When Armies Decide
WASHINGTON — There comes a moment in the life of almost every repressive regime when leaders — and the military forces that have long kept them in power — must make a choice from which there is usually no turning back: Change or start shooting.
Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1....
The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.
South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident....
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Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1....
The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.
South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident....