Foreign Policy Mag : Stephen Walt on Egypt : "If history is any guide (and it is, albeit a rather fickle and ambiguous one), we are still in the early stages. The French revolution went through a series of distinct phases for more than a decade (accelerated, to be sure, by war), before Bonaparte's seizure of power"

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Here goes my favorite author in Foreign Policy Mag : Professor Walt - I agree with the Professor that the Violence of Mubarak will assure a more violent or extremist outcome, this is of course a Revolution.


It is very hard for me to see a Pro-Western Egypt when the smoke and the dust clears. All the violence, deaths and wounded will be charged to the West, and a bill will be passed someday in the future.


Many of the things that Editorials in Newspapers, TV and Radio are saying seem to me like the drowning man kicks. Useless Words and Useless Illusions of Controlling a Situation. As Chris Hedges ( famour journalist and author ) explains Empires are Illusions, and imploding Empires are more illusory.



Foreign Policy Magazine
Mubarak speaks! (people don't listen)
By Stephen M Walt
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 

Mubarak speaks! (people don't listen)


Some excerpts :

If history is any guide (and it is, albeit a rather fickle and ambiguous one), we are still in the early stages. The French revolution went through a series of distinct phases for more than a decade (accelerated, to be sure, by war), before Bonaparte's seizure of power. The Russian Revolution began with the March 1917 uprisings, followed by the Bolshevik coup in October and then a civil war. The Islamic republic of Iran did not leap full-blown from the brow of the Ayatollah Khomeini, but took several years to assume its basic form. Even the United States was a work-in-progress for years after victory in the revolutionary war. (Remember the Articles of Confederation, and the debate over the Constitution?).

In short, history cautions that we have no clear idea what form a post-Mubarak government in Egypt will take, and there's a lot of contingency at work here. I have my hunches and hopes, but nobody can be really confident about their forecasts at this stage. (Heck, at first I didn't think the upheaval in Tunisia would spread!) It will help a lot if the process of political contestation in Egypt avoids large-scale violence, because the onset of mass violence (whether by the regime and its supporters or by the anti-Mubarak groups), is going to fuel greater hatred and paranoia and tilt the process in more dangerous directions. For this reason, those who are urging a peaceful and orderly transition (including the Obama adminstration) are exactly right. And that's why the reports I'm seeing about rising violence (a summary of which can be found on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish) is worrisome.

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