When
Hoda al-Nasser, the daughter of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
al-Nasser, recently deemed the country’s current strongman, Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi, the rightful heir to her father’s political legacy, it was
worth taking her at her word. Just like Nasser, Sisi unapologetically
seized power in a coup d’état. Also like Nasser, Sisi has followed a
path in higher politics that began with a collaboration with the Muslim
Brotherhood -- he seems to have conspired with President Mohamed Morsi
in the removal of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in the summer of
2012 -- before changing course and doing everything in his power to
crush the Islamist organization. Sisi’s crackdown has already resulted
in the deaths and incarceration of thousands of Brotherhood activists,
including Morsi, his erstwhile patron.
This historical parallel might seem to bode ill for the relationship
between Egypt and the United States. After all, Nasser is remembered
today for his unabashed, even chauvinistic patriotism, and most
policymakers in Washington are taught that the close relationship that
the United States currently enjoys with Egypt traces back to the Camp
David accords signed by Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat. But
Washington’s history with Nasser is more auspicious than is generally
remembered. Indeed, with some minor adjustments, Washington’s
establishment of relations with Nasser’s government can serve as the
most promising template for a stable and productive relationship between
the United States and Egypt today.
Sisi is no less nationalistic than his predecessor. Nasser spoke of a
“role” in the Arab world “in search of a hero” -- a role that Egypt was
destined to fulfill -- and Sisi makes essentially the same point in
less poetic language. He asserts that Egypt must regain its position as a
leader of the Arabs, and by so doing restore Arab power more
generally.
It's true that Sisi's rhetoric is more pious than Nasser's avowedly
secular pan-Arabism. But that is more a sign of the times than an
indicator of a profound difference between the two. Indeed, the
foundation for Sisi's indictment against the Brotherhood is that it
offers a transnational, rather than a distinctly Egyptian, version of
Islamism. A proper Islamism would be based on Egyptian traditions and
institutions (including the state-supported Al-Azhar University), and
thus be supportive of the country's interests -- and by extension Arab
interests as a whole. Anything less would be traitorous, in Sisi's view.
At the core of both men's vision lies the projection of strong
personal, national, and Arab power.
But Sisi would do well to notice that Nasser, in his early years, at
least, was intent on reconciling appeals to Egyptian nationalism with
backing from the United States. Nasser knew that he needed American
support as a counterbalance to the possibility of British intervention,
following the coup, in support of their ally, the deposed King Farouk.
He was equally aware that American support would be useful in projecting
Egyptian power, both militarily and diplomatically, in the years ahead.
Of course, Nasser was careful not to appear to be Washington's puppet.
He preferred to give the impression that he was using the Americans
without giving anything in return. In one widely circulated (though
possibly apocryphal) tale about his dealings with the CIA, Nasser was
said to have built the Cairo Tower, which transmitted the Voice of the
Arabs radio station, with cash bribes from an American agent that were
intended to buy his loyalty. The tall, lean tower was said to represent
the young leader “saluting” the United States with his middle finger.
Equally instructive is the fact that the United States tolerated this
arrangement. Then, as now, Washington's primary goal in the region was
to find a strong leader in Cairo willing to work with the United States.
By 1949, U.S. intelligence had deemed that Nasser was such a figure, so
Washington threw its weight behind him. It stood in the way of British
attempts to roll the 1952 coup back and then, more germane to the
contemporary situation, it supported Nasser against democratic
opposition forces whose power rose in 1953 and early 1954 in reaction to
Nasser’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies. In October 1954, Nasser
moved to brutally subdue the final remaining element of the opposition,
which was the Brotherhood. Washington had originally supported the
Brothers in preference to the liberal, secular opposition, which it
deemed too weak to govern, but it stood by as thousands of them were
killed, imprisoned, or chased into exile.
Eventually, the relationship between Nasser's regime and the United
States came undone. The failure had multiple causes. Having assisted
Nasser’s rise to power, and then his consolidation of it, the United
States got cold feet as tensions between Egypt and Israel rose.
Ultimately Nasser’s outsize ambitions -- which increasingly became
focused on military engagement in the Arabian Peninsula following a 1962
coup in Yemen -- exceeded what Washington could support, making the
lure of Soviet support ever more attractive to Cairo. It is also
possible that Nasser had tricked the Americans into believing that he
was their man and would help them secure their interests in the Middle
East, but from the outset had intended to use and then discard U.S.
support.
The U.S.-Egyptian relationship is now essentially back to where it
was in 1954, with Washington supporting an emerging military strongman
who needs to demonstrate his bona fides to his most important
constituency, the military, first, and to the country as a whole second.
The challenge for both the United States and Sisi will be to
recalibrate their expectations of the relationship so that they focus
narrowly on the enduring overlap in strategic interests, rather than on
trying to reconstitute the more expansive alliance that they built over
the last 30 years. The United States needs a strong Egypt upon which to
anchor its drifting policy in the region, while Sisi needs arms and
money to fend off domestic challengers. The future is bright, so long as
both sides are willing to shed aspects of the relationship beyond those
basic goals.
Sisi already seems to be following that game plan. Like Nasser, he
has distanced himself publicly from Washington while doing everything to
ensure its most important support. Consider his government’s response
to the announcement in October of a temporary suspension of U.S.
military assistance for procurement of F-16s, Abrams tanks, and Apache
helicopters. Sisi declared that the decision would hurt the United
States more than Egypt. But he said nothing to risk the discontinuation
of assistance for Egypt’s counterterrorism activities, especially in the
Sinai, which are of far greater and more immediate importance to the
credibility of the military and its leader.
Sisi has, to be sure, allowed the government-owned and
government-controlled media to become much more critical of the United
States than it was under his predecessor Hosni Mubarak. But he has been
careful not to cross the real red line for Washington, which is Egypt
rejecting in word or deed its peace with Israel. Indeed, under Sisi, the
Egyptian military has not only destroyed Hamas’ tunnels under the
Sinai-Gaza border but has stepped up broader counterterrorism
cooperation with Israel while refraining from strong criticism of even
the prickly Netanyahu government.
The key to making this a sustainable strategy may be a continued
reform of the Egyptian military. As part of the reconfiguration of the
U.S.-Egyptian relationship, arms sales to Egypt will need to be altered
and possibly reduced, to ensure that they are designed to meet Egypt's
real security threats, rather than the pecuniary interests of people on
either side of the delivery chain. Procurement supported by U.S. Foreign
Military Funding will have to shift from the heavy emphasis on fighter
planes, attack helicopters, and tanks to equipment more suitable for
threats posed by insurgencies, terrorism, border penetration,
peacekeeping, natural disasters, maritime challenges, and the like. A
leaner, more agile military of this sort would be more capable of
deployment in the region in pursuit of Egyptian and, not coincidentally,
American interests.
Mubarak had long feared that downsizing and professionalizing the
military in this way would cause the officer corps to rebel, and that
being seen to serve U.S. regional interests would undercut his fragile
domestic legitimacy. The result was a massive military that became
bloated and soft, preparing in Godot-like fashion for a war with Israel
that would thankfully never come, and which was unable to project its
power elsewhere. Sisi is not likely to share Mubarak's fears. He has
already retired off a substantial portion of the senior officer corps
who benefitted most from systematic corruption. His appeal is to younger
officers who he may calculate will remain loyal out of a shared sense
of mission, rather than because of patronage. A leaner military capable
of projecting Egyptian power could become essential to maintaining
Sisi's popularity among the public. (For Washington's part, a mobile
Arab expeditionary force capable of intervening in trouble spots in
pursuit of mutually agreed objectives would be a major boon in the
region.)
Of course, even if the United States and Egypt achieve a new
stability, there's no telling how long it would last. Just as in the
Nasser era, both sides may end up wanting too much. Having assisted the
reconfiguration of the Egyptian military and the economic resuscitation
of the country, Washington could become bossy, insensitive to Egyptian
desires generally and the political needs of its rulers in particular.
And it may only be a matter of time until a stronger and more
nationalistic Egypt is tempted to flex its muscles, which is sure to
elicit unpredictable reactions in the region.
Much will come down to Sisi himself, and to how far he decides to
follow in Nasser's footsteps. He is clearly his predecessor's equal in
his obsession with power, his tactical finesse at acquiring it, and his
jealous and ruthless guarding of it. But Sisism is only just beginning
to coalesce into an apparent ideology, one that draws its legitimacy
through reference to nationalism, an established and conservative Islam,
and a strong sense of conservative morality. Although there is nothing
inherent in this outlook that would contradict a strong relationship
between the United States and Egypt, that was also the view that
Washington had of Nasserism back in the early 1950s. The central paradox
of that previous relationship -- that the strong leader supported by
Washington ultimately had to turn on his benefactor to assert his
strength -- is certainly worth keeping in mind this time.
