The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square by Steven A. Cook (review)

With the Arab Awakening and its aftermath still making headlines in Washington, DC, and beyond, Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has provided a timely and easily accessible account of Egypt’s modern history with The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. Readers looking for a blow-by-blow account of the protests in Tahrir Square and the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in response to the events that started in Tunisia in december 2010 will, however, be disappointed. The book contains only a short chapter on the beginning stages of the revolution in Egypt. Instead, Cook has done a more significant service by charting the political, economic, social, and diplomatic development of modern Egypt since the end of Ottoman rule in 1882 (and the onset of British occupation the same year), with an understandable focus on the Egyptian regimes under Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Mubarak and their struggle to build regime legitimacy and navigate Egypt through the precarious history of the Middle East over the past sixty years.

Cook’s recounting of Egypt’s history since the Free Officer’s coup in 1952 is rather conventional, and most readers with a passing familiarity with the Middle East and Egypt will find the first part of the book a well-worn path, with the obligatory highlights of the Suez crisis, the failed United Arab Republic, the wars with Israel, the Camp David agreement, and the assassination of Sadat. No real news here, but Cook does provide a compelling interpretation of the underlying political, social, and economic currents and dynamics that the Cairo regime has tried to shape, control, and, if everything else fails, suppress, since 1952. Ultimately, this of course proved to be a losing proposition for the regime and its last caretaker, Mubarak.

Cook shows that the regime in Cairo under each of these three leaders desperately tried to build legitimacy and a coherent Egyptian identity based on, at various times, socialism, pan-Arabism, or government largesse. This approach was by no means unique to Egypt, and similar efforts were found across the Middle East. Indeed, oil-rich states in the region, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have largely neutralized dissent and revolt and sedated their populations with lavish subsidies and make-work programs. However, Egypt, lacking any significant natural resources that could easily and rapidly be turned into hard currency, was never able to spread wealth and abundance very far or deeply. Riots and other disturbances over food prices, for example, were a recurring phenomenon in Egypt over the past sixty years, hinting at the inherent instability of the political order established after the 1952 coup. Instead, Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak were forced to focus their attention on enriching and bolstering communities and centers of power that were seen as especially crucial to the regime’s stability and the continuation of its rule, including the military, the business elite, and senior members of the government bureaucracy. This effort was never coupled with a successful attempt to build a true Egyptian identity that could be shared widely across communities in Egypt. This naturally left many ordinary Egyptians as disenfranchised have-nots, which in turn led to political and social instability. The regime’s response was more often than not repressive, especially so against the Muslim Brotherhood, which was seen as a particularly significant threat to the continuation of the regime. As is now evident, this approach ultimately failed and the regime was swept away in the waves of the Arab Awakening.

The political, social, and economic dynamics described by Cook are by no means unique to Egypt. Indeed, experts have for many years warned about the coming instability in the Middle East due to rapid population growth, moribund economies, and the limited outlets for peaceful dissent. This largely explains why the Arab Awakening spread so quickly...