The Two 1989s

This day, which ought to have been the national holiday of the new country, could also have been the birth year of the oldest, one day just as recognisable as that of 1776, 1871 or 1917. As I say it, I must ask; who is to deny that it already is? 

But this year, as the date is also the date of not only the extinction of the wall but also the Night of Broken Glass - the subject euphemistically chosen - the Visigothic Council of Toledo in 694, the verdicts of the Stockholm massacre in 1520, the disembowelling of the Mary Jane Kelly, last of the (recognised) Jack the Ripper killing spree of late 1888, the 1923 aborted Munich Putsch and the subsequent attempted murder of the Führer in a uniquely (as well as revolutionary) deadly act of "lone wolf", single-male terrorism in the dawn of war in 1939 - and numerous other events, and was allegedly blocked as the long-wanted National Day of at long last United Germany for the first mentioned infraction - is also the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, and the following infraction on burgeoning civic and democratic spirit - if not civil liberties, unrecognised and negated in the first place - in central Beijing, at the gates of the palace where so many protests had occurred since the events of May 1919, in the autumn of the decade which had begun under the cruel and very much hibernated yoke of Qing rule.

This upheaval might have been deemed revolutionary as well, paradoxically if it had been the only upheaval of that year, but for ill or good, inspired by external rumblings or solely by the internal conclusions and combustions within the governing Gòngchǎndǎng - a party, or club having outlived its inception, coming to power and, eventually, the ideology it had formed at its crest of challenging the Soviet as well as Western creeds to copy the best, or worst in both - it was the year of 1989, the fourtieth anniversary, to both believers and ordinary citizens having grown under its auspices, of the Communist victory in October 1949. But before its 40-year crisis, perhaps inevitable after the death of its author and the fully inevitable waning of the memory of the Japanese scourge and the incompetence of the (still somewhat cherished) "bourgeois" regime of the Guomindang - still empowered, and more fully so, at Taiwan, the Pescadores and other small islands - in the minds of the bulk of the populus, the regime would be challenged from the young of a people whose growth it had claimed to better. These were embetterers themselves, or so claimed, and would not settle for the mystique of the new clique of leadership struggling on in Mao's shadow. Reforms had been launched, but apart from the death of the mad autocracy with its red emperor, no substantial changes had yet been smelled, experienced, assured anyone but the fanatics. Fans, they may have been. But fans, in an oligarchic leadership as that promised, and rather elegantly incepted by Deng - now soon to reach the ripe age of 85, having the Qing regime in living memory - could choose many idols, and under the broader banner of the man now, as ever, welcoming visitors at the large plaza where Chiang's portrait had once beckoned, there were many names to cling onto and hold in veneration.

Storming the proverbial barricades. As East provided grudging support to enthusiasm to bitter but approving silence, the West so recently acquainted with The Grand Dragon refused to act beyond characteristic condemnation. Which camp, on either side of the fence at Tiananmen in 1989, will prevail? As further protests regarding the status of Hong Kong, granted to the People's Republic only years before and transfered enough years after it, have reignited a struggle for diversification of power and civil liberties lacking a counterpart in these proudly democratic Western states. 

The one from the crowd of jumpsuits whose death launched the great rising was Hu Yaobang, technocrat and one of the most widely recognised among the growing throng fostered to take Mao's place and, as they must have thought, his unexpected princeling's. Deng had once ousted Hua as well as the empress dowager, still alive years after a death sentence with the casual reprieve marking the new, or third republic of Chinese characteristics, and surely he would quietly retire if only the many could peacefully state their adherence to the forces of the young. But dead he was, on the Ides of April, heralding bloodshed to someone acquainted to his Shakespeare, and warm as his body may be, this call could not be one for the man to rise up and take the center seat in their name. Instead, theirs was a call for reform, for political plurality to follow economic reform, or the perceived quake of it, as had not yet happened but was considered all but reality in the Soviet neighbour, the regime's chief beneficiary and now dying rival.

This call - in the name of the dead man, the favourite son of Deng's men - might have been taken for an outcry, but asides its inherent ambitions it called upon, and caught the voice of Zhao, premier of the people's republic and a man of ambition as well as (or so history sealed his fate) popular and democratic reform, and added his voice to those of the students, youngsters, occupants of the square rightly named of the Heavenly Gate of Peace. Whether of peace, or just the call of their ancestors of 1919, or the oldest cry of the widest body politic for political justice and anti-corruption policies added to those of territorial integrity (the annexation, pending, of Hong Kong and Macau as Deng's Austria and Sudetenland, the old empire once again united except for independent outer Mongolia) the answer was clear. Atrocious as if it had emerged from the process and alleged openness of the 1960s, now incompatible with the new regime and wind of change. Or was it?

Deng's answer, and that of the Central Committee united - as far as we may know - was a hallmark not immediately associated with 1989 as the merrier events of Berlin half a year later, but indeed saluted and thus further incurred upon the eternal conscience of the hibernating regime which then still upheld its border fence, the last casualty occurring weeks before the violent stirrings began in Beijing. Then, of course, nobody could have known. But the answer would make stirrings of its own, resting uneasily beneath the surface to emerge bubble by bubble, name by name, eventually in throngs that would not have withstood the ripples of the Maoist torrent. 

Going underground. The democratic movement would re-emerge in the 1990s, with Deng retired and Jiang Zemin Three Represents firmly established, to little avail. The Democracy Party, Zhōngguó Mínzhǔ Dǎng, would be crushed equally in 1998, as the republic arose in full right across the strait. 

Now; thirty years past the event that shaped the decade to come and the closing half score years of this millennium, my millennium and Deng's (and Song Mei-ling, who lived through all of it and more, witnessing the massacres from gilded exile on Manhattan as she had the events of 1911, the triumph of her brother-in-law-to-be over Manchu rule from Georgia) reasons are manifold to consider this as not only a pivotal event, either anticlimax or throwback to an era we thought to be closed et cetera, but a reaffirmation the actual recognition of a system in competition with the Western democracy now made preeminent - or at least recognised by Francis Fukuyama that same year (and made eternal, or so at the time, by the seminal 1992 book christened with same title). Oh heavens, yikes, fiddle-sticks, how our victories are short-lived! This advent of a system was typically disguised by the arrogance of the victors, but precisely as the Cold War - certainly for its second half - in fact was a tripolar struggle, the victors were as united as those of the earlier war, the one still defined as such sans adjectif. As West gained ground and economic growth, if fainter than in the wake of the bloodbath-turned-recovery of the last post-war era, East came inexorably - recognisably - as competitor on a global market, but as far as the resurging West was concerned, an ally. Yet, even without a Berlin (or Hong Kong) Airlift, and indeed throughout the handover of Hong Kong (Island, in addition to the conditions of the Treaty of 1898), Macau, the entry of the Communist state into the WTO as if underlining a propaganda victory, the presupposition remained that it was for China, "Red China" as it was only recently known, only a little more than recently excluded from these halls of temporal international power, to adjust and adapt the institutions of this West which had shunned it, humoured it, and now proclaimed it a brother, or rather those of the "other" Chinese non-state (and thus fulfill, suicidally, the equally laughable dying aspirations of senile autocrat Chiang Kai-shek then as much a figure of the past as Cixi had been). 

However, Deng's theory, which for a lack of terminology representative for the time might be called Leninist (sans the prefix "Marxist-") would maintain rigour strengthened, not undercut, with the wealth it was to behold and deliver, in conformity with traditional Confucian and Han Feizi/Legalist dogma. What would be behold, but certainly not vanquish any of this West which had already won would, far from a grinding paradox of systems and a betrayal of the democratic-capitalist assumptions of the period - and, more broadly, back to the liberal hegemony of the 19th century - be a Chinese model of both liberal capitalism and Soviet-style single-party state, or a unique combination of pragmatic totalitarianism, christened in the blood of the generation of '89 rather than sullied and held back by its mush, bent on achieving allegedly Western goals by characteristically Eastern means. 

Another Volksfest in 1989, months after the blood at Tiananmen, with soldiers passively looking on or performing their duty by either savaging their professional abode or helping to dismantle it as securely as possible. Honecker, who surely had hoped to ride it out as steadfastly, received congratulations from victorious Deng and Jiang, but would not long outlive it. 

How then has this model already shaped our minds, aspirations and choices? Apart from the Bálványos speech, where outcast Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban proclaimed the death of liberal democracy in its most derisive, and the rise of an illiberal, perhaps authoritarian, perhaps more democratic (and thus authentic form) of sovereign, popular government. Is this, then, the "Chinese model", or "model of 1989", authoritarian guidance combined with virtue, a modest and susceptible form of the single-party state, rolling over the people it promises better wealth and health? 

I for myself think not; as the democratic revolt against liberal democracy - a hallmark of the decade which gave this new millennium an even smaller and less virulent boom than the first, the last of the last - was one of popular will, or volonté génerale, popular sentiment, or interest at its centre. The Chinese paradox, a paradox no more than the paroxysm it supposedly entailed, more than a distorted form of Marxist-Leninism of the oarsman than a new and softer (let alone self-deconstructing form) variant, harkens in a more foundational sense to Chinese autocracy in its classical sense, found in the mists of Chinese dynastic culture, refined from Yuan Shikai to Chiang Kai-shek (and, allegedly, Sun) through Mao and Deng into the personalistic ambition of Chairman Xi. This model, uncontroversially following Chinese governments through war and genocide and minority rule, accompanied every government to the dying stages of the Manchus, and until the final whiffs of Chiang Ching-kuo. From a Leninist, and certainly Sun's perspective, this revolution might have been claimed to have wandered a full cycle into fully fledged popular sovereignty. Meanwhile, attempts to sway the non-state into the arms of the stronger "authentic" China remains, and - more interestingly - its moves to entrench power remains largely unquestioned, unchecked and even imitated across the globe its limbs now wrap around. But by no means should this make us less concerned the old republic will not be the first victim of this victorious West, and the continued march of Deng's tanks into the third millennium. 

The future? Or the very present? If cast back into a globe divided, which will triumph, and which parts of the loser will infect the winner? If a power struggle entails in the geopolitical and institutional, as well as the economic, for the 21st century, who has served for Churchill at Fulton, to pronounce the new China as foe as well as brother? 

What then, do we do with this beast, and what is it? We must first acknowledge, fully, that China was participant as well as co-victor of the Cold War, and recognise - a harder chunk to swallow - the inevitability of conflict between the victors, or rather that this conflict has endured for longer than we dare think about. And with this, reimagining the Western way, to which way it is universal or eternal, and may be reinforced . But above all, perhaps the best legacy of the Trump administration now, maybe, in the closing days of its penultimate year (depending entirely upon who will win the contest of the following spring, but let's agree for now unpredictability is at least an asset) is the recognition, hopefully irrevocable, that our great rival has been strengthened in the absence of understanding of the divisions lying between us. China, and the Dengist-Leninist system, will remain for an unforeseeable future, and the absence of a cold and frosty relationship has certainly not served the ancient Bastiat theorem more than Fukuyama's more recent one. And perhaps, or am I deluding myself, that the China of Sun, if maintained, may serve as model as well as incubator for a pandemic yet to come and leave a greater China reunited and, hopefully, more healthy as well as free. In other case, we have reason to recognise 1989 (as well as 1978, 1949 and, indeed, the long unrecognised uprising of 1911) as the birthing year of a new system which, for good or ill, serve our fates as the final one as much as democracy has and, in this time of technological sovereignty, perhaps more final as well. 

Pete Butts, and the future of presidential candidates

"Yes. Mayor Pete is really that special." These words, reinforced by the following "Wouldn't it be great... if we had a president who was really smart? I mean really, really, really smart?" left a double taste. How, in a time of unspeakable, yet spoken stupidity and a drop in the sophistication of argument and political debate to the simultaneously academic and vernacular, could someone not be endeared by the promise of a highly educated (and with the speak, interests and grit to show for it, as opposed to a mere diploma and perfunctory letters) war veteran who endeared - to the tune of 80 % landslides - a middle-size post-industrial lackluster Indiana city as well? Adding to his gay (in at least two senses) image, pragmatic hand and aim and willingness to engage that could not suppress certain reminiscient images of the 2008 campaign, a multilingual renommé that seemed to challenge unchallenged vices of the intellectual candidate as well as every European preconception of Americans as stupid, prejudiced, inflexible, and equally lackluster as the gravel they rose from, Mayor Pete seemed only limited by the title of his office (and arguably his age) from sweeping up the coming 2020 primaries in a similar fashion, and go on to bring a wind of change to the Democratic party, the country it once governed as its own, and the world.

But what change? Buttigieg, as is his full name, and one of the Johnsons or Roberts' of Malta, has paraded a heterodox, conciliatory and quirky brand of political reform much in line with his own image. His healthcare plan, Medicare "for all who wants it", has been lambasted by more ambitious elements since release, but . In a country divided between those who would prefer to hold onto expensive plans with elusive but estimable benefits over the xenophilic abstraction of a federally mandated, government-run national plan, and those who worship "change" and "for all" in a manner equal a matter reminiscient of economic growth. Buttigieg's concept, akin to the cobble-work Affordable Care Act we have grown to love, endorse, hate, accept and nearly unanimously wants to shun one way or the other, may well stand scrutiny as a technocratic attempt to reconcile the dream of coverage for those who need it (arguably a position supported by most Americans) with the tranquility and integrity of freedom of contract for those who prefer their current masters (arguably an American argument supported by some) but rhymes bad with the chants of a political climate more polarised than since decades. In short; who wants it?

On foreign policy, Buttigieg has essentially accepted the axioms of the post-Truman, post-Soviet order and the United States' central role touted by the military-industrial-academic complex (or the globalist-imperialist elitist cabal, if you prefer) rather than indicating a will to demolish it, but also acknowledged the need for withdrawal. In this, he may prove a greater hawk than Trump, or in a different way. I doubt a major confrontation with the Truman order is about to take place within the Democrats, who with either Sanders/Warren or Biden/Harris is certain to endure, if under looming and possibly less than splendid isolation.

The ultimate problem, however, is a failure to produce any candidate of both the grit, persona and thought of Buttigieg and the wider experience of, say, Biden or other (ex-)senators not considerable this time, and it echoes back to the Democratic party. Personally, I would hold him in high esteem if only for his executive experience, which is an odd thing these days, and sorely missed. In the past, the American people have held up three senators for the presidency; two dead within their third year, and one with a full eight-year tenure against mounting divisions and a legacy of either momentous or (given the expectations) scant importance. Within both camps, the throng of senators is thick, and full of words spoken with less eloquence and substance than on the senate floor. Promises are racked for the next term, but seldom accumulated in the form of past efforts. This toxic culture, call it a curse of you will, may not be eternal but has clearly grown in insistence to lock a hold on primaries and conventions which will not bode well on the promise to deliver once the campaign is behind, the promises made, and all that is left the reality of government. For the same reason, the capitulation of Governor Inslee is a pity, if not to be mourned for long. In the future, especially after a loss against the Orange one, the not-going-to-be president of the next term as well as the current one, it may be that the rather than the nomination falls (again) to an unlikely governor of humble origins, or - less likely - a mayor or (a decreasing possibility) former Vice President, rather than a scion of the fantastically personal. (Or maybe, in line with the trend embarked, a CEO of nil political experience to counter another. I would not mind it.)

In this, Mayor Pete may have found, or been forced by circumstances into, a strange balance of an unlikely breed: Truly special, but with a mind to getting things done. We may see at a later date, but not likely at any in 2020.

Or, who the heck knows? Will this election year be yet another repeat of 2008?

Bashir's Last Waltz

This week, the Algerian high command, in supposed synchronisation with the country's ailing, failing and visibly disgruntled president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who surged to the supreme office in the wake of the Islamist rebellions of the early 1990s, which in fervour and vicariousness were no second to the groundbreaking violent rebellion and afterbirth of the revolution against French and pieds-noir domination. Within days, the second - and most deserving - of the umarah of the Arab world previously beleaguered, but ultimately victorious against the pressures of the 2011 wave, Sudani strongman Omar al Bashir, would face downfall amidst intense popular protests and the typical (late) intervention of the armed forces. The ladder turned on its benefactee, posed not even with the question of how graceful the checkout, after long-overdue eviction. The coincidence of Mr. Assange's, as it were, ejection with its less than dignified elements would seem to draw all of the attention one might want (as well as attention) that would rightly have been drawn from this man.

Domination, of this - for a long time - conglomerate of two grand peoples, ironically named condominium during the Anglo-Egyptian era, has been Bashir's pregorative for a long time, and for all but the last years including the Bantu Sudanis of the south, now embroiled in a civil war of their own outside his grasp. The cruelties inflicted in particular on these, and more so upon the people of Darfur, would face unkeen international antagonism for otherwise patiently tolerated autocrats prevailing within the region. With a personal stash of slaves, of the most literal and in an Anglo-American dominated interpretation of history (but fitting to an Arab one also, largely) gruesome kind, a record of ethnic cleansing of those not fitted for the new republic, and continuing the islamisation of what could - and certainly to some extent had been - a multicultural (as well as by design multi-ethnic) country over the rest by continuing and strengthening the policies timely set out by Jafa'ar Nimeiry, Bashir earns a place as one of the cruelest, crudest and most retrograde of rulers in the Arab League. He will leave it as eventually exiting as the longest republican custodian, barring only three Gulf monarchs and the Sultan of Oman, the longest. Also, after a nigh-thirty year reign (self-installed the month of the Tiananmen massacre) presiding over the poorest in the league after Somalia and Yemen, by virtue of anarchy, endemic tribal warfare and the timely (if not too generous) contributions of the Saudi airforce. But unless he leaves his country, now without the guise of protection of his unearned garb, it is far from certain the warrant of arrest issued - finally - a decade past, he is uncertain to face justice already overdue by supra-Italian proportions.

His legacy could not be more distorted, and did - it must be said - sully the image of the ostensibly washed and reformed African Union beyond redemption. His crimes may soon be more clearly articulated, lest one is to miss the chance of indulging in great expectations. The forces which eventually engineered his downfall, a typical cataclysmic muster of both disgruntled elite and immediate and daring expression of demotic disapproval, seems more conservative than what one might have hoped for in the decade ripe with, if nothing else, heavy-rocking and momentous change, but a wider popular rebellion seeping into the legal political process, akin to that in the northern colonial power Egypt in 2012 (and the other one in 2016). But for an overthrow of now only Bashir, but the system which made him, a more positive vision that the typical Arab rebellions - so much more the French revolution (as Zhou, after all, might have called it) of 1968 than of 1789 - is sordidly required. 

Above all, Arab - and African - intellectual life must acquire both a sense of integral independence and intellectual libertarianism. Something akin to Adunis, at home and not from a pervasive exile, is required, against which the embedded framework of penal shari'ah will pose a just as suppressive mechanism than the armed forces. The first step, which ought have been the first, for hopeful alteration in 2011 must be followed by another separation, whose fate will rest in the battle of the streets and for the institutions in Khartoum, against which rural communities and wills are almost certain to clash. A free press must be established, at the spill of blood as well as ink (and computer code), and particularly cable. Support for these institutions in their independent variety, and not the double scourge of direct economic aid to the coup-makers, and independent civil society are key if the north, in the end, is to outshine the south. With this drive, some forces within the old oligarchy are almost certain to pose sympathy, at least on the onset.

For all these uncertainties, with Bashir's passing we may see the closing of an era unlike any previous tumultuous moment of 1979, or 1989 (which hardly seeped into the reek of the region's whitherto growing strongmen) or even 2011, where an angry knife plunged into the cavity in symbolic rejection of the state of his country replaced a near-half century of amiriyyah and eccentric cruelty, but also of stability and a life of luxuries - the freedoms from, above else - now undeniably craved for. Without even taking the refugee crisis, itself strong enough to sway events of this kind (and of which I will write shortly) into the narrative. For with the fall of the last of the last of the pre-2011 Arab leaders, bar the more illustrious but eventually less well fated monarchic systems, Sudan had turned its back not only on a period of horror, needless conflict and the hurtful altercation of the near and distant past, but opened a door to a future of even greater uncertainty. And this time, unexpected as it had somehow not been amidst the cries of joy (and else) at Tahrir, it was the people who finally broke down the door.

Few have earned arrest so much. Few of the sordid kleptocrats of the Sahel - and their yet-privileged Gulf cousins - wielded it with the same penchant for cruel displacement and a lesser eye for the changing vicissitudes of his long and unglorious reign. Few, I hope, blunders by the now entirely disgraced Zuma, now enjoying his last weeks of presidency had he not been ousted in his own right, will be as sordidly spat and, I hope, never forgotten as the failure to live up to his international obligations and orchestrate the renewal of the image of the African Union - and his own too, I think -and arraign Bashir's exit by a legal arrest, and strike fear into his more inglorious colleagues as well. Whether you like it or not, their reckoning is coming, and the waltz which Bashir has now been called to will leave him as sordidly mute as the fate of more awe-striking voices, fearful or pleasant. This Bashir, this Bashir. Take this Bashir, with a clamp on its jaws. (And, as one might be tempted to add while straying from the subject, first we take Khartoum, then we take Arabia.) But never, for an instant, consider forgiving its sturdiness or the record it set, being indicted years before its time was finally limited, let alone the woes it inflicted, for long after the day this immediate fate of the dictatorship was settled. For whatever the future may bring, and however grim, the Sudanese may rightly rejoice over the departure of the worst tyrant and kleptocrat not immediately affected by the shockwaves unleashed in the cradle of this decade of so many disappointments. 

We will die if we do not create gods / 

We will die if we do not kill them. 

Adunis, proud national socialist and true voice of Syria (by virtue, not birth) 

Already an image on the wall. The uprising, also deemed as iconic as the ones in Egypt, Libya and Syria long before, has managed in toppling the most incredulously cruel and everlasting of incumbent Arab emirs and tawagit (yes, I'm borrowing the quasi-Caliph's nomenclature whenever he is right) bar the sultan, turning the existing image of Arab nationalism and politics on its head, yet again. This time, rather than asking, "Will it last?", ask this: What will be said of it in ten, one hundred years to come? How will it last? How may she retain significance? 

The First Prime Minister, ve Likud haHadash

"Israel has never had a better friend than you." The statement, more gross had it been made in the Prime Minister's native Hebrew, would seem cheap to the point of absurdity made in a sheer guise of flattery, in a private situation caught by one of the many handheld macrofiers veering into, and preying on the private life. But officially stated by a man so calculated as the Rosch haMemshala, now only months from a record longevity in that job and in that sense having earned being identified with the institution itself, to any man or woman living. Just stop for a moment, and think of the great patrons of the persecuted and beleaguered state-nation, from Cyrus to Bolesław, Raoul Wallenberg and - surely - the great Robert Kennedy and Anwar Sadat, who both took bullets in the wake of explicit and, in starkly different ways, groundbreaking support for the Zionist cause when its polity was truly beleaguered, and decidedly more deserving of sympathy. And let's add to that her domestic friends and patrons, such as the great native son Yitzhak Rabin, christener of the Six Day-War (whose simple but awesome logic my brain could not comprehend for many years), twice Prime Minister and the last to talk seriously of Shalom as less than something of a convenience or necessity - to the same fault. I draw no distinction between gunmen of different nationalities or ostensibly rivaling causes, of the different sons of Jacob by the zealotry of shared Biblical antecedent warrior-prophets. But there is something in the cocksure and yet servile statement, "never had a better friend than you", directed at the Orange one, the trumper of the other great office of better beholders, fitted with an eery splendour to the times. O tempora, o verbi.

No better friend than you. Of all time. Whereas the bond of friendship has lasted, to be strengthened, the result emerging under its grace is contentious, including among American Jewry, most of whom support the Democratic party. As Thomas Friedman put it, and well before, the emerging de facto one-state solution will displace either the notion of demos, of self-government, or the core identity of the Jewish state, so recently affirmed in spite of crass realities.

More upsetting, once you think about it, are the patrons absent from this proclamation, and the diplomatic, social and politico-cultural upset implied, with striking veracity, by this statement. Surely the record-breaking Chancellor of Germany, who never opened her lips but for praise and solemn defence of the integrity of Israel, or of Macron, equally staunch crusader in lieu against local enemies, or of previous presidents, more eloquent or consistent in Christian duty and upholding the great truth set by Speaker Pelosi, that on matters of Israel, Democrats and Republicans may still, in the end, share a common opinion. Not anymore. Though the bonds may last for this statement to remain valid, the breaking between Likud leadership and Democrats in the twilight of Obama's departure, a solid but not unconditional friend, will prove as apparent as those with Europeans, and force a new ground of diplomatic realities which may hurt as much as groundbreaking. For this reason as much as the 2016 election, there was reason to follow the resulting contest of yet another ragtag coalition of the progressive and liberal forces of Israel, now united under the soldier and gentleman Benny Gantz, struggling to muster enough against Likud, previously out for count in the wake of its very historic, and very groundbreaking - no matter the truth or plausibility of Sharon's last gambit - split.

Dual victors? Gantz, a virgin in politics but with a long, harsh and faithful service spanning many governments seemed, if for a moment, to have cleared the seemingly unassailable task of surpassing the party of power of the post-negotiation era. Could - however unlikely - the executor of the Gaza onslaught of 2014 wrestle power from its architect, and restart the era of hope and duality - however unrealistic?

Now, for the fourth consecutive time and with a predictability also fitted to times of supposed great upsets, the steersman of the fate of the most dynamic and state of the Middle East, takes the stage to proclaim victory. The election seemingly elevating - I should say confirming - Netanyahu to the state of Ben Gurion, not merely in the chronological, but also as the architect of her state for a generation. The confirmation of Likud as the party of power, rather than a contestant as strong as Ben Gurion's Mapai (and its successor haAvoda, "Labor") once was, will sear the diplomatic and geostrategic conditions for the maturing state definitely. We know, since 2009, that a Prime Minister Netanyahu has been ready to capitalise on the peaceable intents of Mr. Sharon in his sanguinary, if eerily promising term in office, since 2013 that he was prepared to offer terms to extremists of any shade that, in the European theatre, would at least then seem conspicuously dystopian, and since 2015 that he was to disown openly - unfathomably - the two-state fiction upon which the mainstream has relied for the generations since Israel transformed from a beleaguered state indeed, a David surrounded by Philistines of awesome strength and conspicuously foul intentions, into an occupier-protector of the displaced, disowned and disenfranchised Palestinian nation, or the bulk of it at any rate (at any time). For the first generation, realistic to the point of cynicism but modest in the mold of Herzl to contend with the one, and slightly smaller piece of a tripartite jigsaw puzzle set to replace the anachronistic British Palestinian mandate. The refusal to reject annexation of Arab lands to form the Israel of 1949 was only barely made, from the historic background of the immediate, and very brisk, rejection of any lands for a Jewish homeland. This has been traded, in part an achievement of Arafat as rare as any, for a mirroring David - now grown astute, powerful and scarred - and Yalut, and an in many ways more chilling rejection by the new political alignment (deliberate choice of term) by the reality, as much as in name, of Palestinian statehood. Whereas, when Netanyahu - previously one of the relatively pathetic, unstable Roschim of the 1990s, only to be ousted from party as well as power by his much older, more hedonistic rival - entered the premiership, one could detect the shades between the smart, soft-spoken, diplomatically astute leader and his foul-mouthed cronies, now one cannot. Whereas Netanyahu won't cheaply denounce be here will be no serious talks of peace, and the proposal - previously glinted at - that there will be no realisation of the Arab piece of the puzzle, however mauled, under his leadership, has grown into that there may be no two-state solution forever, the stage already set for a set of competing versions of the one-state, binational solution. Within this framework for all its simplicity and with an unsheltered eye to the demographic question, liberals can only accept one conclusion, and it is the one Netanyahu, and his predecessors, has sold as the cold and irreconcilable alternative to his politics. As Thomas Friedman succinctly put it, there can be no Jewish state, if it is also to maintain its unique status as a democratic one (for a brave, if often deplorable, argument against this three-prongs-be-made-two dilemma, see this spirited debate).

With the alleged patron-enabler of 21st century Hungarian fascism, in the garden of Raoul Wallenberg, protector of the Jewish nation. While relations between his and the land of so many that he saved have crumbled, largely due to diplomatic insensitivities but also a drastic rightward shift best embodied in this pose, the moment felt may not be forgotten. A legacy to outshine his own, of an accomplishment to best even the better Netanyahu. 

How, to discuss this possibility in a paragraph, one is to contend with a Jewish authoritarian (let's leave the comparisons with post-1948 South Africa and its overused, over-mispronounced epithet out for now, as pre-1969 Rhodesia is a finer comparison and yet utterly obscure) state, whether governed by an orbanised Israel, an ethnocracy dominated by Likud coalitions and tightening security measures for at least a generation or a semi-militarised, technocratic hybrid regime - once you think about it - is interesting as well as eery. For what, having accepted the death of Fukuyama's version of history (as he himself has, and at least contended in his 1992 volume) may be exciting to the calculating beholder than this turn of events, just as the current challenges - democratic in substance, if not beholden to a liberal-democratic (or, if one is more critical, "liberal-authoritarian") framework - to the supposedly unbreakable Western European family of values? For one, I conclude that the new, third Israel will pose as interesting a challenge to follow and scrutinise, if not for the inexorable path towards a diplomatic realignment in the path of a political one. One is as a, roughly speaking, liberal forced to contend critically in either case, as the relative benefit of citizens - Arab as well as Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, and the Druze recently forced to conclude their allegiance to their "new" tenant both permanent and preferable to Assad's now very rheumatic embrace - weighs light against the doom proposed, even if compensated with unlikely material improvement, by the permanence of the Likud peace theorem and the paradigm it has allowed to arise, or allowed its conclusion. There will never be a just state for the de facto subjects or denied citizens (let us call them thus) of the Western Bank without a change in the leverage exerted against the government reluctantly in responsibilities asserting itself over them, and - at the same time - no genuine security for the Israelis, including of their more entitled brethren, but without a peace process aimed at compartmentalisation. I am not an adherent to the Eurabia (or, more absurdly, "New Muslimania" in the case of an Australian volunteer crusader) hypothesis proposed by Western masochist-chauvinists and conspiracy theorists, its antonym of brutal white tutelage over the "new" citizenry after a complete breakdown of civil society being far more likely than a peacefully established monolithic Swedish (let alone French) Khilafah rid of Kurds, Iranians and Sami as well as the dispossessed hosts... not to speak of the neighbouring Finns and NATO-hosting Norwegians. Only one infected with the Jihadi mentality could plausibly believe it, within half a thousand years, and I for one will not live to see it, obey it, submit to it, if that needs to be said. In the Israeli case, one is forced to contend with real numbers, and realities of parties and actors pursuing their goals rather openly. Israelis will never subject themselves to a majority similar to that in Palestinian 2006, or Egyptian 2012 elections, as much as we may be forced to conclude that outcome in a truly unitary democratic state. Perhaps, thus, the challenge posed by the new paradigm, and the price it will exact from (rather than flowing unilaterally from) Netanyahu, the pimp of policy as well as other currency, will be a real one to contend with, for Western evaluation as well as Palestinian reality. The briskest commentary will be a sordid one, which will unmake the great effort of Ben Gurion and others, the sacrifice of so many more, to accomplish a state worthy as well as open to (I will reserve from using the term "reserved for") Jews of all lands gentile. In this, by attempting to resolve the conflict by ignoring it, Netanyahu may have buried the great door opened by political Zionism turned reality, the grandeur of a democratic secular nation state, of aspiring citizens flowing in by the thousands and millions to build the shining city in a desert; political, social and cultural as well as geographic. It still stands this test, but as the wells of Arab autocracy and a band of emirates (including those donning either more superb titles or the desperate chant of Jumhuriyah) are quaking in despair before whatever is to follow, the uniqueness of Medinat Yisra'el, so modest in its name, is threatened as much from within as by outer aspirations and hopes. For this, one may hope the grand villains are not to be forgiven, if they cannot be snubbed by their own designs, as values, legacy and institutions are grazed and may crumble yet.

Melekh haYisra'el... seemingly so impossible a title. But who could displace him, from without - or within? The growing influence of religious right in a once secular, quite radical young democracy is an old truth, but the current of religious politics has, if arrested, seen a lock on power for the most conservative and irredentist hard right, as well as its hardening. The support to the parliamentary right has shaped both its aspirations and identity. Having done that, will it last, or find a better patron? Even in the most tribalised democracy, loyalties live on a strain of demand.

What about the challenger? Mr. Gantz, erstwhile commander, has vowed on almost every point to uphold a hawkishness not unfitted to his past, including the contentious issue - in Israel, not so much - of the Iranian nuclear program, and even settlement annexation. The last question may be necessity as much as proclamation of enmity as far as the peace process is concerned, lately enamoured - well, let's be fair and say tolerated - by Lieberman of Yisra'el Beiteinu, the hardline imago of Israeli hard right-wing (res)sentiment of my mind, now in a shift not unlike that of a Hungary also realigned between a moderated, sense-speaking Jobbik of the valiant opposition and a gradually slipping Fidesz, the party of power. Perhaps, in reading Gantz' prospect of the seemingly inhuman task previously - if infinitely - accomplished by Barak and Sharon, of displacing the strongman before his time, the mutual realignment of Beiteinu, Shas or haTorah haMeuhedet for the usual currency of its scions; representation and cash payments, will shift the stage conversely and break the seeming unassailable broadness of the Likud establishment. At the same time, the story of shift towards the hard and relentless right is the same old one, of birthrates and migration of Jewish communities more recent, dispossessed but strong in faith, hard placated in the want for peace, and gradual devouring of all forces decent or reasonable. The other strong factor, however, capable of swaying the most hardline of any representative polity, is the support form abroad. With perhaps the first cost-free, subsidised occupation paid by US support and a crazed (in its ineptitude if not in substance or geostrategy) downfall to relentless, far-from-Bush Sr. (requiescat in pacem) cause of messianic, and often apocalypse-chanting rightward debt to the Jewish state. This sentiment, for all its stubbornness, is younger than my parents, and may yet see revision and - if not - the destruction of its beneficiary (the close, after all, the messianic Christians crave).

The mathematics, at any rate, do not favour an alternative short of the de-alignment so dearly craved, by Israeli democratic integrity if not by a divided electorate. Gantz, or rather the quadrivirate, would have to court Arab parties, successfully drawing out the foulest commentaries Bibi has yet made public, to receive the blessing of President Rivlin for any sustainable majority, thus making the result - if contending with the other small but vital actors on an emerging two-party scene - either extraordinary as well as extraordinary weak, or outright impossible. Either result is likely to fail, and certain only to be frail. The affairs of the Jewish state, even in the high times of the Mapai, the party that literally build the land, has always been one of rocky roads, contentious coalitions of many bumps, ejections and hitchhikers and to a goal of no certainty, and the seeming stability recreated may rather spell out downfall of the Israel we thought we knew, or an establishment of the illiberal democracy looming in Europe from both a technocratic center and the authoritarian right.

But fail Netanyahu is also far from certain not to, and from more precipitous heights (one may well, in a twinge of Schadenfreude if not outright bliss, think of David Bar Giora, defender of Jerusalem united and eternal). With looming court cases, the ridiculous - as well as outrageous, once brought onto the table - proposal to elevate the Prime Minister to a Roman-style immunity, after the fact, it is possible - and perhaps to be desired, even without another seat transferred in the government - that his fall will come sooner and as the sacrifice of this supposedly momentous victory. Likewise, it may even with the most heinous crimes in- and outside the verdict, be far less desirable in face of what this party, the brainchild of Begin - Begin of the garrote and the letter-bomb - has become. For now, it is only known that nothing is known of what is to come. But will the institutions of power unelected uphold their duty? If nothing else, Israel is a state of press and judiciary eager to snap its jaws at the government's feet and shins, and hold it out for the voters for inspection. Previous holders of the office, and the highest one, and with a certain predominance of this first Prime Minister's party comrades, have faced disgraceful fall and the jail sentence so relatively absent in European democracies, certainly in Sweden. All to no avail, even after a momentous career. The question of guilt, with demands even from within that normalcy is impossible and a hard four-year mandate not secure, is impossible to escape. The question is, when the opportunity arrives, will the voters care - after all this?

"The program speaks for itself." Shaded in green, Moshe Feiglin's hard last-ditch effort to court voters above an altering, and ignominiously raised threshold apparently failed a possible state of deal-breaker. In addition, or perhaps as a starter to the core points of annexing the Palestinian territories as well as Israeli-administered territories (such as settlements), expelling Palestinians and building a grand Third Temple, Zehut's prime electoral and supposedly non-negotiable pledge to legalise cannabis fell short. In a political landscape rapidly shifting, where the first two options are never the same as last time, Zehut boasted a peculiar heterodoxy that reached eager, but inadequate ears... or noses.

What is then to follow? Without a part in government, and perhaps as likely with such a turn, the left will fragment again, the center unable to hold. In a healthy democracy, as well as some decidedly unhealthy ones, the shift of power yanked eventually, and sometimes aggressively, by an unappeased electorate is a premier quality, always undercutting the ambitions of any strongman. By an Erlanderesque finesse, if not the grace and neuroses or his humor of this fine length of a premier, the first Prime Minister of Israel may serve for yet another term, and then perhaps another (invested with the Kohl-like grandeur of a second political lifetime, having finally "united" the uneasily divided homeland) before retirement. It would be preferable to see a vacancy, followed by hard negotiations, the peek of a something else, even if it is unlikely to hold and may thus doom the settlement of any viable rival to the new Likud as the Labor of this century.

A snap election may not be impossible. A grand coalition, less likely but not to be overlooked. And after, with or without Yonatan's brother (one must, whatever next to pass, imbue in the name some great etch of honour and duty) at the helm, and whatever the state and composition of the rivaling flagship, whatever the platform held up against the emerging new ethnocracy, and its hardline political baggage, and the religious zeal sustaining the walk of the occupation into eternity (though unlike Xinjiang and Tibet, it cannot reach a decisive point, its crude facts undercutting its own weight) there will be time, as well as reason for old allies to reconsider, and perhaps new - less salient - ones to be found. In this, I have a hard time wishing the alternative, the officer-gentleman, a nice try or even the best of wishes, though it would be well to remember the hardness of this new reality may be disowned by those at its very midst. The satisfaction of the voters will never be reached, and the dynamism and sustained opposition of the Jewish state will never fade, so with the last half century fresh in mind, and the darkest expectations for the next, we can turn the page and expect as much as wait. No Messiah could ever ask for more. A Messiah he is not, and the likes of Kahane better fit the mold of David. This is conservatism at its worst, and at the same time most ingenious, and any alignment will eventually find its just as stubborn rival. As Victor Hugo observed, and stronger than any army, is the idea fitted for the time. As the time of Melekh Bibi passes into the pages of history, of the sublime number but want of any great victories or achievements beyond his own, it may be as good to ask already what content that idea will bear.

The young and the old, but both bearers of the new. With Likud solid on the right and a myriad of "progressives" of uncertain ground on the left, and a new paradigm rising - its unquenchable loyalty slipping, if equally in want of something new - on the other side of the Atlantic, the future is up for grabs. With either in, or on top of either government, how will policy shift in the land of common heritage?  

The Kanzlerin

A truth not widely acknowledged in the era of supposedly hegemonic liberal democracy - which under her aegis came to a dramatic shift - is the observation that the leader of the predominant European economy, the beacon of free institutions, modest government and respect for the rule of law of the continent, did not herself vote in a free election until age 35. Born under the boot of the nascent federal republic and the man inaugurating the Bundeskanzleramt, her Vorbild Konrad Adenauer, the great chancellor himself purged and briefly interned by Nazis for opposition sympathies and a country remade but lacking an army, an armed police service and having only just come out of the last row of hangings by ever-present and supreme occupation authorities.

Ironically it was a religious calling that brought six-month old Angela Kasner east of the border, to be raised, educated and eventually caught in the land of Ulbricht and Honecker, beyond the Iron Curtain. In its starkly socialist and simultaneous victorian society - whose reemergence in the culture of unified Germany has been one of the most tumultuous and duplicitous accomplishment-failures of her political career - she studied Russian, mathematics, physics and at age 32 earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry at the German Academy of Sciences, in a divided Berlin. Angela and husband Ulrich Merkel, from whom she separated under the fairly tolerant laws of the DDR after a five-year childless marriage. The name would stay, and follow her to Bonn.

Spiriting to power in the havoc and hope emerging from the buzzing and breaking that marked the jovial end of the wall that parted her city, Kennedy's city, in two Merkel joined the opposition party Demokratischer Aufbruch before the first and last multi-list elections to the Volkskammer in the spring of 1990, soon emerging as the right hand of Eastern CDU leader Lothar de Maizière, again last and only widely "elected" Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the democratic republic. Rising quickly in a time fit for molding heroes and leaders and names, akin to her later rival Viktor Orban, the chemist-turned-politician joined the list of the CDU and was elected to the national Bundestag, beginning her political journey at the eve of unification, in a city soon fit for the relocation of a united, democratic parliamentary government lost in a cold German spring nearly sixty years before.

The triangle, the gesture inversed. 

What would have become of Kohl without the emergence of this new giant, opposed - now conclusively known - and certainly watched with skepticism from the United Kingdom, France and several of the now liberated capitals of its brethren of emerging Eastern Bloc states we know not, but ultimately meant another eight-year hiatus for the prevailing Union, though forced to contend not only with the social liberal values setting root, but the predictable economic reactions suffered in the newly constituted states. Before very long, Ostalgie would be too apparent in a society not taking enough economic advantage by the new hegemons. Within, the party was ripped apart by factional infighting, corruption scandals of the breed sparing not even German long-term dominant-party technocracy and a long-standing (but ultimately unsustainable) ethos of ascetic, part Lutheran-Kantian, part catholic conservative values, but also the country's role in a clearly existing and deeply hierarchical Atlanticist bond.

Merkel took no clear sides, but worked heavily in favour of long-standing chairman Helmut Kohl through a series of ministries, rising to the post of party secretary upon the great man's downfall in 1998. The neoliberal sceptre of the 1980s had now passed itself, rather than being passed, over to the SPD in a trend making the exile of the power party even more uneasy, if not harming them in the long run. The rejection of Die Union and liberal FDP, its nymphomaniac but recurring partner, in favour of "red-green" majority, it was far more ignominious than before. Whether Germans were really tired of the grey austerity of "Kohlism" (put the definite article of alcohol's native Arabic on that) or disillusioned by unification and the vast gulf between its limitless promise and age-old dream and the reality of formerly enslaved and impoverished (as it was quite commonly referred in CDU propaganda) eastern brethren and apparent realities cannot be established. But it was, in favour both of SPD tutelage, the flamboyant, active, even aggressive personality of Gerhard Schröder and further reforms chipping at the Sozialwirtschaft model (Erhard's grand creation, if not, in that regard, CDU:s) that was the order of the day. The shift, typical of its time but somewhat unfamiliar in the pragmatic, quiet, organised, consensus-dominated facets of the German body politic, came first with ease to Germany but would be followed by a similar and stronger disenchantment, as Schröder failed to live up to the foreign and domestic challenges facing this new and walking giant on the economic and political stage.

If a different style was needed to counter this new time and challenges, embodied by post-division Germany's first and belligerent leader, it would first seem it was coming. With Thatcher, also an "iron" lady on account of her academic credentials, fresh in memory and few other models to equal her, she was labeled an aggressive, if not shrill, somewhat dejected voice of the opposition and the ostensible party of power. A voice, one would later observe, of a woman who had been raised to listen, and to speak carefully. In 2000, she finally succeeded heavily experienced but broadly shunned rival Wolfgang Schäuble as head of the CDU, a position had been as equal to the chancellorship in the federal democratic era as that of the Tory Party had in the United Kingdom. But in a twist to this parallell as well she lost the position of Kanzlerkandidat to CSU:s Edmund Stoiber in 2002, the second such upstart after its legendary long-term leader Franz-Josef Strauß in 1980 (shortly before Kohl's national rise).

And so Stoiber lost, if very barely, situating Merkel untarnished in position for a bid four years later. Or perhaps it would be less. The problems for the "new" SPD were surging. Conflicts with the United States over the Atlanticist bond, with other allies over international entanglements and business relations with the new, "free" Russia, the inability to formulate a coherent foreign policy (a fact ruthlessly undercut by CDU veterans, including Schäuble) and continually rampant unemployment particularly in the recently annexed Eastern provinces, as they had already been labeled, and uncertainty about his financial dealings ultimately cut the loud-spoken Schröder out of favour. In 2005, a snap election ushered in an intense electoral campaign, in which Merkel was continually criticised for failing to hit the "open goal" that was the wreck of the SPD regime as well as open gaffes in national debates, and a cold attitude and uncertainty about her preferred coalition partners and policy proposals. But cold came out in favour and blue conquered over the brand-new red with a few more seats, and intenser-still negotiations for a Großkoalition. It was a hallmark of the more intense Cold War years, but the resulting deal made Merkel the head of the government, SPD tycoon Frank-Walter Steinmeier the minister of foreign affairs and the mild, meek Peer Steinbrück minister of finance, and would put the CDU on top for a succeeding number of administrations that would lay down and destroy her allies and isolate any attempt at parliamentary opposition.

The politics came to concern the European Union, particularly for the first ten years. Continued and increased social spending, devolution of powers and a rebuilt army would be hallmarks of domestic policy, but only overseen to a severe cost of alienation from a continuing changing electorate. But it was European affairs would dominate her term and (carrying on as we speak) more so for perhaps any chancellor since the great Adenauer. The Union had just welcomed new members, including the somewhat speeded inclusion of recently curtained, just democratised states of Eastern Europe suffering from numerous economic and social ills in addition to political and identity issues, afflictions yet affecting some adolescent members such as Spain, Portugal and Greece, all relatively recently delivered from military dictatorship, clerical fascism and economic degradation. The railroading of the Euro, introduced under Schröder and his neighbour Chirac (now Merkel's) as a currency for "Europe" and expected to be established as such, superseding the old system of EMS and open Deutsche Mark dominance. But masks are only a membrane and upon completion - only partially introduced under the still-dominant notion of national sovereignty and a union of peoples - it was hardly pretended the European Central Bank, openly situated in Frankfurt on the Main, would not carry a similar scepter on account of German interests. The Lisbon Treaty, her largest accomplishment on the European area, chipped away at the political notion of confederacy in favour of a developing union but cut short from a proposed "constitution of Europe" after fresh rebellions in Ireland, France and the Netherlands, failed to establish the institutions that - after much struggle and unease, in times of struggle and unease - had established the same for the United States, by the superseding of the Articles of Confederacy by the Constitution (no specifics needed). Furthermore, it came under question - if not until the crash predictably forced the forces of contradiction to inevitable clash for space - to what extent such a European brethren did exist, or did have to be created, by untold means but the proverbial wait and hope.

Nonwithstanding, these were historic accomplishments and on the home scene she was predominant. In 2009, both parties lost ground, but CDU more importantly kept the center seat and could finally negotiate a majority coalition with the surging FDP. This matrimony turned out more sour than before, but more importantly destroyed utterly new-made deputy chancellor and foreign minister Guido Westerwelle's Free Democrats, aiming at a more radical completion of the neoliberal economics of the 1990s and finding little support in the broader German population as well as in Merkel's and Schäuble's cautious leadership. But Merkel herself stood, even stronger. And might have got away with it, or even served as the longest chancellor of Germany ever, if not for the sores of the second Großkoalition and particularly since 2015, which cut down the last political giants of the pre-recession period. The 2013 election had served up all but a stable majority for Die Union on its own terms, a historic achievement, and the SPD under Steinbrück's leadership humiliated for a third time. But the collapse of the FDP, nigh but colossal in both relative and real political terms as they lost all their federal seats, enforced yet another ultimately successful, but uneasy coalition that predictably tore at both parties' credibility. The SPD would repeat the horrors of the 2009 campaign, under the banner of dejected, if initially popularised Brussels veteran and prosthetic Nobel laureate Martin Schulz and came to another, even more catastrophic collapse which - in its throes - came to question its position as the predominant opposition party. Merkel was still queen, but the blow had taken hard, survival was all but glorious, and the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland - only just excluded by a tally close to the FDP's in 2013 under a more moderate, academic-supported slate - and natural queasiness of her old liberal bedmates made the matrimony with red yet again the only option fit, if yet not clearly a beacon of the past.

The Greek debt crisis, the paragon of the post-2009 era of intra-European relations and its cruel exposing the uneasy relationship between international relations, popular wills and economic management, soared her record and solidified her position as ostensible leader of Europe, next to a string of increasignly pathetic and hapless one-term French presidents. With the economy of an already unsteady southern Balkan country, the cradle of demoskratia with all its political and cultural implications bent and shrunk by a quarter under a international whip, while voters at home were increasingly unwilling to pay up increasingly expensive rescure solutions and hapless voter-taxpayers of other crisis-stricken countries (such as the Portuguese) unwilling to experience both. The expansion east, beyond the mere political questions of a resurging, evermore authoritarian Russia - problematic for German politicians who had kindled long-standing financial desires to sustain good relations on this frontier - seemed more a mistake and at best an over-excited grab, with the consequences of the 2013-2014 Ukrainian turmoil putting weight on the eastern frontier, while to the south the doorstep of the union affected by the timely stirrings of the Arab world and its fallout. While not as sternly affected as the leaders of Britain and France, whose victories and overreach made them contend with it militarily, the ever-present questions of humanitarian aid, nationality and integration of cultures - condemned from her own mouth as a failure or at any rate failing in 2010, on the eve of the great wave - would haunt her as the spectre of the financial meltdown had not. This crisis, including the building of quasi-Caliphates and a momentous refugee wave, its timing and weight imposed on the European theatre, proved enough to plow domestic politics into turmoil.

The odds, it must be said given this role model, were stacked against her. The circumstances were, in some ways, grimmer. The times were not fit for building titans. And from this perspective, this truth inherited, she did with grace and would end a respected, hardened champion and guardian of an order already considered ossified. Had she ventured to solve the migration crisis with sterner leadership, and perhaps an articulated vision, she could have made a greater name and a reputation. But the call of Wir schaffen das, contravening the Dublin policy. Meanwhile, the internal contradictions and stirrings were strong and for the last term she was forced to accommodate hardline Bavarian Premier Seehofer as minister of the interior, while steering the course to an unarticulated center. In 2017, she stood more vulnerable than ever, but again managed to to steer clear off the rocks, with the opposition in turmoil. The reds and greens would, however chastised, not challenge the government any more than the CSU would abandon it. Whatever her accomplishments, from which could be brandished a stable enduring Sozialwirtschaft upholding to the rule of law and a civil society, was the enduring throne of government whose occupant would remain with the party she had chosen.

Her policies, while reviled from the broader left and any more idealistic, vitriolic embodiment of the right, not really rekindled on the national scene until on her watch, reinvigorated Christian Democracy in a scene where the ultimately collapse of Prussian society values, and the Communist threat, would seem superfluous. While her rule destroyed any partners as well as rivals which ultimately undid her. And yet, she avoided entanglements to either way, with radical post-DDR socialists and radical-nationalists increasingly popular but late in its coming and marginal in the national theatre. Die Union remains strong, with the Greens whose policies she had co-oped rather than blazed as an ever-likely rival, and under its aegis was the question of who would succeed her, however reviled, as the oarsman (or, as it happened, -woman) of the federal republic, and the prospect of a federal Europe. She smashed the patriarch of European Social Democracy without ever playing the tune or ever an allusion to the , and equalled her mentor in the first momentous challenge of the post-Cold War order. And perhaps it would be one day, after her eventual passing, in the wake of unease and hardened opposition that the brand of Mutti would carry something of the nostalgia of a stable and working past.

Into the Seventh Cow of Plenty

When the tanks came onto the streets, for the last time, in a year-long experiment bringing the political forces of Egypt to a standstill and resurrecting - albeit to to partly joyous or at least gleeful cheers - the order of old overthrown in the Tahrir Square revolution, the greater narrative of Arab and Middle Eastern liberation and Arab modernity (whatever its contents) to a close, months before what may euphemistically be reminisced as the "incident" at Ghouta. This was the moment the Arab Spring jumped, or rebounded into stark winter. In both cases, the pronounced torch of liberty flickered but failed to act, or even to starkly blaze in face of foes, presumed or proclaimed.

But asides the question of Western constitutional democracy, its hypocrisy and potency beyond its borders, the Egyptian force of change - which had, for a time, incorporated elements of the powerful armed forces, of Suleiman and Tantawi - had starkly refuted the grapes of change itself, arrested the order of the new as it had the old, and turned the tide of history. Before long the wheel arguably levelled by the Freedom and Justice administration had been turned to creek and linger over its former pilots and manifold supporters, a cry of triumph and exultation turned to terror. Within two years of sham trials and increasing repression, legal and extrajudicial, the sentence of the rope was imposed on both Muhammeds, Morsi and Badie. The question that might have been asked, by the brave as well as by the pious, was whether this was indeed an arrested revolution, or the a reaction more pure and vitriolic than the one posed by the brotherhood and the political project derailed and dismantled in 2013. The longed-for democratic struggle posed and accomplished not through weeks of turmoil but decades of suffering, want and pain; catalysed or usurped, and now maligned and eroded into the waves of normalcy.

The consequences on what might brashly be referred to as the micro-scale, while previously well known and predictable, are now sordidly known. And where one did once did not have, without limitations the freedom to object, to think and speak as one saw fit (and while the reasonable intents of the regime were far worse) one now has surveillance and the most openly brutal means to silence dissent. The only different feature of the el-Sisi regiment, asides from the absence of the very dislikable figure of Mubarak and the predictable generational shift, is its pocketed image of chaos about to erupt, should this order of old rupture again in favour of the new. For we who have seen its face, and like it not, may foreswear our hopes and aspirations, at least for a while, if not outrightly place them in the hands of this old order.

For new, this order is certainly not. The long history of military intervention, stronger in Egypt and entirely predominant until the outburst of 2011, is looming over its future and its most ambitious project since the Suez canal nationalisation, if not perhaps so secure. And whereas the old order could rely on revolutionary rhetoric, the catalyst of a new, Arab state under Egyptian leadership, as well as legion social benefits and subsidies, the new has capitalised on a regiment of hard stick, soft speech, and a carrot retracted. The fear of the order vanquished is its prime quality, one whose

This at least, el-Sisi knows. The structural change forcing ancient theses and syntheses to transform - under the old African crocodile's older axiom of "adapt or die" - has come to Egypt as well, and may cast the need for thrift, for sacrifice and violence in the face of impending chaos worse than the 2011-13 abnormalities, of fulfilling a promise unkept rather than consummated by the spirit of Tahrir and its bestial issue, as sufficiently needed to warrant its survival, at least among the half of the public predisposed against the alternatives to this modernity. At least for now.

The people's Pharaoh and his servant. What might have come - in democratic terms - from the 2012 upheaval and triumph at the polls by the vessel of the Ikhwan in its homeland, we may not know. But whereas el-Sisi may be denounced as having supported both Scylla and Charybdis for as long as convenient, the crushing of the nascent Islamist state has corroded both the Brotherhood's democratic aspirations and hopes for a Western alliance, previously sustained by the bond and, eventually wavering, support of its army. 

But like many things sweet and sour, this may not be forever. The presumed end of el-Sisi's mandate in 2022, unlikely to be duplicated further but almost certain to be extended through a younger face - if not that of Gamal Mubarak, the primeval fear of the 2011 protests - in an attempt to establish the transition. Beyond the ambitious project of reestablishing a new capital, great in ambition but limited in its capacity of truly relieving homelessness and joblessness (these twin evils of the Arab world, as well as much elsewhere) little has been proposed, less likely to be launched let alone concluded to effect. Unlike its south-eastern neighbour by a few miles, there is not even the shadow of a plausible plan for diversifying economy and society,  even in the eleventh hour.

Unbeknownst, if not unknown, to the protestors rocking streets to the sound of the gavel, demographics may serve the Brotherhood as well in the long term. While counter-terrorism efforts and tacit overtures with Israel, Russia and Syria and the activities of organisations like the Islamic State, now hardly a commune, in the Sinai may have proven effective to mantle the dismemberment of opposition groups, maybe even assuage the immediate despair that a Libyan situation would entail, it will - in the words of Ranier Maria Rilke - not feed the hungry, or clothe the shivering, or repay Egypt's surmounting debt, sure to outlast el-Sisi even if the Brotherhood does not. The continued repression of Islamists, parliamentary and paramilitary, taken to the furthest heights (or depths) in Syria, has not assured their destruction, and its ability to capitalise in the moderate-authoritarian repressive state in Egypt - if history is a guide, quite excellent - provides a legion of opportunity.

This is, however, not the last and worst or tenth of the plagues possibly looming. Like the 2012 parliamentary elections, forces more on the fringe of Salafi preaching (if not outright violent) may grow in strength, and armed resistance may be precipitated if the breakdown is not only overseen by the current order, but reaches it. That Morsi, incompetent to the point of absurdity or self-harm, could not reform the military and bureaucracy enough (or smoothly enough) to wrestle them out of the Nasserist-technocrat stronghold so deeply rooted, or not without indulging their respective defensive habits and tendencies, is not a sign someone else may not succeed - or fail by use of more drastic measures the Islamist-democrat never thought to employ.

What would then better the course? Some reforms, while stark, will be necessary to transform the economy and end the system of subsidy currently needed, while unsustainable in the long term. The capital project will relieve the situation in Cairo, while diverting its economic pool. Five million homes is an ambitious goals, but a necessary expense asides the question of unsustainable debt. Sustainable, however, the ecology of the country is not, and transition to a post-petrol economy and past the likeable gas prices of OPEC and the Arab world would be painful, if easier than for Saudi Arabia. However, corruption remains endemic, and the infrastructure - if not quite so important in a country completely skewed to the Nile delta - is not inviting for foreign spending, prospects that will be rocked by the uncertain future in a negative loop of chaos as the grandmother of chaos. Unlike bin Salman, el-Sisi has no huge pool of trillions, but a population of soon to be 100 million. Corruption is more hard to tackle than homelessness, as it is not a question of want, but rather of dividing the spoils of success, and must be quietly steered alongside but never directly against the wind. And as his reign - supposedly constitutional, with political promises as well as a complete transformation of the economy and labour market - passes into its second term, the hour groweth late.

As in Syria, the minorities particularly attended have been granted different, and particular attention by the regime, in firm and mutual but uneasy matrimony. Should the order of old evaporate in giving birth to the new, it may be responsible for the further ostracism of the Egyptian Christendom, among the oldest. Of the Jewish community, once as strong as that of Baghdad, we know naught apart that their preferred butchers need only wait and see the coffins safely carried.

Information technology, biofuel, solar power, financial services - about to undergo an altercation of its own, which may shrink the opportunities - do not pose a likely lifeboat within grasp of Egypt, for now, the prospect of high-skilled migration limited to its possibly worse-fated brother states, as consequences of the tidal wave which will engulf it as well. Women must need be included in the workforce, and croplands rekindled and made more effective. In the end, the regime must provide multitude jobs or a basic income, somehow financed. Whether this could be accomplished via a national economy of the Nasserist model is a good argument, but given the predeliction of the Brotherhood - in its 2010s incarnation, that is - for internationalism, global economy and cooperation - it may in the end be the closure and call for autarky under a national emergency that will soften the blow. By then, however, it will likely be too late but for a genius.

Above all, this order - even benignly judged - lacks a prime quality needed in every order of the new, which is the ideological tenet. To quote the great Kristian Luuk, recently in referencing Cairo, The Vanquisher: Where are we going? The Pharaoh - once, recall, the term for a reign as well as the well-bearded deity-person to steer it - of President el-Sisi lacks a narrative, other than the negative of the need to suppress the forces invoking Allah (too loudly, or angrily) especially when coupled with calls to reform. This cannot last, and elements of the base of the regime may already be crackling. If not democracy, in leaving the rudder of the ship to the passengers, and the risks it knowingly entails, what? The Fourth Saudi state, if yet unestablished, knows what is wants, and what values it can compromise. Or let us say it has an idea.

For all this it may be inferred that the prime goal of the current order is its own sustaining, and its event horizon a neat five- or ten-year term, and paying less respects to the hard facts of the present than laggardly European governments. But with the dismantling of opposition parties only too successful, it is hard to grasp what opposition will harness the potency, and problems, of the old country. While the new military dictatorship has been established in the permanent sense, and while its ambitions may both incorporate regional stability, peace and even a new settlement in war-torn Libya (contentious and challenging as el-Sisi's proxy and vying client king may appear) may truly rival those of any leader since Nasser, and with the matching personal ambition and dignitas, the prospects are indeed looking as grim, or even as for stubborn Ramesses... not the second, but his counterpart in that old gruesome book of fiction. But with its coffers, human as well as monetary short of easy options, the re-development of constitutional liberties and a national dialogue, and eventually a free, ungoverned National Assembly being the closest, what else is there than being stubborn?