Thoughts on American Foreign Policy regarding Egypt in the last 12 months

Some months ago, when Mohammad Morsi was elected President of Egypt, I saw post after post on Facebook and other social media sites, heavily criticizing the Obama administration for its continued support of the Egyptian military in accordance with the Camp David Accords signed and supported by Republicans and Democrats since the late 1970s, and then implimented during the Regan administration during the 1980s.  Statements such as "Obama is selling warplanes to terrorists!" were prevalent in those days.  These statements easily come from a overtly simplistic analysis of events as they had occured.  The Egyptian military, having wrested power from President Hosni Mubarak, had guided a path toward and including "free and fair elections" for a Parliment and President.  The result was that the Muslim Brotherhood, a historic terrorist organization, and one that tended to Islamic extremism, was seated in power.  So, the aforementioned critics, seeing this, saw that now Egypt was in the hands of the Brotherhood, ergo the military was under the control of "terrorists"; not so fast, say I.

Events of the past weeks, with the Egyptian military staging, essentially, a coup of the Morsi government, show that the earlier analysis of these critics is ignorant of several critical elements, and, thus, their calls to unseat a long standing peace agreement that has kept peace between Egypt and Israel, were simply wrong.  What is clear to me is that these critics know little of Middle Eastern culture, history, and politics.  It is also clear that their criticism belies the fact that they speak from what is essentially an ethnocentric American point of view, not recognizing that the world operates very differently outside of the confines of the borders of the US of A.

Let me start with a quote from Thomas Friedman from this past Sunday on Meet the Press: "We are freaks".  First and foremost, we have a distinct version of democracy here in the USA that is abnormal to the rest of the world's experience.  We have now successfully transitioned power between various poles of the political spectrum, without a shot being fired, for just under 150 years (the Civil War representing the last time we could not resolve our differences peacefully).  And in an even more amazing stripe, we have made these transitions without having the winner use power to decimate the losing party overtly (surely redistricting and targeted campaign funding has been used in some cases, but we have yet to see round-ups of Democrats after Republicans controlled the Legislature and the White House).  So we don't just allow the winner to take power, we also respect the rights of the minority to exist and, more than that, we continue to power broker between the various poles of thought and politics, such that "extremes" rarely can do more than have voice, and simply can't run roughshod on the whole of government/our country.  It is clear that in the Middle East, this level of sophisticated power sharing and ebb/tide process of power exchange is beyond foreign (and for much of the world it is clearly foreign as well, excepting where a monarch/sovereign was the catalyst for such a system to develop).  In a strong sense, this kind of secular government is antithetical and will require strong guiding hands to develop over years if not decades/generations in order to take hold.

Next, we are freaks in that the military is really controlled by our civilian government.  Nothing about this is more iconic than the oil painting in the Pentagon of George Washington returning his sword, the sign of his authority and power, to Congress at the end of the Revolution.  When the President orders us, and when Congress approves the action, we march.  When they say stop, when they say retrograde, they say come home, we do.  We don't act independently of the civilian authority and we certainly cannot realistically even contemplate unseating the institutions of our republic through unified force of arms.  Not only this, but as my good battle buddy Ryan McDavitt reminds me, the concept of soldier that we have as Americans (an honorable, disciplined, servant of the people, called to arms, but also benevolent in action where called to be), is often unheard of elsewhere in the world.  Most of the world hears that soldiers are coming, and they tremble in fear; we walk outside for the parade.  In most of the world, Lincoln's premise that "right makes might" is turned completely around.  The military in many places stands either behind or along side civilian government as a separate "branch" of government, if you will.  In some societies, there is a distinct military class that stands apart, has different rights, and acts above and often is the arbiter/enforcer of any laws that effect all other classes of citizens.  So, those that were quick to judge negatively our continuance of the support of the Egyptian military after the election of the Muslim Brotherhood to civilian leadership of Egypt, for instance, greatly misjudge how that military operates within Egyptian society.

Basically, it was and remains ignorant to think that Egypt's military is subservient to and directed by, the civilian government.  A more astute understanding is that the military is a partner organization to the civilian leadership.  The partnership formed is one of mutual support, in the sense of establishing stable political will and meeting mutually agreed upon foreign policy objectives.  When the relationship becomes such that one side or the other is out of kilter, the civilian government is changed or the military sees a leadership rehash.  This happened with Nasser post the 1967 war (with a major retooling of the military), it happened to install Sadat (remember he was an Army officer), it happened to remove Mubarak, and it has happened again, now, with Morsi.  American policy, through several administrations, has been to develop, wisely, a strong relationship with the Egyptian military, mainly to enable stability, restraint in extreme politics, and as a hedge against threats to our other regional allies, especially Israel.  And, I note, this relationship between our military forces isn't just about sharing how to use their aircraft and preferential sales and how to shoot your rifle better, its also about how a military operates in a civil society, what human rights are all about, and what a functioning democracy looks like.  Not being a pure expert in all of this, I will tell you this is partially why the situation in Egypt has yet to spiral out of control and go into utter chaos; it also is why the military has consistently worked to turn control of the civilian government back over to a group of civilians as fast as possible.  This has worked, partially because, if you look back in history, it has worked in Turkey.

Turkey, what about Turkey?  Lets reflect on the last 100 years in Asia Minor.  If we look back to 1913, the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs, and 6 years and the end of the Great War brought its end.  With the rise of the Young Turks and Ataturk came the rise of a modern, secular Turkey (remember that the Ottoman Sultan's power derived from his holding and preserving the holy places of Islam and the titular role of Caliph), came a nascent democracy.  While America retrenched in many ways after WW I, there was a Turkish exception.  While it is probably overstating it, there developed some key relationships that developed before the German's swallowed Ankara into its sphere of influence (although Turkey remained officially neutral, it signed a non-agresion pact with Nazi Germany in 1941 and when Axis destruction was assured, then declared war on Germany in early 1945).  Once WW II was settled, and British and French influence sunk in the Middle East region, America made it a mission to reinvigorate our relationships with Turkey and made it a mission to join ourselves at the hip with the Turkish military (mainly as a hedge against Soviet influence in the Middle East).  When you look at, then how the government post Ataturk developed, was consistent democratic elections, then corrected by military coup when the parliament/civilian leadership went too far in one extreme or another, then returned to civilian leadership, and so on.  In the 1980s, this cycle more or less closed, and dedication to secular democratic government has been the hallmark of the rise of Turkey in the greater Middle East.  While the Turkish military still stands along side the civilian leadership (rather than under it), the relationship continues to grow closer to a western European/American model, even with the rise of some more Islamic parties in Turkey.

So in writing this entry, I am trying to point to the fact that when it comes to foreign affairs, especially the further you go from western European/American cultural backgrounds, one has to first understand the context, culture, history and societal make-up before commenting on how we approach going forward.  The current Egyptian example proves this point perfectly, in that if you live only in a fairly ignorant American construct of how a military and its government inter-relate, you will miss how we ought to pursue our national objectives in other countries, cultures, and regions.  I can't speak to the full rational of those critics that were so vocal about abruptly ending our military support to Egypt when Morsi and the Brotherhood rose to civilian leadership, but I can say that to have listened to them and acted as they desired, would have been a critical failure.  While I am not happy that a democratically elected government was overthrown, I can say that the Egyptian military keenly understood that the government that was going forward was not just and was not serving the interests of the people of Egypt, at least from their point of view.  Without question, democracy is a good thing as a government form, but it first requires a society that respects rule of law, plurality, and equal rights for those in power as well as out, in order for it to truly work.  Saying this another way, one has to ask is a good thing to have an elected government that terrorizes its own citizens (e.g. Charles Taylor of Liberia) or is it better to have an un-elected government that lives by the rule of law (e.g. King Abdullah II of Jordan)?  Really you want one that is elected and lives by the rule of law, but that is not always possible nor present in any given society.  That said, it requires a culture that has developed that can understand, and make sacred these values, and it may not work in all places at all times.  Clearly, the military in Egypt recognized that the civilian government was not getting them to this goal, but going the opposite direction.  It heard the people and acted.  If we didn't support the military, there wouldn't have been this agent to modulate and guide Egypt to its much brighter future.  When it no longer is that agent, I will concur with the earlier critics, but I will do so knowingly and aware of the context on the ground.  I only pray this helps us all take time to pause and think, before we spout off on the challenging task of guiding American foreign policy generally, but especially in Egypt.