(no subject)

[randomness]

Last week's military action in Egypt makes it clear that the following rule is in effect there:

If there are mass protests, then the military gets to decide what happens next.

There are many countries in which that rule applies now or did in the past. For example, Thailand: In 2008, one political faction put thousands of protesters into the streets and occupied the main international airport in the country. When ordered to remove them, the military refused. After some maneuvering, the government fell. Two years later, a different political faction put thousands of protesters into the streets and occupied the central business district in the capital. When ordered to remove them, the military declared a live fire zone and assaulted the encampment with armored vehicles. The government stayed in power until the next election.

In my opinion, this is not a great rule for a country's politics to have.

Comments

[eac.livejournal.com]

I'm also worried about this; am hoping it's a temporary state. :/

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say how good or bad it is. It is not a trivial skill for the masses of a country to properly operate mass government.

[fin9901.livejournal.com]

Sadly the military in Egypt seems to be the only group with both good sense and power.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I believe it was Mao who said that all power comes from guns.

I can't decide if Kent State is an example or a counterexample.

[cos]

I don't think your stated rule is accurate, and I think if you think about it some more you'll see it as even a little dishonest, for the sake of making a point. There have been mass protests a few other times in Egypt in the past few years when the military did not take over; some of those actually went the other way: they were protests that happened while the military was in charge that got them to cede some power. So when you say "if there are mass protests" you're making a glib yet misleading claim, IMO. While what happened is troubling, if your claim were true that would be significantly more troubling.

What spooked the military this time, I think, is when it became obvious that either the Morsi government was going to turn into an Islamist dictatorship (he was moving that way as rapidly as he could), or there would be large scale civil war (the more likely possibility). Whether what they've done will prevent both of those things from happening is an open question, but that's a different matter. What prompted the military to take authority (decide what happens next) was not "there are mass protests" in and of itself, but the inevitability of one of those two possibilities if they didn't do so.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in this blog:

http://nisralnasr.blogspot.com/

It's by a PoliSci professor I know from my dojo, who specializes in the Middle East. He happened to be in Cairo when Tunisia happened, and has been in Egypt ever since. He writes long posts, every few weeks to few months, so it's not a stock-ticker type of blog. But I have yet to see any other source that even approaches his level of historical perspective and local nuance.