Coups and Revolutions: Mass Mobilization, the Egyptian Military, and the United States from Mubarak to Sisi by Amy Austin Holmes (review)

Amy Holmes has written a useful and extremely fine-grained analysis of what she identifies as revolutionary and counter-revolutionary waves in Egypt beginning with the 2011 ouster of President Husni Mubarak and culminating in the consolidation of power by the military-backed government of President 'Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. Holmes served as a faculty member at the American University of Cairo during most of the events she analyzes, and the work is enriched by the author's eyewitness experience of Egyptian turmoil and her interviews of numerous participants in revolutionary activity.

In this work, Holmes provides analysis of the major theoretical approaches to revolutions, counterrevolutions, and military coups in an effort to see how they apply to Egypt during its revolutionary turmoil. She suggests that such literature is inadequate to explain the upheaval in Egypt and that the 2011–18 era is best understood as a process of revolution and counterrevolution. Holmes divides Egypt's political upheaval into three waves of revolution and two waves of counter-revolution. The revolutionary waves are (1) the ouster of Mubarak, (2) the termination of military rule under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), and (3) the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi. Counterrevolutionary waves include the establishment of a post-Brotherhood caretaker regime under Interim President Adly Mansour followed by the current government of President Sisi.

The revolutionary wave that ousted the Mubarak government lasted only 18 days and is described as something of a regime collapse, with the president's pillars of domestic support crumbling in the face of a rapidly expanding mass uprising. After the first week of unrest, the army announced that it would not use force against the Egyptian people, leaving the regime weaker and more vulnerable. Holmes acknowledges that the military limited its role in the repression of anti-Mubarak demonstrators, but she does not view their conduct as exonerating in the crisis. Rather, she is critical of army units for both helping the police (by such actions as providing them with ammunition) and failing to protect peacefully protesters from pro-regime police and vigilantes. In this difficult environment, she also views later protester attacks on police stations as a reaction to police violence. Importantly, for a wired-in world, Holmes has found serious fault in the Western narrative that that social media played a dominant role in the revolution due to a cyber-blackout and limited social media penetration of Egyptian society. She also states that the Muslim Brotherhood was initially wary of joining the uprising, and did not play a leadership role in the struggle against the regime.

As the crisis unfolded, Holmes maintains, the military could have either propped up Mubarak or pressured him to step down but instead chose to equivocate. She suggests that military leaders may have been weighing their options and using their intelligence personnel to gather information about whether enlisted soldiers would fire at demonstrators or would instead mutiny if given such orders. She also does not seem fully convinced by the argument that the military withdrew support from Mubarak primarily due to the prospect of his son Gamal becoming his successor as president, but she does not rule it out either. Clearly, the military was worried about Gamal eventually installing a new power center composed of his crony capitalist supporters if he became president. She notes that Gamal, who has never served in the military, became a major power in the regime-sponsore d National Democratic Party (NDP) by 2003 and had never taken action to oppose the military's powerful role in society. This argument is important, but it does not mean that the military viewed Gamal as a safe choice. Rather, he was the type of leader they would be inclined to distrust. He had already created a counter-elite composed of his business allies and...