Nathan Brown foresees a long, slow slouch towards weaker military power in the new democracy:
The Egypt of the past half century has been one in which the security establishment exercised control over civilian life. There are now powerful forces at work that seek a reversal so that there will be civilian oversight of the security establishment. This may be a Herculean task but it is not completely a Sisyphean one.
An attainable goal over the short term may be a relaxation of security vetting for sensitive state institutions. With Salafis occupying a considerable portion of parliamentary seats and with a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood chairing the parliament's foreign affairs committee it may be a bit more difficult to block a bright and able young graduate with Islamist inclinations from the diplomatic corps, the judiciary, or even the officer corps. There will be no sudden change — the geriatric leadership of many Egyptian state institutions will neither step aside quickly nor allow the floodgates to open immediately — but the slow transformation of state institutions to be far more diverse is a likely result even if it occurs at a glacial pace.
(Photo: Egyptian riot policemen look at a hanged puppet, held up with a fishing rod by an anti-Hosni Mubarak demonstrator, outside the court in Cairo on February 22, 2012, as the landmark murder and corruption trial of the former president entered its final day of hearings. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images.)
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