Israel Matzav

US suspends some aid to Egypt

You would hope that at least a move like this would have some connection to the current budget crisis in the United States. But of course it doesn't. It's pure politics. President Hussein Obama so misses his friend, Muslim Brotherhood chair Mohammed Morsy, that he is partially suspending aid to Egypt.

To signal its displeasure at the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, officials said, the United States would withhold the delivery of several big-ticket items, including Apache attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles, M1-A1 tank parts and F-16 warplanes, as well as $260 million for the general Egyptian budget.

But in a sign of how the administration is balancing its interests, senior officials said the United States would continue aid for counterterrorism programs as well as for Egypt’s efforts to protect its borders and secure the Sinai, which has become a haven for extremists.

In announcing the decision, administration officials reiterated that the Egyptian military’s brutal repression of supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, was not acceptable. But in explaining their specific steps, American officials sounded as if they were reaffirming a valuable relationship rather than delivering a rebuke. 

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The announcement laid bare the underlying calculations that have shaped the United States’ effort to respond to the upheaval in Egypt ever since the crackdown began in July, leaving more than 1,000 people dead.

American officials have long doubted that cutting back military aid would have any effect on the behavior of Egypt’s military-backed government. The United States also does not want to jeopardize security interests in Egypt, notably counterterrorism efforts, the stability of the Sinai Peninsula and the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Prior to the official announcement of the aid withdrawal on Wednesday, The New York Times quoted an Israeli official as warning that the US was "playing with fire."

The official reportedly stated that US aid to Cairo is part of Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and is also an important element of the United States' standing in the Arab world.

"If America is seen to be turning its back on Egypt, an old ally, how will it be seen? People will see it as the United States dropping a friend,” the Times quoted the official a saying.

You mean they'll see it like US treatment of Israel, but the Arab world will react differently than Israel does. Right?

Jennifer Dyer writes that the aid cutoff is the wrong move: 

Obama is already seen by too many in the Middle East as backing the Muslim Brotherhood. This latest move will only reinforce that dangerous perception. Unfortunately, it also throws into question America’s current attitude toward the investment we made in the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, in which control of the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt and the two nations agreed to demilitarize it and observe confidence-building forms of consultation over its security.

A key element of that agreement, proposed in the consultations at Camp David in 1978, was the U.S. investment in the military posture of both nations. Washington doesn’t arm Egypt just because we like Egyptians and think they’re great, although of course we do. We arm Egypt as part of our commitment to the regional-stability vehicle that is the peace between Egypt and Israel.

The 1979 peace accord is a core element of our policy in the region: a foundation, a base, a pillar, a first principle, a sine qua non. Like our investment in the Organization of American States, like our investment in NATO, like our investment in our alliances with our Far Eastern allies, our investment in the 1979 peace accord is policy bedrock for the United States. We do things just because of it: because it’s still our policy, and it’s our policy for good reason. Because it keeps the peace.

What Obama has chosen to withhold in the partial suspension of aid to Egypt is precisely the list of major weapon systems that we supply as our investment in the Egyptian peace accord with Israel: the F-16 fighter jets, the Apache helicopters, the Harpoon missiles, the upgrade kits for M1A1 Abrams tanks. The counterterrorism aid that will not be interrupted is not significant to Egypt’s security posture vis-à-vis Israel; what matters is the major, conventional weapon systems.

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I can never quite tell if what we’re seeing from the Obama administration is ineptitude coupled with a peculiar, triangulated ideological moralism, or if it’s something else (it’s hard to even say what). It seems unlikely to me that there was no one – no one at all – involved in the administration’s deliberations on this who understood the ramifications for the 1979 accord and Middle East stability in general. But if there was someone, how did things get done in this careless, haphazard manner?

Exit question: how much longer can any semblance of a status quo in global security hold, with the United States government exercising no care to at least observe its forms?

Exhaustion is setting in, so all I will add is that Obama felt he had to do something, so he did the wrong something again.

Labels: Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Barack Hussein Obama, Egyptian Revolution, Mohammed Morsy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:02 AM