MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2014 Blanga: U.S. Aid to Egypt / 1

Responding to Cairo’s New Leadership

Should Washington Withhold Aid to Egypt? by Yehuda Blanga

wo decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attendant

weakening of the radical Arab camp, and three-and-a-half decades after the conclusion of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the removal of the foremost threat to Egyptian security, Cairo’s continued acquisition of thousands of tanks and hundreds of fighting aircraft seems to make no sense. Yet Washington’s withholding of $1.3 billion in annual military aid following the Egyptian army’s July 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi sparked an angry retort, with the military regime threatening to turn to its former Russian patron.

Why does Cairo continue to adhere to this anachronistic military and strategic raison d’être? Has the U.S. administration overplayed its hand by assuming that the threat of military aid suspension could be leveraged to obtain political influence? And what are the implications of this episode for Egypt and the Middle East as a whole?

View from the Nile Despite its 1979 peace agreement with

Israel, Egypt has yet to internalize the idea that it is at peace with its neighbor to the east. What prevails between the two countries is a “cold

peace” as the Mubarak regime made no attempt during its 30-year reign to further the normalization of bilateral relations or to modify public opinion and perceptions of

T

Despite having signed a peace treaty with Israel, Egypt’sarmed forces continue to receive thousands of tanks andhundreds of planes from Washington. “There’s noconceivable scenario in which they’d need all those tanksshort of an alien invasion,” declares Shana Marshall ofGeorge Washington University.

MIDDLE E

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In addition, Egyptian armed forces collaborate in joint exercises with various Western and Middle Eastern militaries: In 2009, the Egyptian military carried out maneuvers with the French, Italian, British, Dutch, and German armed forces while joint Egyptian-Turkish and U.S.-Egyptian exercises were held in 2012.6 The pinnacle of this military collaboration is Operation Bright Star, a joint U.S.-Egyptian exercise that has been held roughly every two years since 1980. However, the exercise planned for 2011 was cancelled due to the events surrounding the ouster of President Husni Mubarak that year, and then in 2013, President Obama canceled the exercise because of the Egyptian military’s toppling of Morsi. Both cancellations have had important repercussions on U.S.-Egyptian relations.

6 “Military Balance Files: Egypt.”

View from the Potomac Since 1979, Egypt—along with

Saudi Arabia—has been one of two cornerstones of U.S. policy in the Arab world. It has served as a mediator in Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian peace talks; it has worked to mod- erate and counter trends toward radicalization in the Arab world; and it provides military support for U.S. forces stationed in the region. Egypt’s geostrategic importance lies in the fact that it is a bridge between East and West, located as it is at the intersection of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, and most importantly through its control of the Suez Canal. In order to move quickly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, the U.S. fleet transits the Suez Canal with permission from the Egyptian authorities. Any delay

or restrictions would require the United States government to station naval forces near the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and round it in order to reach the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. As a result, Washington would appear to have a vital interest in maintaining good ties with Cairo, despite the regime changes there since 2011.

The other main component of the continued military assistance to Egypt has to do with benefits to the U.S. military industry. Every year since 1986, Congress has approved US$1.3 billion in military assistance to Egypt, the second-largest aid package after that given to Israel.7 But the Egyptian military does not receive this sum in cash: As in the Israeli case, a sizable portion of that largesse is paid out to American military

7 Jeremy M. Sharp, “Egypt: Background and U. S.

Relations,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., June 27, 2013; Fine, “Haiyum Hamitsri,” p. 32.

Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (left) standing next to theman he overthrew, Muslim Brotherhood leader andEgyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The popularlysupported coup poses a contorted foreign policyconundrum for Washington, which has been trying tofigure out whether or not to continue military supportto Cairo, and if so, what kind.

MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2014 Blanga: U.S. Aid to Egypt / 4

contractors who assemble tanks and warplanes and send them on to Egypt.8

Since 1986, Washington has trans-ferred 221 F-16 fighter jets with a total value of $8 billion to Egypt as part of its military aid package despite the fact that U.S. military advisors have been saying for years that Cairo had more than enough planes and tanks and does not need any more.9 Likewise, over a thousand Abrams tanks have been transferred to Egypt since 1992 at a total cost of $3.9 billion though close to 200 of them are in mothballs and have never been used.10 Such an arrangement can have economic

8 Jeremy M. Sharp, “Egypt: Background and U. S.

Relations,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2014, p. 23; National Public Radio, Aug. 3, 2013.

9 Bloomberg News Service (New York), Aug. 20, 2013; Planet Money, National Public Radio, Aug. 3, 2013.

10 Sharp, “Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations,” June 27, 2013, p. 32; “Military Balance Files: Egypt.”

benefits within Egypt as well: The Abu Zaabal tank repair factory (aka Factory 200) in Helwan is the site of a joint production of Abrams tanks that employs thousands of local workers.11

As a result, American defense contractors make millions of dollars annually and employ tens of thousands of workers as a direct result of U.S. military aid to Egypt and other countries in the Middle East.12 In the words of Bruce Barron, president of Barron Industries of Oxford, Michigan, a manufacturer of Abrams M1A1 parts that the United

States sends to Egypt: “The aid that we give to Egypt is coming back to the U.S. and keeping 30 of my people working.”13 In turn, the owners of small businesses like Barron Industries work in concert with large corporations such as General Dynamics to operate a lobby of local politicians, business-people, and unions who alert members of Congress to the domestic ramifications that cuts in military production or freezing projects might entail.14

11 Sharp, “Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations,”

June 27, 2013, p. 32.

12 Reuters, May 24, 2012; David Schenker, “Inside the Complex World of U.S. Military Assistance to Egypt,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, D.C., Sept. 4, 2013.

13 National Public Radio, Aug. 3, 2013.

14 Ibid; Reuters, May 24, 2012.

American defense contractors make millions annually and employtens of thousands of workers as a direct result of military aid toEgypt and other countries in the Middle East. These Abrams tanksare assembled at a General Dynamics plant in Lima, Ohio.

MIDDLE E

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In contrast with these strong, albeit restrained, statements by official Cairo, anger was expressed in a much more forceful and unambiguous fashion on the popular level. In July, shortly after the coup, Husam Hindi, a leader within the Tamarod (Rebellion) movement that led the campaign to oust Morsi, called for the masses to take to the streets “and defend the revolution” against the Muslim Brotherhood, which, he charged, was collaborating with the United States to undermine the legitimacy of the revolution. The Brotherhood, he claimed, had a long history of close ties with the Obama administration as seen by the major role it played “in exerting pressure on Hamas to reach a ceasefire during the latest Israeli aggression [Operation Pillar of Defense].” 21

When Washington threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Egypt, Tamarod launched a “Ban the Aid” protest campaign,22 fol-

21 Elaph (London), July 6, 2013.

22 Ma’an News Agency (Bethlehem), Aug. 17, 2013.

lowed shortly afterward by the “Reviving Sovereignty” campaign. Protesting what its leaders called the U.S. attempt to meddle in Egypt’s internal affairs, it posted a petition on its official website calling for the suspension of U.S. aid and disavowal of the peace treaty with Israel:

After the unacceptable Amer-ican intervention in Egyptian affairs, and how the U.S. supports terrorist groups in Egypt, I demand, as an Egyptian citizen who signed this petition, to hold a referendum on two matters. The first to refuse U.S. aid ... in all its forms. The second, to cancel the peace agreement between Egypt and the Israeli entity and rewording security agreements in order to ensure the rights of the Egyptian state in securing its borders.23

Mahmud Badr, a Tamarod co-founder, minced no words in attacking Obama for condemning the June 30 revolution. He urged Washington not to meddle in Egypt’s internal affairs, especially not in the struggle by the military and by demonstrators against “the Brotherhood’s terrorism,” declaring in no uncertain terms that Egypt no longer needed U.S. aid: “I tell you, President Obama, why don’t you and your small, meaningless aid go to hell?”24 For Badr and the members of his protest movement, violent struggle and bloodshed were

23 Al-Ahram (Cairo), Aug. 18, 2013; al-Balad

(Beirut), Aug. 17, 2013.

24 Reuters, Aug. 17, 2013.

Mahmud Badr (above), a Tamarod co-founder, minced no words when he attacked Obama forcondemning the June 30 revolution, declaring in nouncertain terms that Egypt no longer needed U.S.aid: “I tell you, President Obama, why don’t youand your small, meaningless aid go to hell?”

MIDDLE E

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MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2014 Blanga: U.S. Aid to Egypt / 9

The third and final outcome of either the threat or an actual reduction in U.S. aid is the growing role of other states, above all Russia, in the affairs of the Middle East. The United States under Obama is perceived as a weakened power on a slow retrenchment from the region.33 As nature—and seemingly geopolitics—abhors a vacuum, U.S. dif-fidence is encouraging rival powers to play a greater role in Egypt and one that bodes no good for the long term. American history can be instructive here.

During the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration tried to exploit U.S. military, technical, and economic assistance to persuade Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt to join an alliance to defend the region from communism. When courting Cairo failed, Washington refused to provide the Egyptians with requested weapons and later withdrew its offer to fund the construction of the Aswan high dam.34 The strategy was a failure as Moscow quickly provided arms to Cairo through Czechoslovakia. Nasser was initially unwilling to chain himself to any major power, instead maneuvering adroitly bet-ween Washington and Moscow. In a long and patient process that developed over subsequent years, Soviet ties turned into dependence—one that increased markedly in the aftermath of the 1967 war. Two factors were largely responsible for this. For one thing, the Soviets never set conditions for assistance to an Arab country. For another,

33 Daniel W. Drezner, “Does Obama Have a Grand

Strategy?” Foreign Affairs, July-Aug. 2011.

34 “Soviet Penetration of the Middle East,” May 12, 1970, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA), Foreign Ministry (hereafter FM), 4605/2; William J. Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt, 1955-1981 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 16; Ofer Mazar, Betsilo Shel HaSphinx (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2002), pp. 15–28.

“the absence of any statement that the Middle East was vital to American interests”35 was seen as a green light by Russia to become fully involved.

Although the Cold War ended in the late 1980s, a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin still views the Middle East as critical to its political and military interests and would love nothing better than to curtail U.S. hegemony in the region. Since the outbreak of the recent Middle Eastern upheavals, Moscow has sought to increase its influence in the region by protecting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and inserting itself repeatedly in the confrontation bet-

35 “Soviet Penetration of the Middle East,” May 6,

1970, ISA, FM 4605/2.

Following Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow, re-lations between Moscow and Cairo have grown closer. On November 13, 2013, for the first time since Egypt changed its orientation from East to West in the mid-1970s, a Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov (second from left), and a defense minister, Sergei Shoygu (right), visited Egypt. Then-Egyptian minister of defense Abdel Fatah al-Sisi (second from right) and foreign minister Nabil Fahmy (left) met with their Russian counterparts.

MIDDLE E

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MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2014 Blanga: U.S. Aid to Egypt / 11

with global jihad—especially those that operate in the Sinai Peninsula—by means of a new strategic view that encompasses the appropriate means to combat it. The age of classic war in the region, involving large scale air-supported tank maneuvers, is apparently over and there is no longer any need to keep accumulating massive quantities of heavy weapons. The threats posed by Islamist terrorist organizations operating in the Sinai require a new strategy focused on low-intensity counterinsurgency measures.

At the same time, Washington would be advised to look beyond the specifics of military aid to its long term interests. Military aid has significance beyond maintaining the power of the Egyptian military: It demonstrates the depth of U.S. support for an ally and, practically speaking, constitutes a declaration of loyalty to the close bond between the two countries. Any cutback or curtailment of aid to Egypt will be understood by any moderate and secular wings of the Egyptian regime—and by the Islamist opposition—as a U.S. vote of non-confidence in its allies, specifically in Egypt but also throughout the Middle East. Such measures by Washington are creating an opening for outside players—who are neither necessarily moderate nor pro-Western—to penetrate Egypt and the rest of the region, thereby damaging U.S. interests.

In the short term and in the wake of a reduction in assistance, Egypt will not break decisively with the U.S. government as doing so would achieve precisely the opposite of the goals sought by Sisi and the members of the National Salvation Front. Egypt would be further destabilized, losing its main supplier of military equipment, ammunition, and spare parts, and slide even further down the economic slope it has been on since February 2011. On the other hand, opening the Egyptian gates to the Russians, Saudis, and others would win these countries power and influence that over the long run could distance Egypt from its U.S. patron. For this reason, if Washington wants to continue to influence Cairo’s political considerations, it should open its military depots to it, rather than slam the doors shut in its face.

Yehuda Blanga is a lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern studies at Bar Ilan University and a visiting scholar at The Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University.