Egypt's Only Out: A Progressive Military Strongman

The Egyptian Revolution continues unabated. It is nowhere near it's climax. It must inevitably move from sparing over which brand of neoliberal capitalism will lord it over the masses of Egyptians, to who will be Egypt's saviour. For Egypt's revolution to be successful, under the present circumstances, a new Nasser must emerge.  Otherwise Egypt will burn as its politicians fiddle over who will preside over the continued failure of neoliberal neo-colonialism to succor Egypt's teeming masses. Privatization of the remaining public sector, more austerity in the form of reductions in subsidies for food and fuel and the further elimination of vital social services will not cure Egypt's ills but only exacerbate them. No one on the political stage be they Mubarak hold-overs, the Muslim Brotherhood or the plethora of liberal bourgeois/social democratic politicians can solve Egypt's problems as they all recycle the same policies dictated by the US, the EU, the IMF and the World Bank. The only question in the minds of the modern day neo-imperialists is who can best implement those policies.

In order for the US neoliberal corporatists to continue their rule the Egyptian people have been fed pablum about "democracy" being the panacea for all the social and economic injustices they suffer. "Free and Fair Elections" and "The Rule of Law" are all well and good but tell me are elections, "Free and Fair" when they are rigged from start to finish by the corporatists who control the process? When has the "Rule of Law" been anything more than a rationale for class warfare by the 1% against the 99%? We have an election fetish in this country and we try to foist it on one and all, no matter how inappropriate it may be.

The Egyptian people need social and economic justice, for most of them it is a life and death struggle just to put food on the table. Electoral politics will not give them what they need, it will just shift the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic. The last ruler who did anything for the Egyptian people was Nasser. His successors betrayed his legacy and imposed neo-colonial, neolibralism to replace Nasser's Pan-Arab Socialism. Why are the Egyptian people so praiseful of the military's role in ousting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood? Because they know that only the military can save Egypt. But not Mubarak's military, rather the military of the people that lays dormant within its ranks.

What Egypt needs is not "democratic elections" which will replace one brand of neolibralism with another, they need someone in the Armed Forces to emerge, like Nasser to take the bull by the horns, Chavez style, to wrest control away from the neoliberals, be they of the autocratic Mubarak type, the Islamist Morsi type or the Liberal Democratic ElBaradei type. Yes, you heard me right, a progressive military strongman who can rally the troops, retire the generals and implement an Egyptian New Deal a la FDR. Bourgeois Democracy is just that, democracy for the bourgeoisie, aka the big capitalists and their political henchmen, in other words the classic Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. Yes it does exist, in the USA, in the EU and in semi-colonial countries throughout the world. It is entrenched and will not exist stage left unless escorted off stage by the armed forces of the people.

I am confident that there are forces in the military who are planning what I suggest. How could they not be there, given that every Egyptian knows the history of their nation and the role Nasser played? The Army can forestall the inevitable by only one means, obtaining the financial means to ameliorate the socioeconomic crisis that Egyptians are facing with the collapse of tourism, and foreign and domestic investment. In this regard the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as a last deperate measure, have pledged 8 billion dollars  in immediate aid to the beleaguered Egyptian government (which they denied to Morsi) to tide it over the immediate crisis. Will this be enough to placate the people and send them home from Tahrir Square and elsewhere? Such stopgap measures however can only forestall the inevitable. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have no intention of being perpetual donors to save Egypt from itself. Egypt will eventually have to sink or swim and it is doubtful that adherence to Western neoliberal policies will allow it to stay afloat.

The New Egyptian Revolution: And Now for the Rest of the Story

A little historical review is warranted when discussing the current situation in Egypt as nothing there makes sense if not seen in an historical perspective. In 1952 King Farouk I, Britain's playboy Egyptian satrap, was overthrow by the Free Officers' Movement. Col. Gamal Abdal Nasser rose to prominence and by 1954 was the supreme leader. Nasser and his acolytes represented the first wave of the Arab Revolution. It was nationalistic and secular in nature and led to the emergence of like minded movements such as the PLA and governments as in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. One of Nasser's first major projects was the Aswan High Dam which would provide electricity for Egypt's industrialization and control the flooding of the lower Nile Valley to increase agricultural yields. The US was planning to help build and finance this mega-project. But Nasser, pursuing a non-aligned foreign policy, had good relations with the Socialist Bloc and the USSR. In 1956 he recognized the People's Republic of China. This infuriated the US which was still trying to isolate, undermine and overthrow the PRC so we retaliated by reneging on financing the Aswan Dam. Nasser responded by nationalizing the British controlled Suez Canal which precipitated a joint British, French, Israeli invasion of the Sinai and the bombing of Cairo. The US and USSR in a rare bout of cooperation got the tripartite force to withdraw.