Tag: Egypt
I wouldn’t want to start from here
Senators McCain and Graham are packing their bags for Cairo, reportedly having been asked to go by President Obama. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has visited already, including a meeting at an undisclosed location with former President Morsi. The question is this: what should all these luminaries be telling the military-backed government and its Muslim Brotherhood opponents?
Abdul Rahman al Rashed, editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat, suggests:
Everything can be negotiated, except Mursi’s return to the presidency—a demand that the Brotherhood knows will be impossible to fulfil. Thus, the solution can be as follows: a consensual cabinet, a short-term interim government and internationally supervised elections in which the Brotherhood participates. Then, everyone can return home claiming that they have got what they wanted.
My guess is that the senators will be taking a line close to this, insisting on a timetable for elections and as broad a government as possible to prepare for it. In his less than articulate way, Lindsay Graham has suggested as much: Read more
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Peace picks July 29 – August 2
1. Squaring the circle: General Raymond T. Odierno on American military strategy in a time of declining resources, American Enterprise Institute, Monday, July 29, 2013 / 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Venue: American Enterprise Institute
1150 17th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: Mackenzie Eaglen, General Raymond T. Odierno
With sequestration a reality and little hope for a bargain on the horizon, the US military is facing a steeper-than-planned defense drawdown that few wanted but fewer still seem to be willing or able to stop. What are the implications for the men and women of the US Army if the sequester stays on the books for the foreseeable future?
AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host General Raymond Odierno, Chief of Staff of the US Army, for the second installment of a series of four events with each member of the Joint Chiefs.
Register for the event here:
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Real reform requires organized action
Marwan Muasher, former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan, is now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A leading figure calling for reform in Jordan, he was interviewed by Ala’ Alrababa’h of peacefare.net:
Click here to view this interview in Arabic.
Q. How do you expect events in Egypt to impact the Muslim Brotherhood and the reform process in Jordan? Would they weaken the Muslim Brotherhood? And would they be used as an excuse to hinder the reform process?
A. I think the Arab World should establish the rules of democracy in a way that allows everyone to work. I don’t believe in excluding anyone from the political sphere, whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood or otherwise. I also believe that excluding the Muslim Brotherhood by force, or not involving them in governance by force, has helped to strengthen rather than weaken them. If we look at the Egyptian or Tunisian experience, we see that the Brotherhood did not become weak among the population using force. [They were only weakened] when they took power and had to apply the slogans they called for, whether economic or political [slogans].
In the short term, I am not optimistic about Egypt, because the other side, the civilian forces, treat the Brotherhood with the same exclusion it accused the Brotherhood of. They [civilian forces] accuse the Brotherhood of wanting to exclude others, while they do the same thing. And I believe that the best would be to agree on the rules of the game from the outset, such that everyone receives guarantees that all political and social forces in the society would not be marginalized or excluded, and that they can participate in ruling before writing a new constitution that gets the approval of all sectors of society.
As for us in Jordan, it is possible to read what happened in Egypt in two ways. The first way, which is happening now, and I think it is wrong, is to see that the Muslim Brotherhood was excluded in Egypt, and thus we can do the same in Jordan. And as I said, I don’t think that exclusion happens by force, and if it happens by force, it would help to strengthen, rather than weaken, the Muslim Brotherhood. Or it could be read in another way, which is what I hope the Jordanian society would reach, with the help of the wise people in the society, that this is time to agree on the rules of a game, which allows everyone to participate in the political process, and that prevents anyone from monopolizing this process in the future. Would this happen soon? The signs so far are not encouraging.
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Peace Picks July 22-26
1. Rouhani: Challenges at Home, Challenges Abroad, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Monday, July 22 / 9:00am – 11:30am
Venue: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speakers: Bijan Khajehpour, Shervin Malekzadeh, Suzanne Maloney, Roberto Toscano, Ali Vaez, Shaul Bakhash
Six Iran experts discuss President-elect Rouhani’s domestic and foreign policy challenges.
Register for the event here:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/rouhani-challenges-home-challenges-abroad
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Washington stretched
It is difficult to see Secretary Kerry’s announcement that Israel and Palestine have agreed tentatively to meet at an unspecified date to talk about talks as worthy of the news coverage it has gotten. The headlines really signify how far the two sides have drifted apart after a three-year negotiating hiatus in their more than six decades of conflict.
Nevertheless, hiding in the New York Times account is a hint of what the deal behind the modest news may be. Kerry it says
…apparently won concessions on the new framework, which American, Israeli and Palestinian officials said would allow Washington to declare the 1967 prewar borders as the basis for the talks — along with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — but allow Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas to distance themselves from those terms.
This is clever, if ironic. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last year excoriated President Obama for talking about the 1967 prewar borders. Now he is agreeing to American allegiance to that idea as the basis for the talks, along with American recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, one of his favorite hobby horses. Not a bad deal from Netanyahu’s perspective.
Not too bad from Palestinian President Abbas’ either. He wants the 1967 prewar borders to be the basis, so as to ensure that any divergence from them gives the Palestinians at least quantitatively equivalent swaps. He also gets release of some Palestinian prisoners, though it is unclear yet how many and who they will be. The hard pill for him to swallow is recognition of Israel as an explicitly Jewish state, but even that has a silver lining: Israel needs to ensure its Jewishness by enabling the creation of a Palestinian state. Otherwise the demographic expansion of Palestinians is a serious long-term threat.
There is of course still a long way to go before an overall settlement is reached: specific land swaps, Jerusalem, security, the right of return for Palestinians. But we’ll get a pretty good idea of whether this initiative is going anywhere if Israel begins to limit Jewish settlement activity. That is difficult for Netanyahu, as he has within his governing coalition people who want to retain the entire West Bank. It is also his “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” (BATNA), as he can pursue it unilaterally (even if ultimately it would create an Israel that is neither Jewish nor democratic).
The Palestinian BATNA was pursuing membership in international organizations as a non-UN member state. Palestine succeeded at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where the Americans are refusing to pay dues as a result. This may lead to suspension of US voting rights this fall, something my cultured and well-educated friends think is a really bad idea. However that works out, it appears the Palestinians have already decided to go slow in applying for other memberships, under a lot of pressure from the Americans and presumably the Europeans as well. US suspension from the World Health Organization would have many more practical and detrimental ramifications than suspension from UNESCO, which will also hamper many good programs.
More power to John Kerry if he has managed to put together a negotiation on the basis of 1967 prewar borders and Israel as a Jewish state. But even getting this far seems to have made Washington ignore what is going on in Syria and Egypt, both of which need more American care and attention. Our civilian capacities to conduct foreign policy are seriously stretched.
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Egypt, the US and Israel
These are the (slightly amended) talking points I used today in a presentation about Egypt to a pro-Israel American group:
1. I’ll start with the bottom line: I am not optimistic about Egypt’s revolution finding its way to stability or democracy, objectives I would certainly like it to reach.
2. Egypt is a big, complicated, diverse and poor country that simply has not found a consensus on the rules of the road.
3. My colleague Marc Lynch calls this Calvinball, which is a game never played the same way twice in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. The rules are constantly changing.
4. I think of it a bit like Cairo traffic: everyone aggressively doing his own thing, to the detriment of the collective outcome.
5. The big divide is now between the coup—led by the army, the justice system and secularists with support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE—and the Qatari supported Muslim Brotherhood, with the Nour party Salafists somewhere in the middle.
6. If this divide is not bridged, I still anticipate the new revolution will proceed with revising the constitution and holding elections, at a pace forced in part by international pressure.
7. But that won’t fix much unless the Brotherhood rejoins the political game and agrees to play by democratic rules, which it has refused to do so far. Legitimacy depends on participation.
8. If the Brotherhood does rejoin, it may well capture a big part of electorate, which in six months or a year won’t be any happier with the economy and social conditions than it was when Morsi was in power.
9. So Egypt is damned if Brotherhood participates, and it is damned if the Brotherhood doesn’t participate.
10. I’d much prefer to see the Brotherhood inside the tent peeing out rather than outside the tent peeing in, but I can’t pretend to predict which way it will go, as most predictions prove incorrect.
11. What does this all mean for the United States and Israel?
12. Egypt is important to the United States, because it is the center of gravity of the Arab world.
13. If the revolution moves definitively in a democratic direction, that will show the way for Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and eventually Syria.
14. If it fails to move in a democratic direction, the cause in those countries will not be lost, but the odds of success will decline.
15. For Israel, the question is less about democracy and more about security. Morsi was not threatening the treaty, but his slipshod regime was nevertheless bad for security, especially in the Sinai.
16. We’ll have to see whether the present regime will do any better. The Egyptian military seems already to be destroying the tunnels into Gaza, something the judiciary ordered some time ago.
17. I assume this is welcome in Israel. The emergence in Egypt of anti-Palestinian sentiment is likely welcome there as well, though I hasten to add that anti-Israeli sentiment is also strong.
18. In any event, I see nothing to be gained at the moment by ending or suspending US aid to Egypt, which if the pledges are fulfilled will have ample cash from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
19. Influence flows in the same direction as money. You may have a one-time impact from shutting off the money flow, but then influence will rapidly decline. Relationships will be seriously damaged.
20. Better in my view to use the leverage the assistance provides to push for what the United States wants: an inclusive democratic outcome. Assistance should be conditional.
21. Will inclusive democracy in Egypt be good for Israel? That depends on which Israel you support.
22. It is clear that any truly democratic regime in Egypt, and in other Arab countries, will be more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the autocracies, which talked a good line but did little.
23. At the same time, the Arab street seems for the moment more interested in personal safety, jobs and bread than the plight of the Palestinians, so resources will flow to those higher priorities.
24. That said, the Egyptian revolution is taking a much more nationalist turn. I imagine this nationalism will include more belligerence against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
25. I do not anticipate it will include renunciation of the Egypt/Israel peace treaty, mainly because the Egyptian military does not want the burden of the resulting security requirements.
26. For Israel the greater threat comes from instability in Egypt. If the Egyptian state continues to weaken, it may have real difficulty controlling extremists in Sinai and elsewhere.
27. Cairo’s political influence in Gaza is also likely to decline, since Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.
28. Which brings me back to where I started: a stable and democratic outcome is unlikely. Both Israelis and Americans are going to need to learn to manage a much more fluid and uncertain situation than in the past.
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