Anti-Climacus

I've refrained, online and elsewhere, from comment on the situation in what was, at the time I made this note for myself, then in Egypt and Tunisia, now in Libya and Bahrain and some other places. This is one of those situations where my area of research expertise is adjacent to but different from the issues at stake.

The line of thought to which I'd be most willing to attach myself suggests that this is a new 1848 (see Yglesias, among others). As lines of criticism go, this is the safe one: 1848's revolutions left a complicated legacy. There's no safer bet in international politics than that things will be 'complicated.'

When the debate about Iraq was at its highest pitch in 2003, I argued that people who had immediate expectations about a potential war would mostly be wrong. The time slices are just too short to make any meaningful observation about the future, even now: the prospects of success (whatever that means) looked different in May 2003, in the fall of 2005, and now. And they will probably look different next year, and in another ten years. Individual events, no matter how traumatic or important, take a long time to work themselves out.

The same, I think, applies to Egypt. There are reasons to be optimistic about near-term prospects for democratic forms of government; there are some reasons to be worried about a reversion to some autocratic or illiberal form of government. Mostly, it makes sense to avoid being too triumphalist or too skeptical.* Words for the moderate and cautious to live by, sure, but also not a bad way to go through life.


*I may have occasion for a few "I told you so"s in 20 years, but I'll wait until then to enjoy them.