While we had fun in a previous post with the idea that the U.S. is in a conspiracy to support the MB against the will of the Egyptian people-where the big worry in not supporting Mubarak during the Arab Spring was that the MB would come to power-there is also a kernel of truth in this mistaken claim.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/07/no-egypt-were-not-trying-to-force.html
While this is overwrought, there is another side to shown in a great piece in Foreign Policy magazine, that Josh Marshall linked to.
There is truth that the U.S. has rather defensively aligned itself with Morisi and his MB since the AS over concern for the Israeli-Egyptian treaty and a need for Egypt's support on other security issues in the region.
"However, in post-Mubarak Egypt, entreaties to restraint now mask a more enduring reality: in dealing with the country's newly-empowered Islamists, U.S. policy in Egypt remains trapped in the old ways of thinking that produced a bet on authoritarian stability."
"That bargain, which was largely premised on Egyptian support for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, granted the Mubarak regime wide latitude to repress its own people in exchange for regional security cooperation. The United States became accustomed to dealing with Mubarak and his inner circle, with little need to cultivate broad ties."
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/26/clouded_us_policy_on_egypt
A rather prophetic paragraph-it was written in February:
"While the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys its current electoral supremacy, the United States should make no assumptions about the permanence of its position. The fluidity of the Egyptian electorate and the immense challenges before the current government suggest that this preeminence is not inevitable."
What FP suggests is that while the U.S has approached everything in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak from the prism of maintaining it's geopolitical and security interests in the area-specifically Egypt's treaty with Israel, it has failed to appreciate that Egypt has its own reasons to want to maintain the treaty: credibility in the international community and continuing to receive important political and economic aid-a major part of this is a continued very good relationship with the U.S.
In a way, the U.S. lacks confidence here-Egypt no matter who's running it will likely for the foreseeable future need to be our friends and will need to maintain the Egypt-Israel treaty. While the more modest posture of U.S. policy towards Egypt since Morisi has been the right course-it is certainly a welcome change after the absurd arrogance and overreaching of Bush foreign policy-we need to understand Egypt's political motivations better-we do have some leverage.
"While the Brothers have a long history of anti-Western and anti-American thought, they have been consistent in their approach to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty despite their deep-seated hostility to Israel, which often veers into the realm of anti-Semitism, and the widespread popular anger with the occupation of Palestinian lands and the failure of the peace process. It is perhaps one of the few areas where the words and deeds of the Muslim Brotherhood have not diverged."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/07/no-egypt-were-not-trying-to-force.html
While this is overwrought, there is another side to shown in a great piece in Foreign Policy magazine, that Josh Marshall linked to.
There is truth that the U.S. has rather defensively aligned itself with Morisi and his MB since the AS over concern for the Israeli-Egyptian treaty and a need for Egypt's support on other security issues in the region.
"However, in post-Mubarak Egypt, entreaties to restraint now mask a more enduring reality: in dealing with the country's newly-empowered Islamists, U.S. policy in Egypt remains trapped in the old ways of thinking that produced a bet on authoritarian stability."
"That bargain, which was largely premised on Egyptian support for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, granted the Mubarak regime wide latitude to repress its own people in exchange for regional security cooperation. The United States became accustomed to dealing with Mubarak and his inner circle, with little need to cultivate broad ties."
"Since the fall of Mubarak, the United States has adopted a defensive crouch in Egypt that is primarily driven by fears that the treaty might be discarded by Egypt's new rulers. This narrow and blinkered approach to Egypt misunderstands Egyptian national interests, and undermines the formulation of constructive policies. It also has pushed the United States to focus outsized attention on the cultivation of ties with the now ascendant Muslim Brotherhood, often heedless of broader Egyptian political dynamics."
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/26/clouded_us_policy_on_egypt
A rather prophetic paragraph-it was written in February:
"While the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys its current electoral supremacy, the United States should make no assumptions about the permanence of its position. The fluidity of the Egyptian electorate and the immense challenges before the current government suggest that this preeminence is not inevitable."
What FP suggests is that while the U.S has approached everything in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak from the prism of maintaining it's geopolitical and security interests in the area-specifically Egypt's treaty with Israel, it has failed to appreciate that Egypt has its own reasons to want to maintain the treaty: credibility in the international community and continuing to receive important political and economic aid-a major part of this is a continued very good relationship with the U.S.
In a way, the U.S. lacks confidence here-Egypt no matter who's running it will likely for the foreseeable future need to be our friends and will need to maintain the Egypt-Israel treaty. While the more modest posture of U.S. policy towards Egypt since Morisi has been the right course-it is certainly a welcome change after the absurd arrogance and overreaching of Bush foreign policy-we need to understand Egypt's political motivations better-we do have some leverage.
"While the Brothers have a long history of anti-Western and anti-American thought, they have been consistent in their approach to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty despite their deep-seated hostility to Israel, which often veers into the realm of anti-Semitism, and the widespread popular anger with the occupation of Palestinian lands and the failure of the peace process. It is perhaps one of the few areas where the words and deeds of the Muslim Brotherhood have not diverged."
"The reasons for this consistency should be clear to the United States, but too often it views the Camp David bargain as the outcome of a coercive aid arrangement and therefore as perpetually at risk. Fundamentally, upholding the treaty is an enduring Egyptian national interest. It is a threshold for continued international legitimacy at a time when Egypt will require substantial international assistance and support. Further, the still-powerful national security establishment has a dispositive voice on such critical matters, and it has made abundantly clear that Egypt has no intention of abrogating its treaty obligations."
"Despite this reality, the United States has shaped its policy on Egypt with a narrow focus, first and foremost, on the peace treaty and its sustainability. While this is a key U.S. interest, U.S. policy on Egypt does not assure the protection of that and other interests, which depend primarily on a stable and functioning Egypt."
The real harm is that the U.S. has felt it has to be very friendly with Morisi and the MB-it presumes that if it had stopped being so friendly it could quickly lose Egypt's standing by the Israel treaty and Egypt's support on many other issues. An example was the U.S. gratitude for Egypt's assistance on the Gaza strip crisis last November:
"The short tenure of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohamed Morsi has been marked by the maximizing of factional power and the absence of meaningful reform or even governance. The growing polarization in the country has produced an intractable political crisis that makes dealing with the country's interlinked economic and social crises impossible. The present course of exclusionary unilateralism mixed with repressive actions is a path to instability, with no guarantees of Egypt muddling its way through."
"To make matters worse, these negative political trends have been unintentionally encouraged by U.S. signals. This was abundantly clear in the aftermath of the November 2012 Israeli military attack on Gaza, when Egypt played an important role in the negotiation of a ceasefire. The spiral of events that followed were damaging to the prospects of an inclusive and stable Egypt and to the reputation of the United States. At root, the United States overestimated the options for Egypt in the face of the fighting in Gaza. Despite the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological affinity and strong links with Hamas, Egypt's enduring interests are a durable check against foreign policy adventurism, particularly at this current vulnerable juncture. In the aftermath of that foreign policy victory and a visit by then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Morsi quickly parlayed his newfound capital to expand his authorities in autocratic fashion. In his constitutional declaration on November 22, Morsi immunized his actions from judicial review in an effort to protect the Islamist-dominated constitutional drafting process. This myopic step institutionalized Egypt's political crisis and ensured that the country's foundational document would be a destabilizing element in the country's future.
With Morsi's cooperation on Gaza firmly in mind, the United States was slow to understand the significance of this constitutional crisis, which had permanent ramifications, and was loathe to place blame at the feet of its newfound partner. In various official statements and readouts, the United States engaged in stark equivalence that avoided the causes of the country's crisis and appropriate blame
In this context we better begin to understand the conspiracy theory that ties the U.S. with the current Islamist dominated constiututional order in Egypt-it is this tainted order that led to the recent demand of the people for the military to overthrow Morisi with force.
In retrospect, the U.S. has probably been a little too uncritically friendly to the Morisi MB regime. Certainly the answer wasn't the old George W. Bush paradigm of unilateral ultimatums and demands. Still we could have been a little more restrianed in public support for Morisi until his Administration begun to heed the demands of the Egyptian people:
"The United States must certainly remain engaged with Egypt and calls for blunt and immediate conditionality of U.S. aid are impractical and potentially counterproductive. But the United States should reappraise the broader aid relationship and fashion workable conditionality arrangements. In the immediate future, the United States is not without other forms of influence. Egypt's current leaders crave international acceptance and legitimacy and are reliant on outside support and assistance, particularly from international financial institutions. The United States should use those tools to try to shape how Egypt's leaders perceive their interests, recognizing the inherent limitations involved, and it should synchronize these efforts with allies."
This FP piece was written back in February but clearly the writer knew what they were talking about with the advice offered at the time:
The United States must certainly remain engaged with Egypt and calls for blunt and immediate conditionality of U.S. aid are impractical and potentially counterproductive. But the United States should reappraise the broader aid relationship and fashion workable conditionality arrangements. In the immediate future, the United States is not without other forms of influence. Egypt's current leaders crave international acceptance and legitimacy and are reliant on outside support and assistance, particularly from international financial institutions. The United States should use those tools to try to shape how Egypt's leaders perceive their interests, recognizing the inherent limitations involved, and it should synchronize these efforts with allies.
With Secretary of State John Kerry scheduled to visit Egypt for the first time in the coming days, he should make clear that under the circumstances the United States is not in a position to host Morsi, as is currently planned for later in the spring.
In a way this underscores the value that is placed on friendly relations with the U.S. In that way we can use some level of 'soft power' in the future. Not only is it in our own national interests but we are less likely to be the victim of exported Tea Party fantasies like the one that Obama is in bed with the MB.
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