EGYPT: OUR ALLY?

Posted By on February 2nd, 2011

Egypt: Our Ally?

The mantra of the press is that the United States is likely to lose its major Arab ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Certainly Mubarak does some of what the United States would have him do – things he believed were in his interest, such as opposing Hamas – but he does other things as well. Egypt was no help at all on Iraq and Mubarak’s understanding of Iran as a threat to Egypt was very late in coming. His determination to keep the lid on his domestic pot, including turning public anger toward Coptic Christians and accusing Israel of sending sharks to attack Egyptian swimmers off Sinai, made him at best a weak reed on which to hang American policy, and at worst, a finger in the dike of raging anger that is now likely be co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood. He is less an ally than a client.

Mubarak remains/remained in power through the steady support of the armed forces sucking up billions in U.S. military assistance – one not-unreasonable reason Americans are held in such low esteem by the Egyptian public. American money built an army that confronts no foreign enemy simply to allow Mubarak to pay off the generals and possibly to feed their revenge fantasies about destroying Israel. The Israeli government and military generally believes, “Better a cold peace than a hot war,” and they’re right as long as Egypt makes a strategic choice for peace. For how much longer will Mubarak be setting Egypt’s strategic priorities?

And then what? The Egyptian public – like the Jordanian public – has never been primed by its government to see Israel as anything other than an enemy. And it is hard to imagine that the Egyptian military thinks of Israel in any but hostile terms.

It is this army in which the United States appears to have vested some of its hope for the future of the regime – even in the absence of Mubarak. New Vice President Omar Suleiman was the chief of foreign intelligence. The new prime minister was formerly the chief of the air force, as was Mubarak before becoming vice president to Sadat. Mohammed El-Baradei, who appears to have some American support despite his apparent pro-Iranian and pro-Brotherhood sentiments, would need the support of the army to take control of the country, even on an interim basis. The Muslim Brotherhood might also want to co-opt the military. The Brotherhood’s enemy has been the internal security police – the ones who opened fire on the demonstrators – not the army, and the army was welcomed by the demonstrators in a number of places.

The idea of a military-run Egyptian government – whether with or without El-Baradei as the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood – should alarm the United States and the West.

Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Walker was on the Sunday talk shows saying that the demonstrators were angry over the absence of a Palestinian state and that Israel had to do something to help mitigate the problem in Egypt. While it is hard for us to imagine the riots of Cairo and Suez as a response to anything other than the repressive and economically stultified Egyptian government, it is true that the Egyptian government has always needed an external enemy. Years of rampant anti-Semitism, de-legitimization of Israel in the official Egyptian press and the unwillingness of the government to allow Israel normal relations has been a defining policy of the Mubarak government.

We’re planning not to be surprised by an outbreak of anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment in the crowds in Cairo. The United States may consider Mubarak an ally, but we suspect that as he grows more desperate, he will lash out at us and at Israel in a last gasp effort to stay ahead of his own people.

February 1, 2011

The Brotherhood, Sooner or Later

It was a great rhetorical moment. President George W. Bush, speaking in Whitehall, succinctly and eloquently framed the problem of 21st Century Western policy in the Middle East:

(Britain and the U.S.) in the past have been willing to make a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold. As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own back yard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.

But rhetorical moments are only that and while the United States has made slow and difficult progress in helping Iraq find consensual government, elsewhere in the region we remained willing to turn that blind eye for perceived benefit. Like Egypt.

Asked whether the United States was taking the side of government or the protesters in Egypt, Secretary of State Clinton split the difference. Tying the Obama administration to its predecessors – the Bush and Clinton administrations – she said the U.S. had been “on the side of the people” during “more than 30 years of American cooperation with the government in Cairo.” The United States, she said, is trying to “keep on the message we’ve been on, convey it publicly and privately and stand ready to help.”

What message would that be? Help who do what?

Words out of the Obama administration sound more like the Carter administration than the Bush or Clinton White Houses. In what looks remarkably like the undermining of the Shah, the U.S. government has spoken out of several sides of its official mouth: While Secretary Clinton stands with “the people” who very much appear to want Hosni Mubarak out, she said the United States “advocates no specific outcome.” Vice President Biden said, “I wouldn’t call Mubarak a dictator” and while he should “begin to move in the direction that – to be more responsive to some of the needs of the people out there,” Biden said he shouldn’t resign. Presidential advisor David Axelrod, “(Obama has) on several occasions directly confronted President Mubarak… And pushed him on the need for political reform. Exactly to get ahead of this. This is a project he’s been working on for 2 years.”

They all appear to believe this is a contest between Mubarak and “the people,” which, if Mubarak had just been a little nicer, or didn’t rig elections, or didn’t turn off Twitter, or didn’t arrest people in the middle of the night, or had political parties and a free press, or didn’t take bribes, Egypt might have escaped the current upheaval. Unrecognized is the fact that if he had done any/all of those things, the upheaval would have come sooner and the Muslim Brotherhood would have had Cairo sooner rather than later.

Mass protest can happen without a strong guiding hand, but revolution is something else. The Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t make the Iranians unhappy with the Shah – he did that – but the Ayatollah’s supporters provided rice to the people so they would know that when they went to protest, their families would eat. And when the Shah left because the United States was no longer willing to support him, it was the Ayatollah’s factions that took the reins from the interim government supported by the United States.

That is not to say that the United States should support Mubarak to a bloody end, but to note the distinct limitations to our ability to get what we want. We want Poland (the strong guiding hand behind Solidarity, the Catholic Church, with later help from the AFL-CIO), but we are more likely to get Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt and has a strong network of social and political institutions – much like Hamas that took over Gaza and Hezbollah that is in the process of taking over Lebanon.

While the United States is supporting former IAEA Chief Mohammed el-Baradai as a possible replacement for Mubarak, he is likely at best to be an interim figure – putting a face acceptable to the West on a government he doesn’t control – until either the Egyptian army or the Brotherhood takes over. Or, until the army is co-opted by the Brotherhood. Again, watch Lebanon – where the United States continued to support the Lebanese Armed Forces with equipment and training even as Hezbollah moved into positions of political power in Beirut. The new Lebanese prime minister says he wants good relations with the United States. Who doubts that he is the acceptable face on the Hezbollah’s revolution?

The United States can want what it wants, but after watching the pot boil in Egypt for years and being willing or able to bring nothing to the table except support for the dictator against his own people while claiming we want something else, we will assuredly get what we get.

  • February 2, 2011

    JINSA Report #

    1,057

    The idea of a military-run Egyptian government – whether with or without Mohammad El-Baradei as the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood – should alarm the United States and the West.

  • February 1, 2011

    JINSA Report #

    1,056

    While the United States has made slow and difficult progress in helping Iraq find consensual government, elsewhere in the region we remained willing to turn that blind eye for perceived benefit. Like Egypt.

  • January 25, 2011

    JINSA Report #

    1,055

    Papers that supposedly prove that the Palestinian leadership had offered far reaching concessions to Israel appear more to be an attempt by the British Foreign Office to finish establishing the Palestinian Arab state that didn’t emerge at the end of the mess they made of the Mandate for Palestine.

  • January 24, 2011

    JINSA Report #

    1,054

    Peace between Israelis and Arabs (and we should not allow substitution of the word “Palestinians” for the word “Arabs”) is not a matter of rhetoric. But words matter.
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