America Has No Leverage in Egypt

By STEVEN SIMON

EGYPT has entered a dark tunnel, and it is difficult to say when, and in what condition, it will emerge. Many Americans, in the meantime, are outraged that the Obama administration has not exerted its supposed leverage, in the form of military aid, to pressure the Egyptian army to restore a democratic form of government. But it is time for some realism about that leverage. A yearly sum of $1.3 billion may seem persuasive, but this money has always been intended to secure foreign policy outcomes, not domestic political arrangements that the United States favors. (The State Department has announced that it will put “on hold” $250 million in civilian economic aid to Egypt; the annual military aid expenditure will remain untouched.) For $1.3 billion per year, America has ensured peace with Israel, priority access to the Suez Canal and, more recently, counterterrorism cooperation. This worked under the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak and under the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi, with whom President Obama had an effective enough working relationship to broker a deal to end the latest outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Despite the fact that American military aid to Egypt has always been intended as an inducement to strategic cooperation, successive presidents have been tempted to use it in other ways. But this aid has never succeeded in persuading Egypt’s rulers to govern the way Washington wants. Shortly after he took office in 1993, President Bill Clinton issued a not-so-veiled warning to Mr. Mubarak to reform the electoral process or face a cut in aid. Mr. Mubarak was unresponsive, and as violent resistance against him mounted, the White House backed off. The administration of George W. Bush fared no better. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Mr. Mubarak liberalize the country’s political system to allow opposition parties greater representation, he responded by arresting the only liberal candidate with any name recognition in Egypt — Ayman Nour — for electoral fraud. (No one should doubt authoritarian rulers’ capacity for irony.) In response, Ms. Rice canceled an impending trip to Egypt, which led to Potemkinesque changes to the country’s election rules. These reforms faded quickly, paving the way, in conjunction with an economic downturn, to the mass protests that eventually resulted in Mr. Mubarak’s fall in February 2011. Just as pressure from Presidents Clinton and Bush didn’t succeed in bringing about domestic change, the alleged leverage supplied by American assistance failed to compel Mr. Morsi to heed Mr. Obama’s repeated warnings to adopt a more inclusive approach to governing a deeply divided Egypt in the past year. As far as Mr. Morsi was concerned, the need for his party to dominate Egyptian politics and escape the charge that he was collaborating with the West trumped not just the $1.3 billion on offer from Washington but also the $4.8 billion the International Monetary Fund was urging him to accept. When in history has a country the size of Egypt, with its proud history and self-conscious greatness, rearranged its domestic politics for the equivalent of just a billion dollars? A decade ago, Turkey began making bold constitutional changes, institutionalizing civilian control over the military and reforming the judiciary, but these steps were taken to meet the membership requirements imposed by the European Union — a status to which Turkey still aspires. Compared with the $1.3 billion America provides Egypt, E.U. membership promised incalculably greater rewards to Turkey. Indeed, if the E.U. had offered Turkey only what Egypt receives from Washington, the Turkish Army might still be running the country. However great its hegemony may have once been in the Middle East, America no longer enjoys a strategic monopsony. Today, there are other buyers of Egyptian cooperation who can outbid the United States. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia together have pledged $12 billion to Egypt’s junta, and they have done so without the conditions that Congress places on American-appropriated funds. Of course, the White House could still do something symbolic, cutting off aid to assuage America’s moral critics. But presumably Mr. Obama hasn’t done this for two reasons. The first is to avoid making the United States the center of the story. If America cut all aid tomorrow, the Obama administration would be accused by all sides of undermining the country’s security and meddling in its affairs. Egypt’s current political crisis dates back to the 1930s, and it is one that Egyptians need to resolve themselves, without the distraction of American involvement. And since cutting aid is unlikely to work in any case, staking American prestige on such a doubtful outcome would be imprudent. The second is that as violence and repression in Egypt deepen, the White House will ultimately be compelled to respond, even if its options are at best symbolic and, at worst, counterproductive. Proponents of punitive action are correct to argue that the biggest threat America can wield is a cutoff of military aid. But this must be held in reserve for when things inevitably get worse. In the interim, canceling a joint military exercise with Egypt was the tactically sensible thing to do. Having fired this warning shot, the administration still has at least one round of ammunition remaining. Egypt’s nightmare will not disappear overnight; Washington needs to keep dry what little powder it has left.