Israel Matzav

Is Egypt too big to fail?

Fouad Ajami suggests that Egypt believes it's too big to fail.

Morsi may claim, as he does now, that America’s standing in Egypt, and in the wider Arab world, depends on Washington brokering a “just peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. But reason of state trumps the needs of the Palestinians. It should be recalled that the great peace-maker and pragmatist, Anwar al-Sadat, who pulled Egypt out of the swamp of the Arab-Israeli conflict, was always keen on paying tribute to that old Palestinian claim.

Defer as they will to Washington on the Camp David Accords and peace with Israel, the new leaders of Egypt can call Washington’s bluff. The perennial threat, popular in the U.S. Congress, of cutting off aid to Egypt, is hollow. A small minority in Congress has hankered after that. But Egypt’s leaders have always operated on the premise that their country is too big to fail. 

Like riverboat gamblers, they relish the game, secure in the knowledge that a country of more than 80 million people, at the crossroads of the world, so near to the oilfields of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, a Sunni balance to Shiite Iran, will always be bailed out. The Egyptian education of Barack Obama came in late, but it came nonetheless.

If I were Egypt, I wouldn't be quite so confident. All the American foreign aid money in the world is not going to bail out their economy, and if they manage to get the US angry enough  Congress just might pull the plug.

Labels: Egypt, Mohammed Morsy, US foreign aid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:44 AM