Supporters of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood 'The Freedom and Justice Party' participate in a march in support of the party. Photo: Reuters

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is well organized and popular. Its Freedom and Justice Party easily won a plurality of seats in the first post-Hosni Mubarak parliamentary elections, and the party is set to remain a dominant force in Egyptian politics for the foreseeable future. Important party members are touring Western capitals, including London and Washington, on a charm offensive.

The Brotherhood’s Islamist origins and ideology have caused much hand-wringing in the US about the group’s commitment to democracy and liberalism. But the short-term risk of the Brotherhood’s rule for the US isn’t its religious beliefs, which are not out of step with those of most Egyptians and which their need to maintain international reputability is likely to moderate. Rather, it’s the group’s political incompetence.

Foreign media are no longer enamoured with revolutionary Egypt, but this is the most critical period in its transition since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011, with the process of writing a new constitution and conducting a presidential campaign happening simultaneously. On both fronts the Muslim Brotherhood, already in a tense and fraying accord with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has shown an alarming political tone-deafness.

Yet the main risk of increasing Brotherhood-SCAF tensions is not, as commonly portrayed in the US, sustained military rule. Rather, the tensions belie a much tougher challenge: an Egypt in which the only power centres are the Brotherhood and/or SCAF, with all other groups alienated or disempowered. This is a negative outcome for both US foreign policy and Egyptian stability – but it looks increasingly probable.

Back when SCAF and the Brotherhood were playing nice, Egypt’s military leaders decided that parliament – which the Brotherhood dominates – would elect a 100-member constituent assembly to write the document. All political parties and most political forces in Egypt, the Brotherhood and liberal groups included, could agree on more or less the same thing: a semi-presidential system, a compromise on the role of the military and Sharia as a principal source of legislation.

The Brotherhood-led, Islamist-dominated parliament could easily have crafted an assembly with only 30 or so Islamists, ceding the remaining seats to Coptic Christians, women, liberals, civil society activists and legal experts, and still have gotten the constitution it wanted. And by including a broader array of forces in shaping Egypt’s post-revolutionary political bedrock, the Brotherhood would have garnered increased trust and credibility from its opponents.

Instead, the Brotherhood clumsily overplayed its hand. In a move guided as much by historical insecurity as newfound power, the group’s leadership created a constituent assembly list dominated by Islamists, alienating Egypt’s non-Islamist political class – the Brotherhood’s natural ally against SCAF. In response, most of the non-Islamists on the list, dejected and no longer feeling they had a stake in the political process, announced their withdrawal from the assembly.

Rather than moderating its approach, however, the Brothers doubled down. Exactly a week after the constituent assembly debacle, the Brotherhood announced it was reneging on its promise not to field a presidential candidate. The Brothers originally made the guarantee – repeated countless times over the past year – to assuage domestic and foreign concerns that they sought to monopolize politics in much the same way Mubarak’s National Democratic Party had. The backtracking announcement immediately raised hackles within military circles and unsettled Egypt’s already wary non-Islamist groups.

While the relationship between SCAF and the Brotherhood has not collapsed completely, it is clear that the political accord between the two, which sustained stability for much of the past year, is unraveling. Had the Brotherhood not tried to pack the constituent assembly with allies and extremist Salafis, non-Islamist political forces would have rallied to the Brotherhood’s side on the presidential question. (In fact, a court in Egypt today ordered the constituent assembly disbanded.) But now many non-Islamists mistrust the Brotherhood as much as SCAF. And this poses a significant challenge for the US.

Throughout Egypt’s difficult transition, the US has sought to encourage reform while maintaining its distance, wary of sabotaging the process by fuelling a nationalist backlash. And though the US has not been entirely comfortable with some of SCAF’s moves, it recognized that Egypt was heading in fits and starts toward a civilian-based regime, even if the road was bumpy. Likewise, the Brotherhood’s success did not especially unsettle the US, as the group’s leaders appeared committed to assuming power only as part of a broad coalition – an outcome with which the US could live.

Now, however, the US faces two alternatives, equally unappealing and dangerous. Some Egyptians on the fence would now have no problem if the military staged a coup – the logic being that a military dictatorship you know is safer than an unpredictable Islamist dictatorship you don’t. With the US already struggling to regain stature in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, supporting a new authoritarian regime in Egypt would do incalculable damage.

Yet a government over which the Brotherhood effectively has a monopoly and that may be emboldened to pursue Islamist goals and reconfigure regional geopolitics, is equally unpalatable. The US would be forced to work with a regime to which it is ideologically opposed, while marginalising the very political forces in Egypt (liberals, youth, women, Islamist youth and civil society activists) whose uprising last year ultimately led the US to cease its support for long time ally Hosni Mubarak.

In either outcome, the US finds itself stuck. And that’s not good – not for the US, not for the Muslim Brotherhood and, most of all, not for the Egyptian people.

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Ian Bremmer is a Reuters columnist.

Kim Jong-un

There are many surprising things about Kim Jong-il’s sudden death, not the least of which is that it took two days for the rest of the world to hear about it. Yet most surprising is the sanguine reaction of the global and especially the Asian markets. On Monday, or actually Sunday as we now know, the world woke up to its first leaderless nuclear power. Coming as close as anyone could to filling his seat was his youngest son, who is in his late twenties. There’s no way these facts were accurately priced into markets that took just a relatively minor dip as a first response. The news from North Korea appears to have been taken far too lightly, and just a few days out, it’s disappearing from the front pages.

While Kim Jong-un’s status as heir apparent seems to tie a nice bow around the situation, let’s get real for a moment. The son of the elder Kim only appeared on the North Korean stage after a stroke necessitated succession planning in Kim Jong-il’s regime in 2008. Consider that founder of the country Kim Il-sung put his son, Kim Jong-il, in front of the citizenry as his heir for more than a decade before his 1994 death. That decade was precious time; time Kim Jong-il spent consolidating power and putting his own people into high government office— and he was over 50 years old when his father passed away. Kim Jong-un has been deprived of that head start; he’s got to rely on whatever ground his dead father managed to clear for him since his 2008 stroke. A couple of years at his father’s side — and a promotion to four star general — is scant time for the younger Kim to have developed a real plan for ruling, or real allies in government.

Photo: Reuters

That said, don’t expect Kim Jong-un to be deposed. There won’t be a North Korean spring — for real or for show — anytime soon. The country is too backward and too brainwashed to mount any sort of populist opposition to the ruling regime, and its people have little if any knowledge of the outside world. Even if Kim Jong-un proves unable to consolidate and retain power, all that would replace him as the head of state is a military junta or strongman; there’s no democracy on the horizon, given the country’s current sorry state of affairs.

The important relationship to watch going forward will be between North Korea and China. Kim will want to impress his people by letting more food into the markets and increasing their terrible standard of living in whatever marginal way he can. He’ll need cash to do so, and will probably call upon China to help. China is North Korea’s last substantial benefactor in the world. In a classic diplomatic sense, because North Korea is America’s enemy and South Korea is America’s friend, China has little choice but to keep propping up the North. If China changes its tack now, it could find North Korea inching towards reunification with the South, putting a firm American ally right on its border. The question is, will China support Kim Jong-un wholeheartedly, or will it too take a step back and see what emerges from the power struggles sure to be playing out behind the scenes at this very moment?

Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken the right approach to this complicated situation: the White House has decided to sit back, watch and wait. It could, and likely already is, offering behind-the-scenes humanitarian relief to the North Korean people. It should continue to offer any such assistance that it thinks will be accepted. The Obama administration should not by any means be applying diplomatic pressure to restart six party talks or anything else of the sort. In essence, the free world should be rooting for Kim Jong-un to stabilize the country so that it can again try to bring North Korea out of the dark ages in an orderly fashion.

The British SAS used to say that when securing a dangerous environment, you should shoot the first person who makes a move (hostile or otherwise) to ensure authority. While I’m not advocating violence, one has to hope Kim Jong-un can consolidate power sufficiently, so that the world at least knows who it’s dealing with when it comes to North Korea. We don’t know what kind of leader he’ll be, or if he’ll even be a leader for very long, but a country that treats its rulers as gods needs someone at the top of the pyramid to keep from devolving into chaos.

Otherwise, the world is back to where it was the day after Kim Jong-il died — a day in which no one knew whose finger was on the North Korean nuclear button.

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Ian Bremmer is a Reuters columnist.