Obama Comes to His Senses on Egypt

Obama Comes to His Senses on Egypt

Jonathan S. Tobin
04.01.2015
Commentary Magazine


Since coming to office President Obama has made a series of disastrous decisions that have alienated allies and empowered foes around the globe. In the Middle East, his reckless pursuit of détente with Iran has undermined the security of moderate Arab nations and Israel while also undermining his supposed goal of nuclear non-proliferation. But his hostility to allies goes deeper than his resentment of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or his impatience with Arabs who rightly fear the consequences of an Iran nuclear deal. Among the most egregious examples of the administration’s mishandling of America’s friends was the case of Egypt, the region’s most populous country. But even as he digs deeper with Iran and has threatened to isolate Israel, the president seems to have come to his senses on this one topic. Yesterday’s announcement that Obama was lifting the freeze on arms sales to the Egyptian government is a rare instance of good sense on the president’s part. The decision to try and repair the damage he had done in the last four years is late but perhaps not too late to help the Egyptians as they seek, along with the Saudis, to push back against the advances of both ISIS in Libya and Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen.


The arms freeze dates back to the military’s overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in the summer of 2013. Since then, Obama has given President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the Netanyahu treatment, making no secret of his distaste for Sisi’s methods in rooting out the Brotherhood and even choosing not to enthusiastically back Egypt’s attacks on ISIS in Libya and decision to help the Saudis fight the Houthis in Yemen.

The ostensible justification for the freeze on weapons to Egypt was the military’s human-rights violations. There is no denying that Sisi’s government has acted ruthlessly and shown little respect for human rights since coming to power. But while his actions must be viewed with distaste, Obama’s belief that there is a third, democratic alternative to the Islamists of the Brotherhood or the military was a delusion. Though the Arab Spring made it possible for some to dream that democracy might flower in Egypt, the ability of the Brotherhood to take advantage of the fall of the corrupt Mubarak regime gave the lie to any such hopes.

The history of the administration’s conduct in Egypt is a case study in failure driven by ideology. President Obama greeted the Arab Spring protests with enthusiasm but little understanding of the impact they might have on both the cause of human rights or regional security. Though Mubarak would have fallen with or without the push he got from Obama, the president can be blamed for hastening the collapse and for the pressure he brought to bear on the military to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to eventually succeed that authoritarian regime. Once it took office, the president seemed to embrace the Islamist movement whose sole goal was to ensure that the democratic process it had used to take power would never be used to oust it. Unlike the coercive methods he used on the military both before and after the Brotherhood was in office, the administration treated the Islamists with kid gloves even as its actions alienated most Egyptians.

Rather than support the protests of tens of millions of Egyptians who called for the Brotherhood’s ouster, the president treated the military coup that ended their misrule with disdain. He quickly made it clear that he was unhappy with this turn of events and used the considerable leverage that the U.S. has over Egypt via an annual aid package of more than $1 billion per year to undermine Sisi.

Fortunately these administration efforts failed and Sisi has consolidated his hold on Cairo. What he has created is no democracy and no respecter of the rights of dissidents or Islamists, but it is stable and, in the view of most Egyptians, far preferable to the Brotherhood’s drive to create a far more repressive state. But for the better part of two years, Obama has waged a cold war against a government that shared America’s concern about the spread of Islamist terrorism. Instead of backing Sisi as he sought to isolate the Brotherhood’s Hamas allies in Gaza and fighting other terrorists in the Sinai, Washington has made no secret of its anger about the coup.

What did it take to wake Obama up to the necessity of repairing relations with Cairo? Sisi’s flirtation with Russia was unsettling but left the president unmoved. So, too, did Egypt’s decision to bomb ISIS targets in Libya after Egyptian Christians working there were murdered. In the end, perhaps it was the chaos in Yemen where Iranian-backed rebels seem to be on the verge of taking over the strategic country. Though the Egyptians should be wary of a major military commitment in a country that was the graveyard of dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser’s ambitions in the 1960s, Egyptian forces are badly needed to reinforce Saudi efforts to retrieve the situation there. Ending the arms freeze now was not so much an admission that everything the U.S. has done in Egypt for years was a mistake as an emergency measure as the region fell apart due to Obama’s mistakes.

Ending the Egyptian arms freeze cannot make up for the colossal blunder being committed with Iran or other mistakes in Syria and Iraq. But it can be the start of a return to a sane policy of backing allies rather than isolating them. For this the president deserves a modicum of credit. Let’s hope it is not an isolated example of wisdom in an administration whose remaining time in office seems fated to be one of foreign-policy disaster.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/04/01/obama-comes-to-his-senses-on-egypt-arms-freeze/

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