Larison has once again let his hyper-realism get the best of him, in arguing that the military has just been playing a clever game and will get behind the exceedingly craven to America and Israel Omar Suleiman as Mubarak’s successor. ~Jack Ross

I take the charge of “hyper-realism” as a compliment, since I take it to mean that I am more realistic than most. Better that than hypo-realism, I suppose. More seriously, I am not sure where I have gone wrong in saying that the interests of Suleiman and the military are aligned. Jack says that I am arguing that the military “will get behind” Suleiman, but from everything I have read about him the military is already fully behind him and was before the protests started. After all, he is the person who represents their interests at the top level in the government. There doesn’t seem to be any question of whether the military will “get behind” Suleiman. Since Mubarak’s announcement that he will not run again, the question has been whether Suleiman and the military will make Mubarak leave sooner or later. The answer seems to be later.

Furthermore, it seems correct that they (i.e., Suleiman and the senior military officers) see their interests being served by a transition in which Mubarak co-opts part of the opposition, hands off the baton to Suleiman, and secures the regime against the current challenge. Maybe this isn’t “clever” at all. It is possible that it could backfire, damage the respect Egyptians have for the military, and result in an even bigger mess in a few years’ time. Whether it is clever or not remains to be seen, but it does seem to be what is happening. I should add that Springborg regards all of this as a “bad gamble” by the administration. That’s possible, but even critics of the decisions that have led to this point should be able to acknowledge what is going on.

There is also the power of precedent. As Issandr El Amrani wrote in his profile of Suleiman two years ago:

Every president of Egypt since 1952 has been a senior military officer, and the military remains, by most measures, the most powerful institution in Egypt.

Meanwhile, Suleiman had already been gaining supporters as the next successor years ago, because he appeared to be a more acceptable alternative to Mubarak than his son:

Publicly, Suleiman has started to gain endorsements for the job from Egyptians across the political spectrum as the increasingly public discussion plays out of who will follow Mubarak. A leftist leader of the Kefaya movement, Abdel Halim Qandil, has urged the military to save the country from a Mubarak dynasty. The liberal intellectual Osama Ghazali Harb — a former Gamal acolyte who turned to the opposition and founded the National Democratic Front party — has openly advocated a military takeover followed by a period of “democratic transition.” Hisham Kassem, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, also has stated that a Suleiman presidency would be vastly preferable to another Mubarak one. On Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, partisans of a Suleiman presidency make the same argument, often seemingly driven as much by animosity toward the Mubaraks as admiration for the military man.

Meanwhile, here is some reporting from CNN that is worth reading:

“The military’s refusal to act is a highly political act which shows that it is allowing the Egyptian regime to reconstitute itself at the top and is highly, utterly against the protesters,” said Joshua Stacher, assistant professor of political science at Kent State University and an expert on Egypt. He was among more than a dozen Middle East experts who met Monday with three White House National Security Council officials to talk about the Egyptian crisis.

The absence of military action serves two purposes, Stacher said.

“(One,) make the protesters go home, and two, scare the population that isn’t protesting,” Stacher said. “They want the Egyptian people to submit to the police state, and they want the people to pine for their police state so that they have stability back.”

“It’s getting really ruthless,” Stacher added.

In Egypt, Vice President Omar Suleiman issued a statement saying that dialogue with opposition forces, as ordered by Mubarak, won’t begin until the demonstrations stop.