Egypt: What Could Go Wrong
Waller Newell writes at Jewish World Review:
Since the French Revolution in 1789, revolutions have shown common features that are directly relevant to what is happening in Egypt right now. Since the final outcome in Egypt after Mubarak's ouster -- a new regime -- may be weeks, even months or years, away, it is worth pausing to take the long view.
In general, the initial reformist phase of such revolutions focusing on individual rights and opportunity is swept aside by radicals who want an egalitarian and collectivist political order. Thus, liberal reformers like Lafayette and Mirabeau inspired by the American Revolution with its emphasis on individual liberty were followed by true collectivists like Marat and Robespierre. In the same manner, Kerensky was followed by Lenin; BaniSadr (if not exactly a liberal, a technocrat bent on secular modernization) by Khomeini.
The second, truly revolutionary phase is usually preceded by the delusion on the part of the liberal reformers that they can form a partnership with the radicals, harnessing their populist energy to help bring about the transition to free elections, economic modernization and individual rights. The radicals, for their part, always look on these alliances as purely tactical, to be overturned when the time was right to take over. We can predict a similar outcome for Mohommad El Baradei's and other reformers' opening to the Mulsim Brotherhood's leaders.
Another consistent feature is that revolutions take place, not in the most repressive of tyrannies, but more typically in despotisms whose grip is already loosening, and where both a degree of economic prosperity and liberalization are already taking place. The administration of Louis XVI was the most liberal and reformist ever known in France; it attempted to introduce a free market system and break the economic hold of the aristocracy over the masses. Similarly, Tsar Nicholas II alternated between harsh repression and encouraging the Duma to share power with the crown; during his reign, the Russian economy was one of the fastest growing in Europe, reaching levels in agricultural production that Nikita Krushchev conceded in 1956 had still not been equaled.
