As exhilarating as it was for the people in Tahrir Square to have forced out Hosni Mubarak, that was the easy part. Dismantling a dictatorial system is much more difficult than seeing off a particular dictator.

This is the reality that Egyptians, and participants in other countries comprising the Arab Spring, continue to face. The dictator does not sit suspended above all of society, but rather rules with the support of a social base. Not rarely the dictator, when in the global South, is supported (and even reliant on) an imperial power with its own agenda.

The United States government, whether the occupant of the White House is a Republican or a Democrat, has kept dictators in power throughout the world — the U.S. has militarily intervened in Latin America or the Caribbean 96 times, including 48 times during the 20th century. That total doesn’t include coups fomented by the U.S., such as Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.

The leading powers of capitalism were quite comfortable with the pre-Arab Spring status quo and, most notably in the case of the U.S. government, did little to discourage the idea that they’d prefer to keep things as they had been. But this is not to suggest that internal factors should be ignored. The same judges appointed by former President Mubarak preside; the Army continues to impose its will in the judicial and economic spheres; and the Muslim Brotherhood seems comfortable stepping into the shoes of the former régime. The economy continues to not function but the priority among Egypt’s elites is to jockey for power.

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