’s likely that neither is — and that both will pass from the scene as the revolution’s pendulum swings inexorably to the extremes.

You may be asking: How can it not matter? While the mosque (in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood) and the military (in the form of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) stand triumphant, each risks losing its grip on political power. Both will inevitably be the victims of true political transformation and swept away, as Brinton would say, through the course of events. To read more…

Read more about Revolutions in The Anatomy of Revolution  a book by Crane Brinton