The February 2011 overthrow of one of the most entrenched autocrats in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, following a three-week-long, relatively bloodless people's revolution, was a stunning event in contemporary Middle Eastern politics.² Its effects will reverberate throughout the region as much, if not more, than the Nasserist Revolution of 1952 that brought the army to power. A once somnambulant Egypt may be catching up with the more vibrant societies in the region such as Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

The stance of the Egyptian military during the 2011 revolution sealed the fate of the Mubarak regime.³ However, the political and socioeconomic role of the military is harder to assess in Egypt than in any other Middle Eastern country. For one thing, the subject is taboo. Despite attempts to question the military's size or budget, its affairs are never subject to debate or censure.⁴ More important, it is very difficult to get specific information out of the officer corps. They do not welcome interviews. It was exceedingly hard to draw Egyptian officers into any meaningful discussion during my time at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. There is little or no fraternization between American and Egyptian officers. Despite the numerous exercises that the U.S. military has conducted with its Egyptian counterpart, U.S. officers know little about their opposites. Americans are not allowed to contact Egyptian officers by phone or email except through the Ministry of Defense in Cairo. Given the size, historical role and influence of the Egyptian military, literature on the subject is thin. Major book-length studies generally have said very little on the role of the military in Egyptian political and economic life, even though the military has constituted the backbone of the republican regime, since its founding in 1952. However, there is sufficient data to examine this black box. The primary purpose of this paper is to address the political role of the Egyptian military in these last few years, particularly in the wake of the events of 2011.