At five in the afternoon, Cairo time (46).. Arab National Security (1)

Files Not Yet Closed…

 

January 25 and the Balance of Power:

 

The road to January 25 was neither clear,

nor was it the result of specific, discrete causes,

nor can it be reduced to a fully formed conspiracy, or to a purely idealized revolution.

 

It was a complex trajectory,

in which internal failures intertwined with external calculations,

where legitimate anger intersected with political ambitions,

and good intentions overlapped with directed projects.

 

For this precise reason, the importance of this series of articles emerges.

 

What occurred in Egypt in 2011 cannot be understood outside its regional and international context,

nor can it be explained solely in the language of slogans,

nor should it be treated as a fleeting moment that ended with its early days.

 

This series of articles does not seek to rewrite history,

nor to put intentions on trial,

nor to present an alternative official narrative.

Rather, through it—and to the extent permitted by documents and experience—I attempt to answer a fundamental question:

 

How were the paths leading to January 25 constructed?

 

Not the day itself,

but the road that led to it,

the environment that allowed its eruption,

the intersections that made it possible,

and the fates that nearly resulted from it.

 

The years that followed January revealed that much of what appeared spontaneous

was, in fact, prepared,

and that much of what was presented as inevitable

could have followed different paths, had calculations or choices differed.

 

Experience also revealed that states are not brought down only by military invasion,

but may also fall through chaos,

and that the most dangerous threat nations face in moments of transition

is the absence of a comprehensive understanding of what is taking place.

 

From here, this series of articles treats January 25 not as an event,

but as a point of convergence of three major trajectories:

 

An international trajectory that reordered the Middle East after the Cold War

 

A regional trajectory that employed fragmentation instead of occupation

 

An internal trajectory in which imbalances accumulated without fundamental treatment

 

At this intersection, the Egyptian state was placed before an unprecedented test.

 

How does it preserve itself without confiscating anger?

How does it open the doors to reform without falling into a void?

How does it save the nation without turning survival into a permanent constraint?

 

These questions form the core of this series of articles.

 

I do not ask the reader, of course, to adopt ready-made answers,

but to read with an open eye,

away from old alignments,

and to recognize that understanding what happened

is the first condition for preventing its repetition.

 

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(1) Before the Eruption:

 

January 25 was not an isolated Egyptian event, nor a sudden explosion born from a vacuum, as some later tried to portray it—whether in defense, justification, or evasion of accountability.

At its core, it was a rare moment of intersection between genuine internal anger and a broader international project, through which the region had been undergoing reengineering for many years, quietly, with strategic patience, and by non-traditional means.

 

Today, after nearly fifteen years, the picture appears clearer, and documents have become bolder in revealing what was managed behind the scenes.

The question is no longer: Was there a plan?

But rather: How did this plan operate? And why did it collide in Egypt with obstacles it did not encounter elsewhere?

 

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The New Middle East… An Old Western Idea:

 

Those who believe that what occurred in the second decade of the third millennium emerged suddenly, or was the product of a transient political moment, are mistaken.

The idea of reshaping the Middle East did not originate with the “Arab Spring,” nor even with the Cold War. Its roots go back to the early twentieth century, when the West began to view this region not merely as geography, but as the jugular of the world:

energy, corridors, armies, and creed.

 

From the moment of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse and the agreements and divisions that followed, a fixed Western awareness took shape: that this region, if allowed to unify, stabilize, or possess independent decision-making, would become a genuine strategic threat—not only to Israel, but to the entire system of Western hegemony.

 

Thus, Sykes–Picot was not a historical mistake, but a deliberate design.

And the Balfour Declaration was not a moral deviation, but the cornerstone of a long-term project.

 

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From Division to Fragmentation:

 

If the twentieth century was the century of dividing geography, then the early twenty-first century became the century of dismantling states from within.

 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the world’s transition into a unipolar moment, the United States and its allies felt that the time had come to eliminate what remained of the “large, troublesome states” in the Middle East:

states that possessed armies, a national memory, or room for maneuver.

 

Traditional wars alone were no longer sufficient.

Their cost was high, and their political outcomes uncertain.

 

A new model was required:

 

Without tanks

 

Without direct occupation

 

Without a declaration of war

 

Here, concepts such as the following were born:

 

Nation-building

 

Spreading democracy

 

Supporting civil society

 

Empowering youth

 

Creative chaos

 

Glossy terms that conceal a single core essence:

the dismantling of the state without bearing political responsibility for the real actor.

 

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Bernard Lewis… When Maps Become Doctrine:

 

In this context, Bernard Lewis’s project was not merely an academic thesis, as some attempted to downplay its danger, but rather an intellectual translation of a deep political desire.

 

The central idea governing this project was brutally simple:

that the Arab and Islamic world cannot be managed as a unified entity, nor should it be left cohesive, and that the only solution is to dismantle it into smaller, rival entities, incapable of forming any strategic threat.

 

The objective was not to spread democracy, but to manage perpetual conflict.

Sectarian, doctrinal, ethnic, social conflict…

Conflict that consumes armies, exhausts societies, and renders “external protection” a necessity rather than a choice.

 

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Egypt at the Heart of the Plan…

 

At the heart of this conception, Egypt was a special case.

 

Not because it was the poorest, nor because it was the most unstable, but because it:

 

Possessed a cohesive army

 

Held a deep historical legacy

 

Occupied a geopolitical position that could not be bypassed

 

Exercised an influence that extended beyond its geographic borders

 

Thus, the objective was not to bring Egypt down in one blow, but to remove it from the equation.

To preoccupy it with itself.

To break its confidence in its institutions.

To transform the conflict from a conflict of state into a conflict of society.

 

Here, precisely, the story of the road to January 25 begins.

 

The road did not begin in Tahrir Square.

It began years earlier,

in research centers,

planning rooms,

training programs,

funding networks,

and under glossy titles

whose danger many did not perceive until it was too late.

 

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Where Are We Heading?

 

In the next part, we will move from the theoretical framework to practical application,

and we will pose the most dangerous question:

 

Why was the dismantling of armies the first step?

How did entire Arab armies turn into arenas of attrition?

And why did this scenario fail in Egypt in particular?

 

To be continued…