Eric Trager
New Republic
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Cutting aid will cost Washington substantial influence in Egypt without
achieving any gains for either American geostrategy or democratic
prospects within the country.
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In a certain sense, the Obama administration's decision to withhold much
of the $1.3 billion in annual aid given to Egypt isn't surprising. U.S.
law mandates cutting off aid to countries in which a coup has taken
place, and the Egyptian military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi
this summer was, analytically speaking, exactly that. Moreover, the
Egyptian military's behavior during the three months since Morsi's
removal has made Egypt's slide towards enhanced autocracy impossible to
ignore: Over 1,000 people have been killed in the military-backed
government's crackdown on pro-Morsi protests; journalists who criticize
the military have been prosecuted in military courts; and the new
constitution will likely further shield the military from any kind of
civilian oversight.
Indeed, the generals are not democrats, and never have been. They are
bureaucratic actors who selfishly guard their bureaucratic privileges,
which include autonomy over their internal affairs and control over vast
economic assets (for example, among other consumer products, the
Egyptian military produces bottled water), and they know that true
democracy could cost them these perquisites. But cutting off aid won't
make the military democratic, and it will come at a substantial cost:
namely, the ability to encourage the military in a more progressive
direction down the road, when the environment might be riper for a more
assertively pro-democratic U.S. policy in Egypt.
The calls to cut off military aid in the aftermath of Morsi's ouster
reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of what transpired in Egypt this
past summer. To say, as is frequently said, that the military removed a
democratically elected president from office is to overlook a very basic
reality: that by the time unprecedentedly mass protests against the
Muslim Brotherhood's rule commenced on June 30, Mohamed Morsi was a
president in name only. Morsi's November 2012 constitutional
declaration, which put his own edicts above judicial scrutiny, and his
subsequent ramming of an Islamist constitution through to ratification,
severely undercut his popular legitimacy, and shrunk his support in a
country of 85 million people down to the Brotherhood's base of
approximately 500,000 members. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood's
decision to dispatch its cadres to brutally attack and torture
protesters outside the presidential palace on December 5 led many
Egyptians to view the Brotherhood -- an organization that they had
elected only months earlier -- as an emerging fascist regime. From that
point forward, protests against Morsi's rule became so frequent and
destabilizing that by late January, the military -- at Morsi's request
-- assumed control over the three major Suez Canal cities.
At the same time, Morsi's appointment of perhaps thousands of completely
inexperienced Muslim Brothers to executive positions across Egypt's
massive bureaucracy catalyzed substantial resistance to his rule within
the state itself. This was something that Morsi's own Brotherhood
appointees acknowledged. But rather than trying to build consensus
within their respective bureaucracies, Brotherhood ministers instead
diverted governmental resources directly to Brotherhood-affiliated
organizations, thereby exacerbating the resistance within their
bureaucracies to their authority. By June 30, uniformed officers from
the same police force that once backed the Muslim Brotherhood's assault
on protesters were now protesting against him, alongside millions of
Egyptians in the streets. And shortly thereafter, Morsi's ministers
began resigning from his government. Morsi, in other words, had
completely lost control, and his refusal to negotiate a political
resolution to the crisis -- and his explicit preference for martyrdom
over politics -- made his reassertion of control virtually impossible.
When a president of a country of 85 million, mostly impoverished, people
loses control, there are no happy endings. Indeed, some truly gruesome
possibilities suddenly become probable: violent uprisings,
assassinations, civil wars, and, yes, military coups. And despite the
Egyptian military's undemocratic outlook, the generals very much wanted
to avoid a coup. As military officials emphasized for months leading up
to Morsi's ouster, their experience running Egypt following Hosni
Mubarak's 2011 ouster was a sour one. Their training, they said, was in
fighting wars and defending borders, not in policing cities and handling
sanitation. More to the point, the generals effectively got what they
wanted under Morsi: The Brotherhood's constitution granted the military
unprecedented autonomy over its internal affairs, including its control
over major economic assets. And Morsi affirmed his acceptance of the
military's exception to democratic oversight in April, when he buried a
state report highlighting the military's abuses in power following the
2011 uprising. It was, in other words, a good deal for the military --
but one that became entirely unsustainable as Morsi lost control of the
country.
Yet despite the military's reluctance to remove Morsi, its ultimate
decision to do so put it in direct confrontation with the Muslim
Brotherhood. This is, quite frankly, the way coups work: Those that
seize power seek to ensure that those they removed cannot return to
power, because this would almost certainly mean death for the new
rulers. This is why the Egyptian military moved to decapitate the
Brotherhood from the moment Morsi was removed. And many -- perhaps most
-- Egyptians share the military's fear of a resurgent Muslim
Brotherhood, which is why they have broadly endorsed the military's
brutal crackdown on the organization.
It is a dynamic that Washington cannot change even if it wanted to,
because it is virtually impossible to exert influence on actors who are
engaged in an existential struggle. And the administration's policy
towards Egypt since Morsi's ouster has undercut its potential influence
further. By insisting that the military negotiate and even reconcile
with the Brotherhood, the administration made the generals fear that
they would be pressured into their own suicides, and the administration
thus lost the ability to at least achieve the more conservative goal of
preventing an all-out assault by security forces on the Brotherhood's
protests. Meanwhile, in its equivocal public posture regarding Morsi's
removal, the administration exacerbated Egyptians' paranoid belief that
the U.S. desires Brotherhood rule in Egypt -- which Egyptians view as
far, far more threatening than military rule. Cutting off military aid
now -- only two days after Egypt was hit with three terrorist attacks --
will only reinforce these anxieties, and will mean losing a point of
leverage that the U.S. might be able to use in the future, when the
political environment in Egypt might be more hospitable for pushing the
country in a more progressive direction.
And rest assured: That moment will surely come. If the past two-plus
years have taught us anything about Egypt, it's that newly emerging
regimes quickly fall out of public favor as they become more autocratic.
Much as Egyptians turned on the military leaders who assumed control of
the country in February 2011, and much as they rebelled against the
Muslim Brotherhood leader who won the presidential election in June
2012, they will likely bristle before long under the current regime,
particularly as Egypt's economy continues to tumble. If the U.S. desires
a stable Egypt, it is at that moment that the U.S. will want to use its
leverage to encourage the generals to lower their political sights, and
permit a more inclusive and democratic politics.
But if the U.S. cuts aid now, it won't be able to have that conversation
then. It will also put at risk U.S.-Egyptian military cooperation that
is of significant value to U.S. strategy in the Middle East, which
includes U.S. overflight rights and preferred access in the Suez Canal.
And by only keeping the portion of the aid that is designed for
counterterrorism operations and border control, the administration will
reinforce the perception in Egypt that the military aid's primary
purpose is to keep Israel safe, and that Washington does not care about
Egyptians' well-being.
Cutting aid, in other words, is a lose-lose proposition: It will cost
Washington substantial influence within Egypt without achieving any
gains for either American geostrategy or democratic prospects within
Egypt. It is an unforced error in the extreme.
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Eric Trager is the Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute.
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The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
1828 L Street NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20036
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