Comes Now The Fallout

All political turmoil has fallout.  The more dramatic and seemingly revolutionary the turmoil, the more intense, long lasting, and unpredictable the fallout.  So it is with the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" events of Tunisia and Egypt.

The first signs of the spreading wave of destabilizing aftershocks of the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia have shown themselves most dramatically with waves of illegal immigrants hitting the rocky shores of the microscopic Italian island of Lampedusa.  The mass (more than five thousand and counting over the weekend) of economic refugees has panicked the Italian government.  With good reason.

Italy has already been the target of opportunity for refugees from much of Africa usually funneled through Libya and thence by small, overloaded boats to the outpost of Lampedusa.  The Italian government howled last year as the waves crested and beat down on the shores of the island.  Already facing high domestic unemployment, a yawning budget gap, threatened default on sovereign debt, the last thing the always rickety government needed was the burden of refugees in numbers almost beyond count.  Nor has it helped that most of the economic opportunity seekers are Muslim, which fact exacerbates the large and growing sense of alienation within their own country felt by Italians (and many other nationalities as well.)

The European Union has been generous in its initial offering of economic assistance to the transitional regime in Tunisia.  The organization has committed itself to a 347 million dollar gift between now and 2013 with an immediate tranche of 23 million underway.  Yet even this generous an offer to a country of eleven million is not sufficient to provide an instant economic boost sufficient to offset the unemployment and underemployment crisis which did so much to trigger the overthrow movement.  Even if the US comes through with an equivalent or greater amount, the aggregate will not be sufficient to meet the expectations of the successful practitioners of "people power."

The necessary inference is that more Tunisians will get on board more boats and hope to get to Europe.  Italy being the closest place, it is only expectable that the current flood (described by an Italian official as "Biblical") will continue and grow.  The Italian proposal to "assist" the Tunisian authorities in stemming the flow by stationing Italian police and other security forces in Tunisian territory was a rational albeit politically ill-considered response to the looming crisis.

It is not surprising that the transitional government rejected the Italian offer as an insult to Tunisian sovereignty and national dignity.  The Tunisians may need the assistance desperately, but there is no way foreign security forces can be accepted without fatal political consequences.  Revolutions, even those of the leaderless sort, are not known for rationality.

It is a bit harder to understand the thundering denunciation by the German ForMin of Italy's plea for a unified European Union stance on the migration crisis.  Herr Westerwelle undoubtedly understands that the EU is already threatened by losing control of its collective external border as has been underscored by the massive influx of Turks across the border into Greece and thence throughout the Union.  The addition of economically motivated masses from Tunisia--and quite probably Egypt as well--will have severe internal political consequences for both the EU and many of its member states.  The anxiety felt by many Europeans over the growing Islamization of the region is not baseless and is not going to go away soon.

The possibility of Egyptians joining the exodus should not be discounted hastily.  The removal of Mubarak will not create any new jobs.  Even a robustly prosecuted campaign to retrieve the billions allegedly stolen by the  Mubarak family and cronies will do nothing in the short term to address the very real economic problems confronting the Egyptians.  Given that the tourism industry has been damaged by the events of the past three weeks and that the extent of the damage is not yet known, there is a high probability that unemployment and its evil twin underemployment will continue upward.

The bitter truth has not yet spread through the enthusiastic "revolutionaries" of Tahiri Square:  Removal of a dictator, no matter how odious, does not in and of itself do a damned thing to enhance the economic quality of life generally.  When the realization does sink in, the consequences are not predictable in detail, but it is fair to posit that one result will be a flow of Egyptians from the Land of the Nile to anywhere north where jobs might be found.  Being a lot larger in population than Tunisia, it is safe to assume that even if the percentage of economic refugees is small, the aggregate number will be large.

The EU had best take note of what is happening in that small and distant rock of Lampedusa and pull together a common stance on the question of economic refugees generally--or simply surrender to the latest outbreak of Volkwanderung.  Economic grants alone will not do the job of keeping Egyptians home.  Considering the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, the size and characteristics of the Egyptian population, there simply is not enough free money floating around to reconstitute the Egyptian economy fast enough or completely enough to seduce the folks into staying where they are.

Refugees are only one of the fallout aspects attendant upon the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.  There is another, potentially far more damaging bit of unintended consequence at work here.  That is the status of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.  The Supreme Military Council could not bring itself to mention that treaty specifically.  Instead the assembled generals confined their commitment to maintaining all currently extant "international agreements."

It is known that the generals are not of a single mind regarding the treaty.  Some, like the current Minister of Defense and de facto chief-of-state, are in favor of keeping it intact.  Others are in favor of either scrapping it or seriously restructuring it.  A leading moderate, secular political leader, Ayman Nour, has opined that the the treaty is finished.  He is in favor of a total renegotiation of the historic agreement signed by Anwar Sadat over thirty years ago.

The treaty is the single greatest reason the US tied itself so closely to both Sadat and Mubarak.  We were willing to ignore the many ways in which Egypt violated the spirit of both the Treaty and the Camp David Accords as long as the peace held.  The government of Israel was willing to do the same.  Keeping a peace, even a very, very cold one, was much preferred over allowing the resumption of war either direct or via proxy.

Arguably, the Mubarak regime became less and less willing to avoid war by proxy given the greater flow of weapons to Gaza in the past few years.  Certainly, there is no love lost for Israel either at governmental or popular levels within Egypt.  Nor is the Muslim Brotherhood solely responsible for the monolithic hatred of Israel or the burgeoning industry in antisemitic film, written materials, or television programs which exists in Egypt.  It is fair to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the only group in Egypt endlessly hostile to both Israel and Jews.

While there is very little probability of the Egyptian military undertaking another war with Israel in the event the treaty is nullified, there is every probability that Egyptian support for proxies such as Hamas would increase.  This is likely to occur even if the Treaty is allowed to soldier on in formal existence.  Mubarak had been trending in that direction as a sop to public opinion if for no other reason, and it is most probable that both the transitional government and whatever successor finally comes to power will do the same--just more openly.

Democracy will do nothing to assure the peace continues.  No blathering about elections, people's will, transparency, and other nice sounding warm, fuzzy words will do one iota to keep the peace.  Nor will these words create jobs, fix broken economies, feed the hungry, or do anything else real and material.

The American administration as well as its European equivalents will be well advised to keep this in mind as they pull out the stops on promoting democracy.  It ain't a magic wand.  It neither keeps peace, assures prosperity, or ends hatred.