The ouster of Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt and the return of the Egyptian military to active involvement in politics has brought to a close the first round of the Obama administration's experiment with attempting to reconcile majoritarian rule with U.S. interests. As with the Bush administration's hope that Islamist forces that came to power as a result of free elections would moderate their policies once in office—the famed "pothole theory" of democracy, in which radicals in opposition become pragmatists once charged with actual governing—the assumption was that the Muslim Brotherhood would not use its dominant position in the parliament and its control of the presidency to take full control of Egypt, but would moderate its program and create political space for its opponents, particularly the representativesof a more secularist point of view. The U.S. government hoped that it would not be forced to make a choice between its desire to promote democracy and securing its interests.

Morsi's presidency was also a test of America's willingness to accept a lesser degree of cooperation from a democratically elected successor government to Hosni Mubarak. Contrary to some dire predictions, Morsi did not abrogate Egypt's peace treaty with Israel—one of the cornerstones of America's strategic vision for the Middle East—nor did he interrupt all cooperation with the United States. At the same time, however, he was not going to continue the full panoply of Egyptian support for U.S. initiatives that his predecessor demonstrated. The Morsi government also was pushing through changes in the civil-military relationship. As with Turkey