Imperfect Progress

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
(source: Wikipedia)

Shortly after meeting him in December of 1984, and just months prior to his ascension to the Soviet premiership, Thatcher famously declared to the West (particularly Ronald Reagan) that Mikhail Gorbachev was "a man we can do business with;" when Reagan handed over the helm of the West Wing about four years later, he and Gorbachev, architect of glasnost and perestroika had since hammered out the INF treaty and laid the groundwork for what would become START I, leaving George Bush the task of watching the Berlin Wall symbolically crumble as the Soviet Union itself collapsed over the next two-and-a-half years.

Meanwhile, in the ongoing geopolitical hotzone of our times, a Mid-East rife with chaos and instability of all sorts, a new sort of “man we can do business with” has emerged, a sectarian Arab strongman spanning where North Africa and West Asia meet: the former General-turned-President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. And unfortunately, it has taken the Obama administration until just recently, after coming to recognize his permanence as a fixture in the Arab arena, to begin an effort at cultivating productive relations with the regime in Cairo.

What’s even more unfortunate is the manner by which the bridges between them and us were burned last year. Sisi came to power when he led the military in overthrowing the country’s first-ever democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood—a coup d'état, more or less. US law happens to require the halting of non-humanitarian aid (which Egypt happens to be recipient of a hefty amount of) if such events occur, and so the White House decided on freezing a good deal of it.

This is where things get tricky. While it did freeze much of the annual aid package, at the same time the White House did not explicitly condemn the overthrow. Why? Because it was largely justified, and popular. To know Mohamed Morsi simply as his country’s vaunted first democratically elected president is to be lacking a few other key details of his tenure; after having been repressed since the time of Nasser, the Muslim Brotherhood’s first go at running the government looked a whole heck of lot like, well…a clumsily enacted spin on Nasser: consolidation of power by the executive, declaring presidential actions immune from legal challenge, movement to effectively deflate and circumvent the opposition, this time with a decidedly Islamist flavor to it all.

The Egyptian people happened to find all these developments particularly unappealing, so they packed the streets by the millions, for the second time in about as many years, to once again demand their head of state remove himself from power. Fortunately for this mass of discontents, the military didn’t really like the president, either, and barely a year after his inauguration, Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the Armed Forces under Sisi.

Sisi has remained at the helm ever since, and after a winning an almost assuredly tampered pro forma election, is likely to remain well into the foreseeable future—a lucky strike for the US, in regards to our Mid-East strategic aims, and the reason why maintaining productive relations with his government is so key to achieving them. Even before Secretary Kerry began to walk back the administrations awkward early treatment of the new regime in Cairo, and promise the reinstatement of the full $1.3 billion in annual aid, Sisi’s junta was already taking steps against radicalism that, while not entirely free of controversy, were certainly worthy of being applauded: in addition to cracking down on Muslim Brotherhood elements, they turned their attention to Gaza, condemning Hamas, and destroying the tunnels into Egypt that organization uses to resupply itself.

Then, on top of volunteering his government’s services as mediator of talks between Israel and Hamas during Israeli invasion of Gaza last month, Sisi made what may perhaps be the most proactive offer any Arab leader has made in some time towards the goal of ending the Palestinian conflict: he offered up 1,600 square kilometers of Sinai land to the PA, to increase the size of Gaza by five times, and create a new Palestine, on the terms that it would be demilitarized (President Abbas rejected outright).

Now, to be sure, Sisi’s Egypt has not been without its rougher edges. Some controversy was raised by the new government’s practice of mass trials of prominent Brotherhood members, and the mass handing-down of death sentences to those accused is highly questionable practice. Also of concern was the detaining of several journalists who were alleged to be co-conspirators with the Brotherhood. This is where our aid packages could potentially become a potent political tool; instead of simply freezing the aid cold when the Morsi government was overthrown, it should have been kept in place, and only threatened to be partially withheld in the event that an action taken by the new regime was a step “too far;” it’s a concept rooted in economics as much as anything else: incentivize careful behavior to better work towards common goals.

In spite of these occasional thorns, the new Egyptian state continuously becomes more promising. Just weeks ago, they began coordinating with the UAE on airstrikes against Islamist militants in Libya. Now, they’ve joined in with around ten other Arab states to back the American campaign against ISIS in Iraq and now Syria; given the right encouragement, Egyptian assistance here that matches their renewed zeal for combating militants elsewhere would make a vital addition to a new coalition. Even if their methods at times show room for improvement, the motives of this newest Egyptian state are exactly the sort we should encourage elsewhere in the region if we should ever hope to see any sort of long-term stability.

-Mitch Carter is an Illinois State Scholar and a member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.