by Gary Farber
There are many expert reporters on Egypt, obviously, and tons of scholars. But let's start with the excellent generalist on international policy that everyone has, I hope, been reading for many years — and if you haven't you should start last year or whenever — Laura Rozen. Some good news and bad news:
Earlier today, I was on a panel discussing coverage of the Egypt unrest, and someone mentioned that no one had seen it coming.
But that is not the case. Several foreign policy scholars and former officials have been urging the U.S. administration for months to prepare for the end of the Hosni Mubarak era and the instability that would accompany it.
Now that the administration has found itself scrambling the past few days to, first, try to avert a bloodbath in Egypt and more broadly, figure out what to do amid a hugely complicated power transition there with much at stake for the U.S., it's worth noting the people who have been pleading for policy attention on this issue long in advance. Chief among them, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Michele Dunne, a former NSC and State Department Policy Planning official, and the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan, who co-chair a bipartisan working group on Egypt.
I (and others) wrote about their efforts to get the U.S. policy community to pay attention. See "W.H. pressed on Egypt democracy," from September:
A bipartisan group of senators and foreign policy analysts is pushing the Obama administration to prepare for the looming end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule in Egypt by putting a new emphasis on Egyptian political reform and human rights.
The group’s immediate goal is to pressure Mubarak to allow international monitors to observe Egypt’s parliamentary elections in November, but the overall aim is much broader.
“The bottom line is that we are moving into a period of guaranteed instability in Egypt,” said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar with the Brookings Institution who co-founded the Egypt Working Group with Michele Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So the idea [that] we can keep puttering on as if nothing is going to change is a mistake. … What we need now is to move to deliverables.” […]
"We have a feeling that Mubarak has managed to bluff one more [American] administration, as he has done for 28 years,” Egyptian- American sociologist and civil society activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim told POLITICO. “He’s very skillful at portraying himself as the stalwart [Arab partner in the Middle East peace process], and arguing the focus should not be on elections and democracy while he has to attend to other important files — Gaza, the Palestinians, Iran, Syria; on all these [he portrays himself as] the best ally, the lever.” […]
U.S. pressure has led Egypt to release hundreds of Egyptian civil society activists detained under emergency law in the past several months, Dunne said. But Kagan and company say the U.S. should be doing much more.
This is all good. Bad:
Mubarak didn't permit international elections observers to monitor Egypt's November parliamentary polls, and the Senate resolution on Egypt co-sponsored by former Sen. Feingold never made it out of the Foreign Relations Committee, Josh Gerstein reported Saturday. […]
More good:
To their credit, the National Security Council's top Middle East hands Dennis Ross and Dan Shapiro met with Dunne and Kagan in November to discuss the issue (at a stuck moment of the peace process which has remained stuck), and other democracy and human rights specialists in the administration, including the NSC's Samantha Power and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East democracy issues Tamara Wittes, have frequently met with them.
Good, bad, and ugly (still quoting Rozen):
Just got late word that Dunne, Kagan and others from their group including former Bush NSC Middle East hand Elliott Abrams, as well as George Washington University Middle East expert Marc Lynch, and the National Security Network's Joel Rubin, formerly a U.S. Egypt desk officer, have been invited to the White House Monday.
“We do think-tank sessions on an almost weekly basis," a senior administration official told POLITICO's Playbook. "The goal is to bring in some of the top opinion leaders and thinkers on a given subject and have a candid conversion. We’ve done it with China, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Today’s topic is Egypt.”
The good here is, of course, Marc Lynch, one of the go-to guys on the Middle East, the guy you were reading for so many years as Abu Aardvark, of course. Aside from being a big fan of Buffy, Marc is expert and a truly fine fellow. that you must read on the Middle East unless you yourself read Arabic, and most of the Arab papers, watch most Arabic tv, etc., and since I don't, I read Marc, among many others, and he observes that Obama's handling Egypt pretty well:
After President Obama spoke last night about the situation in Egypt, my Twitter feed and inbox filled up with angry denunciations, with lots of people complaining bitterly that he had endorsed Mubarak's grim struggle to hold on to power, missed an historic opportunity, and risked sparking a wave of anti-Americanism. Once I actually read the transcript of his remarks, though, I felt much better. I think the instant analysis badly misread his comments and the thrust of the administration's policy. His speech was actually pretty good, as is the rapidly evolving American policy. The administration, it seems to me, is trying hard to protect the protestors from an escalation of violent repression, giving Mubarak just enough rope to hang himself, while carefully preparing to ensure that a transition will go in the direction of a more democratic successor.
It's crucial to understand that the United States is not the key driver of the Egyptian protest movement. They do not need or want American leadership — and they most certainly are not interested in "vindicating" Bush's freedom agenda or the Iraq war, an idea which almost all would find somewhere between laughable, bewildering, and deeply offensive. Suspicion of American intentions runs deep, as does folk wisdom about decades of U.S. collaboration with Mubarak. They are not really parsing Hilary Clinton's adjectives. Their protest has a dynamic and energy of its own, and while they certainly want Obama to take their side forcefully and unequivocally they don't need it.
What they do need, if they think about it, is for Obama to help broker an endgame from the top down — to impose restraints on the Egyptian military's use of violence to repress protests, to force it to get the internet and mobile phones back online, to convince the military and others within the regime's inner circle to ease Mubarak out of power, and to try to ensure that whatever replaces Mubarak commits to a rapid and smooth transition to civilian, democratic rule. And that's what the administration is doing. The administration's public statements and private actions have to be understood as not only offering moral and rhetorical support to the protestors, or as throwing bones to the Washington echo chamber, but as working pragmatically to deliver a positive ending to a still extremely tense and fluid situation.
I completely understand why activists and those who desperately want the protestors to succeed would be frustrated — anything short of Obama gripping the podium and shouting "Down With Mubarak!" probably would have disappointed them. But that wasn't going to happen, and shouldn't have. If Obama had abandoned a major ally of the United States such as Hosni Mubarak without even making a phone call, it would have been irresponsible and would have sent a very dangerous message to every other U.S. ally. That doesn't mean, as some would have it, that Obama has to stick with Mubarak over the long term — or even the weekend — but he simply had to make a show of trying to give a long-term ally one last chance to change.
The key to the administration's emerging strategy is the public and private signal that this is Mubarak's last chance, that the administration does not expect him to seize it, and that the U.S. has clear expectations of those who might succeed him. The key line in his remarks here is this:
"When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise."
I recommend Reading The Rest, as you should always do with Prof Lynch (and my bias that we've been bloggin' buds since he started blogging is irrelevant; I've read lots of arseh*les for decades, and been friends with some such bloggers, too). The ugly, of course, is Elliot Abrams who was one of the most despicable actors in the Reagan administration's support of death squads and torture in El Salvador:
In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre of civilians by the military in El Salvador began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas."[12] The massacre had come at a time when the Reagan administration was attempting to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran military. Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports of the massacre as misleading. In March 1993, the Salvadoran Truth Commission reported that 5,000 civilians were “deliberately and systematically” executed in El Mozote in December 1981 by forces affiliated with the Salvadoran state.
Not to mention elsewhere in Latin America.
Then, I'm still not sure what to make of this, as I linked back on November 5 , 2007:
[…] Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.
Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt declined to comment on the vice president's interventions or to elaborate on his positions. "The vice president's views are certainly reflected in the administration's policy," he said.
Increasingly, however, Cheney's positions are being opposed by other administration officials, including Cabinet members, political appointees and Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the administration on all matters concerning terrorism.
Personnel changes in President Bush's second term have added to the isolation of Cheney, who previously had been able to prevail in part because other key parties to the debate — including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers — continued to sit on the fence.
But in a reflection of how many within the administration now favor changing the rules, Elliot Abrams, traditionally one of the most hawkish voices in internal debates, is among the most persistent advocates of changing detainee policy in his role as the deputy national security adviser for democracy, according to officials familiar with his role.
But, then, anyone looks sane compared to Dick Cheney. And the good news is that just because you listen to someone, it doesn't mean you take their advice.
Abrams, you'll also recall,
Pleaded guilty October 7, 1991, to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about secret government efforts to support the Nicaraguan contra rebels during a ban on such aid. U.S. District Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., sentenced Abrams November 15, 1991, to two years probation and 100 hours community service. Abrams was pardoned December 24, 1992.
Wasn't that sweet of President G. H. W. Bush? And he also avoided impeachment! Win-win!
Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Aborting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails 'Cover-Up'
But I have a lot of faith in Marc's judgment, so I'm cautiously hopeful Obama will listen to Marc, and who knows, maybe even Abrams has changed spots.
Though I doubt it:
On February 2, 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Abrams deputy national security adviser for Global Democracy Strategy.[28] In his new position, Abrams became responsible for overseeing the National Security Council’s directorate of Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organization Affairs and its directorate of Near East and North African Affairs.[28]
Abrams accompanied Condoleezza Rice as a primary adviser on her visits to the Middle East in late July 2006 in the course of discussions relating to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.
After all, that worked out so well for everyone.
On the other hand, it turned out that Abrams was too busy to bother advise Obama!
The situation in Egypt is deeply worrisome. Reporting is reliably unreliable.
Mubarak's announcement is far too reminiscent of this:
The overthrow of the Shah came as a surprise to almost all observers.[47][48] The first militant anti-Shah demonstrations of a few hundred started in October 1977, after the death of Khomeini's son Mostafa.[49] A year later strikes were paralyzing the country, and in early December a "total of 6 to 9 million" — more than 10% of the country — marched against the Shah throughout Iran.[50]
On 16 January 1979, he made a contract with Farboud and left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar (a long time opposition leader himself), who sought to calm the situation.[51] Spontaneous attacks by members of the public on statues of the Pahlavis followed, and "within hours, almost every sign of the Pahlavi dynasty" was destroyed.[52] Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed all political prisoners, and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years in exile. He asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a 'national unity' government including Khomeini's followers. Khomeini fiercely rejected Dr. Bakhtiar's demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, demanding "since I have appointed him he must be obeyed."
This has still yet to work out very well. I make no predictions. But presumably you've heard:
Just hours after President Hosni Mubarak declared Tuesday night that he would step down in September as modern Egypt’s longest-serving leader, President Obama strongly suggested that Mr. Mubarak’s concession was not enough, declaring that an “orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.”
While the meaning of the last phrase was deliberately vague, it appeared to be a signal that Mr. Mubarak might not be able to delay the shift to a new leadership.
In a 30-minute phone call to Mr. Mubarak just before his public remarks, Mr. Obama was more forceful in insisting on a rapid transition, according to officials familiar with the discussion.
Mr. Mubarak’s 10-minute speech announcing he would step down came after his support from the powerful Egyptian military began to crumble and after American officials urged him not to run again for president.
But Mr. Mubarak’s offer fell short of the protestors’ demands for him to step down immediately and even face trial, and it could well inflame passions in an uprising that has rivaled some of the most epic moments in Egypt’s contemporary history. The protests have captivated a broader Arab world that has already seen a leader fall in Tunisia this month and growing protests against other American-backed governments.
Mr. Mubarak, 82, said he would remain in office until a presidential election in September and, in emotional terms, declared that he would never leave Egypt.
And you might have predictions or thoughts. What do you think?
Only thing I think, if the immediate initiator for the uprising was high food and energy prices, then Obama is pushing on a string trying to work within the existing kleptocracy.
I just recently found out about the website below. I don’t know much about the people who post there, but it looks interesting.
link
I don’t think Egyptians should trust the good intentions of the American government (whether Obama or anyone else). Obama isn’t supporting Mubarak because he’s smart enough to see he can’t prop him up (which, as this guy points out, puts Obama way ahead of some potential Presidents in the sanity department.) But supporting him was their first instinct, judging from Biden’s interview last week. Certainly the Palestinian Authority (which we also prop up) seems to identify closely with Mubarak and if 80 million Egyptians were as easy to push around as a few million Palestinians, I suspect the policies would remain similar. The PA jails political opponents and one hears mainly praise for them in the US. (Hamas is pretty bad in its own domain, of course.)
The US foreign policy establishment can’t be happy about the thought of a genuinely independent democratic Arab country deciding for itself what policies to adopt in the Middle East. Still, Egypt is poor and the army probably enjoys the money they get from the US, so that might provide some leverage if such a catastrophe actually occurs.
I hope Mr. Mubarak will step down soon. But he is male, and Middle Eastern, trained form the cradle to view capitulation as a sign of weakness. I hope Obama can keep up the good work, and that Mubarak will negotiate to leave Egypt now in exchange for permission to come back when he is actively dying.
One result of Mubarak’s tyranny is that there is no organized and competent civilian force of moderation. There is an undifferentiated mass, there is the Army, and there is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Takeover by MB would lead to abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, a near-total ending of US Aid, up-arming of Hamas, closer alliance with Iran, and an increased likelihood of war.
The MB has refrained from violence for 50 years; violence against Egypt, because Nasser and Mubarak have been so dangerous. That would end.
Takeover by the Army would be some kind of extension of the current government, I think.
But he is male, and Middle Eastern, trained form the cradle to view capitulation as a sign of weakness.
Can you cite a peer reviewed sociology or anthropology or clinical psychology journal justifying that assessment, or are you just trafficking in absurd racial stereotypes?
And in what way would that be different from the image that the Right in the US paints of itself?
Er, capitulation is a sign of weakness. It’s sort of definitional. No cheap psychology required.
When you’re the President of a state with 80 million people and you have to give it up because of a few jeering kids in the street, you are shown to be weak. It’s not a psychological conundrum. If there’s a greater shame than being hounded from office by outraged protesters I don’t know what it is.
David Goldman, writing as “Spengler” in the Asia Times, points out that rising food prices, and rising volatility, will continue to bedevil the Arab world. See:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB02Ak01.html
I would like to point out that instability in the Mideast makes Israel less likely to sign a peace treaty; nobody knows what the environment will look like in Lebanon, Jordon, or Egypt in 5 years.
On the other hand, in previous wars (1967 and 1973) the Arab side was armed and backed by the Soviet Union. Iran is an arms exporter, but it isn’t in the same league. And I just can’t see Egypt aligning with Iran for armaments if the Egyptian Army has any say in the matter. But the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt can’t be that different from Hamas, so an Egypt led by the MB might well align with Iran.
instability in the Mideast makes Israel less likely to sign a peace treaty
So the chances have gone from one in ten gazillion to one in twenty gazillion?
Fred, could you offer us a little information on your background as an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood?
Because your description of them, and their likely actions, seems like (at best) a picture of their position 3-4 decades ago. But doesn’t look much like anything I have read in the last several years by people who actually have spent any time studying on in the Middle East.
Which doesn’t mean that you are necessarily wrong, of course. Just that knowing where you are coming from would be helpful.
Based on my reading elsewhere and obsessive listening to the BBC, I agree with this summary of the situation.
The idea that it was a surprise to anyone in power that Mubarak’s days were numbered is laughable. The only thing that can plausibly be described as a slight surprise here is how quickly the current crisis in Egypt followed the events in Tunisia.
Our government is indeed in an awkward spot — props to Obama for handling it as well as he has — but it’s a spot it put itself into.
I’ve been saying since Vietnam War days that realpolitik is not consistent with our Constitution or our values. We should be doing everything we can to undermine dictators of every stripe, not propping them up. Maybe in the extreme case of WW II we had no choice but to ally with Stalin against the Nazis, but I can’t think of another instance we’re our association with a despot was ultimately to our benefit.
One thing the Administration can and should do right away is stop shunning Al Jazeera and make spokespeople available to them for interviews.
It’s crazy that we aren’t using the Arab world’s news rating leader to get our pro-democracy position across. Heck, my own preference would be to bluntly say that we had what seemed like pragmatic reasons for supporting Mubarak all these years, but we now regret it. I think it may take that sort of humble frankness to begin to win back any shred of credibility for US statements with the AJ audience.
FWIW, one of my favorite knowledgeable commentators on the Arab world is Mona Eltahawy
She knows what she’s talking about, and her excitement and enthusiasm for what’s happened in Tunisia and especially Egypt (where she was born) are truly infectious.
I caught some of BBC World News at the gym tonight. They interviewed a wealthy adviser to Mubarak; the adviser implied that Mubarak cannot step down because he is a military officer and this is a battle. “If an officer deserts the field, he is shot.”
A chilling series of reports of the events yesterday can be found here: http://goo.gl/zyXWW
The young man and his friends stumbled upon a 2 year old boy who’d become separated from his parents. Happily, they cared for the child and he has been reunited with his family. Such stories along with images like this: http://twitpic.com/3vzr28 and this: http://yfrog.com/h02gvclj give me hope for Egypt’s future.
“Maybe in the extreme case of WW II we had no choice but to ally with Stalin against the Nazis, but I can’t think of another instance we’re our association with a despot was ultimately to our benefit.”
Hi, Moshe. A crook meets a despot.
Counter-example, but defensible.
Mona Eltahawy, yes. Juan Cole is also worth reading. There’s a long list, which I’m too tired to give right now.
Gary, I don’t think that’s a true counter example. Yes, Nixon going to China was a good thing. I also support ending the embargo on trade with Cuba and continuing to talk to North Korea and Iran. Engaging our opponents (and even trading with them) is always a good thing. Much better than sticking our fingers in our ears, chanting nonsense, and loudly proclaiming “I can’t hear you.” But that’s not the same as allying with them and providing billions of US taxpayer dollars to support them, as we’ve done in Egypt.
The people of Egypt, and of the broader Arab world, know that even as we’re advocating a peaceful transition to real democracy in Egypt, we’ve supported and continue to support regimes that deny their people basic human rights, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Yemen. So who can blame them for accusing us of being hypocrites?
Call me a naive idealist, but I’d like to see our foreign policy reflect our values as consistently as possible.
The newborn American government was too weak to take sides in the French Revolution, but does anyone think the Founding Fathers were on the king Louis’s side?
Whoops. That last phrase should be:
but does anyone think the Founding Fathers were on King Louis’s side?
I’ve read that Mao’s real agenda in meeting with Nixon was to get Nixon to covertly supply him with things like aircraft, and possibly weapons. China had insulated itself away from its former supplier, the USSR, and was in need of some help. Mao recognized a fellow power-addict, the story goes, and went to great pains to befriend Nixon. He was genuinely baffled as to why Nixon permitted himself to be investigated.
The newborn American government was too weak to take sides in the French Revolution, but does anyone think the Founding Fathers were on the king Louis’s side?
No, but I also think that President Washington, even if he had disposed of a trillion dollar budget and an air force, would have vetoed any proposal for the United States to involve itself in French affairs. Everything he ever said on foreign policy makes that clear.
We’re so far past the wisdom of our first President that it’s not really relevant to bring him up – we’re already thoroughly entangled in Egypt. “Taking sides” at this point isn’t some choice we can avoid.
I think Obama has played this fairly well. Non-committal at first, then increasingly anti-Mubarak as the people of Egypt made their will known.
Maybe it will end badly nonetheless. I hope not.
Moshe:
It’s little known, but Henry Kissinger gave U.S. intelligence to Mao, behind the backs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Soviet troop movements, our satellite photos, etc., to Mao, Chou en-Lai, and his government. We were defacto allies against the Soviet Union.
See here.
See here:
Here:
Here:
Those include links to the documents, and really, I could bury you with more cites, let alone documents, than would fill your house, let alone want to read, on what Nixon and Kissinger did by way of secret military cooperation with China.
Ask and ye shall receive. 🙂
But you really wouldn’t want that.
I’ll give Kissinger credit for many things, including being a hell of a devious son of a b*tch.
Of course, there was the famous case of the Joint Chiefs spying back on Kissinger:
And so on.
I believe I’ve mentioned to you that I know a little about Nixon. 🙂
Yeah, but the question was, if it’s a.) moral and/or b.) beneficial to ally with dictators and human rights abusers. I think the answer is no.
Other examples would be US support for Iraq during the Iraq/Iran war, support for the Mujaheddin against the USSR in the Afghanistan war and support for Pakistan in general.
First of all, whose question was it? I don’t see it in my post, and I wrote it. So whose question?
Second, of course it’s not “moral” but we don’t live in dreamland, so b is what’s relevant. And in the long term, the answer is no. But meanwhile we live in the present, so the answer becomes: it’s complicated and contingent, and subject to debate, but generalizing is not very useful unless we only live in Theory Land.
A previous poster brought up the question of morality, which you cannot simply dismiss as irrelevant.
As for your answer: ethical principles need per definitionem be general and tend to get watered down by “reality” soon enough anyway, so generalizing is not a bad thing per se, but rather a requirement if you want to stick to an ethical framework at all.