Over the last week or so, there have been more than a few stinging indictments of U.S.-Middle East policy. Whether it is Iran’s nuclear program, the civil war in Syria, or Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to push Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the Obama administration is near universally derided as both timorous and out-classed in the face of formidable adversaries. It’s been an impressive pile-on even if some of this commentary is actually more about politics than analysis. Among the various op-eds, columns, and articles, two caught my attention. On November 8 in his regular column for Foreign Policy, James Traub skewered the White House for failing to talk tough to the Egyptian military about its blatantly un-democratic approach to post-Mohammed Morsi Egypt. A few days later, The Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Jackson Diehl, published a stem-winder of a column that ripped Kerry on every important issue in the Middle East, including the Secretary’s apparent willingness to accommodate what is shaping up to be Egypt’s non-democratic transition.
Traub and Diehl are serious and accomplished observers of American foreign policy and their contributions to the recent foreign policy debate are not politically motivated. Yet the assumption underlying their articles that the United States can be an anchor of reform in Egypt—a view that is shared among a diverse and influential subset of the American foreign policy elite—is suspect. Before I am accused of being a troglodyte, let me be clear: Democracy in Egypt would be a very good development, providing Egyptians with the representative government they have long sought. I have also written that Washington’s approach to Egypt over the last three years should have emphasized principles like personal freedom, non-violence, transparency, and equal application of the law. That said, it strikes me as odd—given the available evidence—that analysts believe democracy promotion, whether in the form of actual programs designed to encourage more open and just societies or rhetorical support for progressive change, would make an appreciable difference in Egypt.
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My skepticism is a function of the fact that for Egyptians, the stakes are so high in their struggle to define new political and social institutions, there is very little that external powers can say or do to influence the way in which sons and daughters of the Nile calculate what is best for Egypt. It is also based on my sneaking suspicion that in the end, the people who were central to making the January 25 and June 30 uprisings happen will not determine the trajectory of Egyptian politics. Instead, the contours of Egypt’s new political order will likely be determined in a war of position among the military, intelligence services, police, and the counterrevolutionaries embedded in the bureaucracy. Needless to say, this is not a propitious environment in which America’s limited resources can make much of a difference.