Amy Hawthorne and Andrew Miller write:

Consumed by domestic politics, exhausted by the Middle East, and complacent about the stability of Arab allies, Washington has stopped paying close attention to Egypt. But something alarming is happening in the most populous Arab country and a key U.S. security partner: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is moving Egypt closer toward totalitarianism than strongman Hosni Mubarak ever did and, in the process, laying the groundwork for more instability in a region that has already seen too much of it.

Soon after Sisi, a former military chief, became president following his 2013 overthrow of a freely elected but illiberal Muslim Brotherhood government, Egypt adopted a constitution with some formal guarantees on rights and modest checks on presidential authority. It was a sign, Sisi and his most ardent supporters claimed, that he was restoring democracy. But Sisi has spent the last few years ignoring that constitution, amassing power, and cracking down brutally on his Islamist adversaries and anyone else who questions his rule.

Now, in a power grab that recalls the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sisi is leading Egypt into even more dangerous territory by ramming through constitutional changes that will formally codify a personalist dictatorship. This is bad news for Egyptians, of course, but it is also dangerous for the region and world. Although authoritarian systems that concentrate power in a single potentate may look durable—especially when that figure is backed by the military like Sisi is—they are more vulnerable to a chaotic collapse than other types of regimes. [Continue reading…]