On July 3, the powerful Egyptian military told Mohammed Morsy, the country’s first democratically elected leader, that he was no longer president.

The generals suspended the constitution, held Mr Morsy in custody and installed a “technocratic” government with Chief Justice Adly Mansour as interim president. They unveiled a transition roadmap developed in consultation with the opposition and promised to hold early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Egypt’s experiment with elective democracy was cut short by this ouster, marking a forceful return of the military to power after one year.

Conceptually, the removal of Morsy and the ensuing violence reveal in a deep sense the paralysis of Egypt’s democratic transition trapped in the tensions of a “triple heritage” of militarism, Islamism and secularism.

The exit of Morsy has signalled the rise of new militarism involving the military and key sections of the Egyptian public, reflecting a salient contradiction and a stridently violent turn in the “Arab Spring.”

In the face of the growing militarism, the future of Egypt’s democracy and society now rests with the military’s success in managing the country’s triple political heritage.

The first leg of this legacy is a military-backed political order as the guarantor of stability, which is the root of centuries of anti-democracy culture and repression in the country.

In a nuanced study of the Egyptian military in politics, Iman Harb says that the military’s involvement in the political process and its subsequent professionalism have always been a reflection of the nature of the regime it served.

The Egyptian military was visibly the preeminent institution in the political process in the 1950s and ‘60s. But since the 1970s, it acquired a veneer of professionalism, accepting a subordinate role in a presidential system that has safeguarded its interests but limited its direct involvement in politics.

The pre-eminence of the military in politics, whether direct or behind the scenes, can be traced to its status as the most organised and well-financed institution in the Egyptian society.

The Egyptian military comprised of the Army (1,468,500), Navy (20,000), Air Force and Air Defence Command (EADC), is the largest in Africa and the Middle East and the 10th largest in the world, with an annual budget of $5.85 billion, including $1.5 billion of US aid.

The elite at the helm has always been the real power behind the throne. But its prestige and untrammelled power have been complicated by public protests and social unrest.

In the wake of the “Egyptian Revolution” that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the military moved in to fill the void left by the crumbling civilian administration. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces got its first taste of direct power, governing for 18 months until the election of President Morsy.

This intervention in politics put the Egyptian military elite in direct political competition with the social movements, culminating in large-scale protests in January 2012 that led to the call for elections.

This militarism showed its face when state security forces joined protesters during the Port Said riots of early 2013. The military again had to intervene to ensure stability and security, ending more than five decades of indirect management of politics and setting a precedent of direct intervention. This marked the birth of Egypt’s new militarism.

Populist turn

The public face of Egypt’s new militarism is General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the senior uniformed officer, although the labyrinth of networks sustaining him has local and international reaches.

Egypt’s military elite has taken a populist turn, forged an informal alliance with the largely secular-minded opposition and abetted public protest as a “legitimate” tool of removing a democratically elected government from power.

On July 1, the army gave Mr Morsy 48 hours to resolve his dispute with his opponents. Mr Morsy dared the military, invoked the democratic norm that he was the legitimately elected leader and refused to step down. He was toppled.

The second pillar of Egyt’s triple heritage consists of the secularists, who are also allied to minorities in the society. The secular-minded crowd is working in cahoots with the military as an indelible feature of the new militarism.

Having lost the 2012 elections to Morsy and the Islamists, the secularists have shifted the axis of competition from elections to public protests as the enchanted feature of the political culture.

The generals have abandoned the democratic path and constitutional order, abetting public protests and social unrest as an instrument of regime change.

On June 30, the first anniversary of Morsy’s time in power, the generals stood and watched as an estimated 14 million protesters thronged the streets of Egyptian towns and cities in what the secularists are celebrating, euphemistically, as “the Second Revolution.”

As a feature of this militarism, public protests have grown increasingly violent. The protesters burnt down the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsy’s party, resulting in 48 deaths.

In the post-Morsy Egypt, the culture of public protests has effectively brought Abdel Nasser’s model of military-backed secular Arab nationalist political system.

In effect, it has also pushed the military to the drawing board. It has to adapt and loosen its hold on power to survive. In the short term, its priority must be to steer the country towards a constitutional order to put politics on an even political keel and secure itself from being swept out of power by street action and insurgents.

Why the “Egyptian revolution” has become dangerous for democracy is because its priorities have been wrong. The Arab Spring has enthroned the norm of “people power” or “the rule of the mobs” seen in street politics.

The ouster of Morsy and the decision by the military and its international backers to adjust and kowtow to the new phenomenon of street politics as a tool of affecting political change has reinforced “people power.” For now, and in the age of “people power,” Egypt’s military remains the final arbiter.

But this has happened at the detriment of “paper power” or the pursuit of a people-driven constitutional order and its corollary institutions to pull the mobs out of the streets and stabilise democracy. The style of the military intervention aimed at dealing with Islamists is slowing Egypt’s move from “people power” to “paper power”.

Expectedly, in the absence of a people-centred constitutional order, each wave of unrest has made the military’s position less secure. This became clear from the protests in February 2012, which ended with the elections that swept Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

With the exit of the brothers, the military finds itself in a very public and precarious position of demonstrating that it is an honest and neutral broker in the transition process. But so far, it is faring dismally in reconciling Egypt’s triple heritage and uniting the various political factions of the public.

In the post-Morsy hiatus, even Islamic parties opposed to the Brothers are protesting against the military’s most recent political roadmap. Clearly, how the generals will manage to country’s emergent protest culture has far-reaching implications on domestic and regional stability.

So far, the military’s populist turn is paying off and its uneasy alliance with the secular-minded crowd is holding the country together. Recent opinion polls suggest Egypt’s military is by far the most trusted institution in the polity.

Most intriguingly, Egypt’s fervently secular-minded crowd has cast aside memories of six decades of military-dominated governments and human rights abuses as well as the high-handed military rule in the 18 months interregnum between Mubarak’s fall and Morsy’s rise and courted the military to cut short Egypt’s first experiment with full-scale democracy in less than an year.

Holding the alliance between the Tahir Square groups and the military is the trust in the generals’ promise that they have no desire to linger on in politics.

Despite the hype around the waves of “revolutions,” the Tahir Square crowd and its international backers yearn for democratic stability, and, for now, believe that the military is the guardian of the revolution and only able guarantor of stability in Egypt.

But the devil is in the detail of the transitional path. It is doubtful that the protesters are looking for the Pharaonic model of a highly centralised control of state power by one section of society that all militaries are predisposed to exalt.

Despite this trust, the 18 months of military rule after the fall of Mubarak’s regime illustrated how quickly the tide of public opinion can swing against the military. The Muslim Brothers are again in the role of the opposition. Economic, energy and food security crises are still mounting.

Inescapably, the military is likely to find its goal of quietly guaranteeing the security and stability of the Egyptian state from behind the scenes increasingly difficult.

By unwittingly kowtowing to public demands to overthrow a democratically elected government before the expiry of its term, the military sought to realise the short-term goal of limiting the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. But now that this goal has been realised, the ground has become rapidly shifty for the military.

Egypt’s political pluralism and the protest culture ultimately limit the military’s capacity to railroad its decisions. In the emerging post-Morsy order, the military is for the first time in Egypt’s modern history pitted against vested and serious indigenous competition for authority.

Clearly, the ongoing protests by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies continue to weaken the military’s absolute hold on power. It has to quickly move to consolidate a constitutional order as its best exit strategy from politics, and return to the behind-the-scenes control of power.

Complicating Egypt’s impasse, the fledgling opposition against Morsy is showing serious cracks. The appointment of Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as interim prime minister was opposed by the ultraconservative Salafi Nour Islamic party followers, who insist he is “too secular” to win their backing.

Third pillar

The third leg of the tension-ridden heritage are the Islamists. Sympathisers of the Morsy ouster are peddling the “self-coup” thesis to justify the undemocratic removal of a popularly elected government from power.

They say that although Morsy’s was a democratically elected government, it increased the power of the executive through a series of presidential decrees, gradually eroding the country’s political institutions to keep itself in power. It inadvertently rallied both the secularists and the military against itself.

The Tahir Square protesters accused the government of undermining independent institutions — the courts, the media, a neutral civil service, the army and the police — meant to check its powers. They saw the coup as a necessary evil to prevent the emergence of a new strong man. ElBaradei went as far as claiming that the Morsy government was heading for a fascist state!

Nevertheless, the insular and Islamist politics of Morsy and the Brothers failed the democratic test of forging an inclusive, broad-based political consensus reflecting the shades of opinion in society. The very size of the protests indicates a legitimate and countrywide disaffection with the Brothers’ style of governance.

This included failure to adopt clear policies to rescue the economy, halt the decline of the Egyptian pound, dwindling foreign exchange reserves, rising inflation and unemployment (estimated at more than 40 per cent for Egyptians under 24 years).

It also often failed to pay farmers for their wheat, arrest soaring crimes and end frequent power cuts and long queues for fuel.

It did not help matters that the IMF did not agree on a big loan to the government, which would have opened the way to other donors. Even more tragic, Morsy and the Brothers rattled the more conservative and religious stratum as well as the large and nervous minority of Christians (perhaps a tenth of the population of 84 million) and the much smaller minority of Shia Muslims.

But whatever label is affixed to the move by the military to push out a sitting president at gunpoint and put him in custody is inherently anti-democracy.

The consequences of the military coup on the Egyptian aspirations for democracy are dire. Nearly 52 per cent of Egyptians voted for Morsy and the Brotherhood — a stronger endorsement than the Americans gave Barack Obama five months later.

Morsy’s national security adviser described the ouster as a “military coup,” referring to the military action to force the president out of power. To the Islamists, the post-Morsy Egypt is “paradise lost” for democracy.

The alternative path for the military was to back, lock, stock and barrel, Egypt’s nascent democratic institutions while supporting the opposition to prepare adequately to defeat the Brotherhood from power in the next election in 2016 or before.

In its aftermath, the coup has sent a dreadful message to Islamists seeking to pursue their agenda through legitimate democratic channels. Morsy’s ouster has convinced them that even if they win power in a democratic process, their opponents will always use non-democratic means to oust them.

Ominously, this has the potential of forcing Egypt’s largest and well politically organised group underground.

In the election that swept Morsy and the Brothers to power, the West backed to the hilt the secularists who led Egypt’s revolution. Following the coup, the US and the EU have notably refused to stick a label on the takeover. This has raised questions on the West’s seriousness in moving from rhetoric to reality in their commitment to the idea of “democracy as a universal value” underpinning post-Cold War neo-liberal order.

President Obama stopped short of condemning the move, merely calling on “the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process.”

It is in Washington’s interest to tread an ambiguous line on the military power grab in Egypt.

This is because while the coup has implications for its commitment to democracy worldwide, the shift in power in Cairo has largely guaranteed two of its foremost interests in the Middle East: That the military will not attack Israel and, equally important, it will continue to secure the Suez Canal for international trade.

Correspondingly, Washington-based think-tanks and lobbies such as the Foreign Policy Magazine depicts the public protests as “a democratic uprising” and tout post-Morsy Egypt as an example of a “democratic coup d’état.”

Inversely, Morsy’s Egypt also comes through as an “illiberal democracy.”

The fault line

Response to the Egyptian coup in the Arab world reveals the Islamic fault line that is now defining politics in the region. Some countries hope that the military and the interim regime it has installed will halt the rise of Islamists in the Middle East. The secretary-general of the Arab League, Dr Nabil Elaraby, hailed the coup as a “popular revolution”.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia praised Egypt’s armed forces for the “positive and historic role” they played in preserving stability.

Israel avoided any show of satisfaction over Morsy’s ouster, but its officials were delighted that the change would lead to the restoration of largely frozen contact with Cairo.

But Turkey, which has a history of military coups and currently has a government with Islamist roots, which has faced weeks of often violent protests, condemned the takeover as an “illicit” toppling of “a government that has come to power through democratic elections.”

African countries

Notably, the strongest and most direct denunciation of the military coup in Egypt has come from Africa.

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said: “What is happening in Egypt is a matter of grave concern not just to us in Africa, but to any true believer of democracy.”

At issue are the implications of the hounding from power of Egypt’s president for politics in Africa’s fragile democracies. This threat is aptly captured by the London-based Economist magazine: “The precedent that Mr Morsy’s ouster sets for other shaky democracies is a terrible one. It will encourage the disaffected to try to eject governments not by voting them out but by disrupting their rule.”

On its part, the African Union has suspended Egypt from participating in its activities until the return of constitutional order. In slamming the ban, its Peace and Security Council has argued that the “overthrow of the democratically elected president does not conform to the relevant provisions of Egypt’s constitution, and therefore falls under the definition of an unconstitutional change of government.”

Recognising the gravity of the Egyptian crisis, the AU has also appointed a high-level panel to engage various actors and work towards a peaceful and inclusive transition, and the restoration of constitutional order.

Prof Kagwanja is the CEO of the Africa Policy Institute. This article is part of the Institute’s Citizen Security Project.