Egypt's Military Budget.

Article 9 of Egyptian deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Selmy's discussion document on constitutional reform contained a suggestion that the budget for the Egyptian military appears as a single item and a single total in the national budget. This sparked violent protests and accusations that the military were trying to cling to power and act as a sort of secret shadow government. I think that much of that criticism was misplaced because I think what the Egyptian military were trying to do was much more complicated and much more clever then that.

In even the most open societies certain aspects of what the military does has to remain secret for very good reason. For example if the Egyptian military were to publish a budget showing they spent US$1million on 10,000 tank shells an enemy or potential enemy could use that information to work out what type of tank shells the Egyptian military are using. That enemy could then improve the armour on their tanks to make sure they will withstand Egyptian shells meaning that if they ever met in battle the Egyptian military would have no way of destroying the enemy tanks meaning that Egypt would lose the war. This secrecy requirement is even more important in areas such as foreign covert intelligence (spying) and special forces operations.

In supposedly open western societies the military have developed a solution to this problem. They simply lie. For example I think the US unit that was set up to capture or kill Osama bin Laden after Sept 11th appeared in the US budget a logistics unit and throughout the cold war Britain's government department for farming always had a suspiciously large budget.

So by making their opening offer a single item and a single total the Egyptian military seems to be attempting to open a dialogue with the Egyptian people and their soon to be elected representatives to find out how much they want to know and if they will tolerate being lied too in return for being allowed to ask searching questions.