How new is Egypt’s “new” foreign policy?

Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation.  You can read more from Barak Barfi at Project Syndicate and be sure to check it out on Facebook and Twitter.

By Barak Barfi

CAIRO – In the months since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, his successors have signaled a shift in foreign policy by reaching out to former adversaries.

Egypt’s government has welcomed Iranian diplomats and embraced the Palestinian group Hamas. Many interpret such moves as clear evidence of Egypt’s desire for a diplomacy that is not subordinate to American interests.

But Mubarak never entirely fit his detractors’ portrayal of him as an American lackey. In fact, Mubarak’s need to please his Saudi Arabian benefactors, not the United States, was paramount in his thinking. Although he sometimes supported American policies, Mubarak frequently rebuffed the U.S. when its positions did not align with his own.
Since the end of the October 1973 war, Arab-Israeli peace has been a cornerstone of America’s Middle East agenda. The U.S. often looked to Egypt, the most important and influential Arab country, to play a leading role in promoting this goal. And, when it suited him, Mubarak played his part. When the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat humiliated Mubarak before the U.S. Secretary of State and the international media by refusing to sign an annex to an Israeli-Palestinian accord brokered in Cairo, Mubarak told him, “Sign it, you son of a dog!”
On the other hand, when Arab public opinion opposed Palestinian concessions, Mubarak remained aloof from U.S. peace initiatives. For example, in 1996, he declined President Bill Clinton’s invitation to come to Washington, along with Arafat and the leaders of Israel and Jordan, to settle a bout of Palestinian violence. And when Clinton asked Mubarak to pressure Arafat to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal during negotiations at Camp David in 2000, he refused.
Mubarak had a rocky relationship with Israel, and held America’s closest Middle East ally at arm’s length throughout his presidency.
For almost ten of his 30 years in office, Egypt had no ambassador in Tel Aviv. Mubarak never made an official state visit to Israel, and he frequently refused Israeli prime ministers’ requests to come to Cairo.
When the U.S. sought to extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1994, Mubarak mobilized the Arab world against the initiative, because Israel refused to sign the NPT.
Instead, Mubarak’s relationship with the Saudis usually determined his foreign policy. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threatened to attack Saudi Arabia, Mubarak quickly dispatched troops to defend the kingdom. He was keen to support the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies, who provided him with a steady flow of aid and an outlet for surplus Egyptian labor.
Though Mubarak’s opposition to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991 happened to align with U.S. policy, he was unwilling to back other American campaigns against Arab leaders.
When President Ronald Reagan’s deputy national security adviser, John Poindexter, asked Mubarak to launch a joint U.S.-Egyptian attack against Libya in 1985, the Egyptian president scolded his visitor, saying, “Look, Admiral, when we decide to attack Libya, it will be our decision and on our timetable.”
Mubarak again refused to acquiesce in U.S. plans to isolate Libya in the 1990’s for its involvement in the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Instead of ostracizing Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Mubarak welcomed him to Cairo.
After the United Nations imposed an international flight ban against Libya in 1992, its land crossings with Egypt proved crucial to Libya’s economy (and possibly Gadhafi's political survival). Libya withstood the sanctions in part by importing food and oil infrastructure supplies via Egypt, and by exporting petroleum and steel with Mubarak’s help.
In fact, Mubarak’s Libya policy was driven largely by economic and security concerns, and rarely took U.S. interests into consideration. More than one million Egyptians worked in Libya, which was also a large export market. And Gadhafi was eager to help Mubarak subdue Islamist threats to the Egyptian regime. Unlike neighboring Sudan, which harbored Egyptian radicals, like Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who were bent on destabilizing the country, Libya turned them over to Mubarak.
While Gadhafi delivered terrorists to Mubarak, the Egyptian president declined American requests to do the same. After Palestinians in 1985 hijacked the Italian ship Achille Lauro, killed an American, and berthed in Egypt, the U.S. asked Mubarak to extradite them. But Mubarak refused, saying that Secretary of State George Shultz was “crazy” if he believed that Egypt would betray the Palestinian cause.
Egypt’s new leaders have inherited Mubarak’s dilemma – how to realize the country’s aspiration to lead the Arab world without angering its Saudi benefactors.
For this reason, the Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement will yield more photo opportunities than tangible results.
On opposite sides of religious and ethnic divides, a close bilateral relationship would seem unlikely under even the best circumstances. And, with Egypt in need of massive financial aid to offset the economic losses caused by its February revolution, its leaders can ill afford to alienate the Saudis, who view Iran, not Israel, as the gravest threat to regional stability.
Egypt is entering a new era. But the radical policy upheavals predicted by analysts will prove to be small tremors. Saudi interests will continue to weigh heavily on Egyptian foreign policy. And that, above all, means preserving the status quo.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Barak Barfi. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011. For more from Barak Barfi, visit Project Syndicate.

In Obama's European Trip, Mideast Echoes

Interviewee:	Charles A. Kupchan, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow
Interviewer:	Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

May 20, 2011

President Barack Obama's six-day trip to Europe is intended to reinforce the transatlantic relationship and find common cause on how to address the changes convulsing the Mideast and North Africa, says CFR's European expert, Charles A. Kupchan. "It's really going to be an effort to repeatedly put out the message that the transatlantic relationship is alive and well," says Kupchan, "and then leveraging that broader message to address some of the specific issues on the table, including Libya and support for democracy in the Middle East." Obama will also deal with discontent in the European Union, manifested mainly in Germany, over the bailouts and the eurozone crisis, and he will meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss persuading the Russians to agree to joint missile defense with the United States.
President Obama leaves Monday for a trip that will take him to Ireland; the UK for a state visit; to Deauville, France, for a G8 meeting; and then to Poland. What is the main purpose of this trip?
The headline for the trip will be the importance of the transatlantic community and the enduring bond between the United States and Europe. There have been concerns from the beginning that the Obama administration had downgraded the importance of the transatlantic link. The countries of Central Europe were particularly concerned about the so-called "reset" policy of improving relations with Russia, worried that that rapprochement with Moscow was coming at the expense of their own priorities. The trip also comes as the culmination of a long effort by the Obama administration to say "No, that is a misperception and the United States today values Europe and the transatlantic link as much as it ever has." But at the same time, the president will want to stress that this bond between the two sides of the Atlantic increasingly has to focus beyond the Atlantic zone, and in particular on the Middle East and North Africa.
The Middle East speech that the president gave on Thursday was in some respects an open advocacy in advance of the G8 meeting [Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the United States] for the need for concerted transatlantic action on a new aid and trade package with the region and the importance of standing firmly beyond the forces of liberalization across the Middle East.

The kinds of issues that will be under discussion will be debt forgiveness, new efforts to stimulate private enterprise, and in general a broad discussion about what the United States and Europe can do together to jump start the foundations of a more competitive and dynamic economy [in the Mideast].

The Middle East will clearly figure prominently at the G8 meeting. Will he be seeking to get the Europeans to push for more aid?
Yes. The Libya operation will come up in Britain and in Deauville at the G8 because the main players [France, the UK, the United States, and Italy] in that air campaign will be present. There will be an assessment of how the campaign is going and what can be done to increase the pressure on Muammar Qaddafi to step down, who should be doing what, what's the appropriate division of labor in the coalition. The G8, in contrast to the G20, has more of a political role even though it is still generally seen as an economic organization.
You'll have a discussion at Deauville also of the broader political strategy for the Middle East coupled with a set of concrete steps taken to support economic development in the Middle East, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, which are the vanguard of the so-called Arab Spring. And the kinds of issues that will be under discussion will be debt forgiveness, new efforts to stimulate private enterprise, and in general a broad discussion about what the United States and Europe can do together to jumpstart the foundations of a more competitive and dynamic economy. The president on Thursday gave a statistic that's quite startling: that if you take out oil exports, the Middle East as a whole has a total export value the size of Switzerland. That gives some sense of the scale of the work that needs to be done to modernize the economies in the Middle East.
In the president's speech he also talked about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and he kind of bluntly told the Palestinians that it will be fruitless for them to press at September's General Assembly for the approval of a Palestinian state without having negotiated it first with Israel. In other words, he indicated the United States would try to block it if they push ahead. Does he have the support of the Europeans and other members of the G8 on this?
France and the UK have indicated that they might support a Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN if negotiations do not in the meantime yield progress. Paris and London appear to be putting pressure on the Israeli government to advance the peace talks. Germany and Italy have indicated that they would not be prepared to support a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians. The United States, as you say, has made clear it opposes a unilateral move by the Palestinians.
What about the visit to the UK? Is the Anglo-American "special relationship" as strong as ever?
One of the reasons that Obama is going to the UK and is having a state visit--this is Obama's first state visit during his presidency--is in many respects to signify that the special relationship between Britain and the United States is alive and well. In addition to the broad concern in Europe that it lost the privileged place in American strategy, the British in particular felt that they no longer were the go-to country when the United States wanted to do business in the world. Obama is clearly saying, "You're still number one, this special relationship is as important today as it has been in the past." That is the broad message the president is going to try and keep the headlines of the trip hitched to.
This is not going to be a trip that's in the weeds; this is not going to be a trip where there will be daily announcements of specific policy initiatives. It's really going to be an effort to repeatedly put out the message that the transatlantic relationship is alive and well and then leveraging that broader message to address some of the specific issues on the table, including Libya and support for democracy in the Middle East. The stop in Warsaw will be useful in that respect because the president will encourage the Poles and others to draw on their own experience in transitioning from the Soviet bloc to market democracy, and to draw on that experience in helping the Middle East. The president specifically said on Thursday that we will launch enterprise funds for the Middle East modeled on those that successfully helped capitalism take root in central Europe.

To the degree that Obama can help calm nerves and make very clear how important the European project is to the United States and to the transatlantic community, he might be able to lend a helping hand.

At the G8 meeting, he will be meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany has almost ostentatiously stayed out of the NATO involvement in Libya. What's the mood in Germany like these days toward the United States?
The mood in Germany right now is irritable and inward, and it's not the United States that's the cause. It's the eurozone crisis, and the trajectory of the European Union as a whole. The decision by Germany not to join the Libya operation and to abstain from the vote in the UN Security Council was a sign of a Germany that really is subject right now to considerable discontent politically. Merkel has been struggling with weakening public support, and in many respects she used her opposition to the Libya operation as a way of trying to buck up her domestic situation, and it really hasn't helped much. The core of the problem is that the German electorate is very uncomfortable with the bailouts for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, which has caused a broader discontent about European integration as a whole. This discontent is taking place not just in Germany but right across the European Union, and it manifests itself in part by the surging electoral strength of far right parties, from Denmark to the Netherlands to Sweden to Hungary to Finland.
One of the issues that will be interesting to keep an eye on next week is this: Does Obama tip-toe into this issue? In many respects, the United States doesn't have a dog in the fight. This is a European issue, but at the same time the United States cares very deeply about the integrity of the eurozone and the stability of the euro. I'm sure that at least behind the scenes Obama will be talking to Merkel and other European leaders about the necessity of getting the bailout system firm and efficient to stabilize the euro. And it would also not be unhelpful for Obama to make very clear that the United States strongly supports the European Union and the project of European integration, because this is a moment of second guessing and introspection across Europe. To the degree that Obama can help calm nerves and make very clear how important the European project is to the United States and to the transatlantic community, he might be able to lend a helping hand.
In France, is he going to come under a lot of heat over the arrest in New York of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
It is entirely plausible he will get asked about the case at a press conference, but it will not in any way be a large issue during the trip. In France, Obama is going to try to keep the focus on the broader issues of aid in the Middle East. Also we will see missile defense come up because Obama has a bilateral with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the margins at the G8, and they are engaged in a discussion about the Russian buy-in to missile defense.
When he gets to Central Europe, there will be very little attention on Strauss-Kahn. There the focus will be on the American commitment to Central Europe, and it's worth mentioning that his visit coincides with a summit of Central and Eastern European leaders. Over twenty other leaders will be there, he will have dinner with them, he will stress the American commitment to the region and probably talk about a new initiative to base a squadron of American fighter aircraft in Poland. The Poles have always looked to get Uncle Sam on Polish territory, and this is one way of doing that. Another issue that's likely to come up is the visa waiver question; the Poles long to be able to travel to the United States without getting a visa. Obama's been working on that front, and as far as I know we don't yet have a resolution.

Clinton Urges Reform at U.S.-Islamic Forum

In Washington, there’s been no shortage of conferences and discussions that have sprung up in response to the so-called Arab spring, but one gathering in particular stands out for its influential take on the revolutions that continue to rock and redefine the Arab world.

The eighth annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, held at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington from April 12 to 14, was jam-packed with political heavy-hitters and explored a range of timely topics — from Muslim minorities in the West, to off-the-record assessments of the stalled Middle East peace process, to the roles of youth and the media in the recent uprisings.

All of these issues directly touch the forum’s sponsor, Qatar, a small but wealthy Persian Gulf emirate that is crafting a bold foreign policy in response to the turmoil and, many say, punching above its weight on the global stage.

So far there haven’t been any protests in Qtar, which in fact became the first Arab country to formally recognize the rebels in Libya and provided six fighter jets to the NATO campaign to protect civilians against Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

It’s a delicate balancing act for Qatar, a country of 1.4 million that’s surrounded by much larger and more powerful neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. But Qatar, flush with natural gas riches, wields its own considerable influence as a regional powerbroker, home of the Al Jazeera media network, and site of the 2022 World Cup, a major coup for the tiny nation.

“For the past decade or so, Qatar has skillfully straddled the competing groups of allies in the region — Egypt and Saudi Arabia versus Iran and Syria — achieving a status of neutrality that has allowed it to broker political deals in Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen,” wrote Clifford Krauss in an April 3 New York Times article. “At the same time, Al Jazeera has given a voice to dissidents, has rankled autocrats across the region, and has been both blamed and praised as a driving force behind the current ‘Arab Spring.’”

Perhaps as testament to Qatar’s growing clout, this year’s U.S.-Islamic World Forum was held for the first time ever outside of Doha, in Washington, D.C. Co-sponsored by the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, the forum’s guest list read like a who’s who in U.S. policy circles: Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the National Security Council’s Dennis Ross, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and David Brooks of the New York Times, along with scholars and pundits galore.

The star attraction was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke at the gala dinner at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium — echoing many of the views that made headlines the last time she swung through Doha, when she sharply, and presciently, warned that the region’s foundations were “sinking into the sand.”

“While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order…. Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever,” she bluntly told a group of Arab leaders, many of them U.S. allies, gathered in Doha on Jan. 13, one day before longtime Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was forced from of power and roughly a month before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met the same fate.

At the U.S.-Islamic Forum in Washington, Clinton candidly reiterated that the old Arab way of ruling is stifling development and simply no longer tenable. “Uprisings across the region have exposed myths that for too long were used to justify a stagnant status quo,” she said, above all denouncing “the myth that Arabs do not share universal human aspirations for freedom, dignity and opportunity.”

“Today’s new generation of young people rejects these false narratives,” she added. “That is why this January in Doha, just weeks after a desperate young Tunisian street vendor set fire to himself in public protest, I talked with the leaders of the region about the need to move faster to meet their people’s needs and aspirations.”

And as in Doha a few months earlier, Clinton returned to many of the same criticisms, from rampant youth unemployment to corruption-laden cronyism.

“First, can the leaders and citizens of the region reform economies that are now overly dependent on oil exports and stunted by corruption? Overall, Arab countries were less industrialized in 2007 than they were in 1970,” Clinton pointed out. “Unemployment often runs more than double the worldwide average, and even worse for women and young people. While a growing number of Arabs live in poverty, crowded into slums without sanitation, safe water or reliable electricity, a small elite has increasingly concentrated control of the region’s land and wealth in their hands.”

She noted initiatives such as “Partners for a New Beginning” to boost trade and spur foreign investment, along with direct economic assistance, to help the region create jobs and sustainable growth.

Clinton though largely confined her comments to the need for economic reform, veering away from openly advocating for regime change, although she urged Arab governments to stop muzzling dissent. “Citizens have spent decades under martial law or emergency rule. Political parties and civil society groups are subject to repression and restriction. Judicial systems are far from either free or independent. And elections, when they are held, are often rigged,” she lamented.

She also specifically called for greater women’s rights, a central theme of her diplomatic work, noting that “you cannot have a claim to a democracy if half the population is left out.”

“Now, all of these challenges — from deep unemployment to widespread corruption to the lack of respect and opportunities for women — have fueled frustration among the region’s young people. And changing leaders alone will not be enough to satisfy them — not if cronyism and closed economies continue to choke off opportunity and participation, or if citizens can’t rely on police and the courts to protect their rights,” Clinton cautioned, arguing that protesters now need to channel that energy into the hard, tedious work of building political coalitions to put the revolutions’ gains into practice.

Many people though were watching Clinton’s speech for clues on what America’s role in that process might be. So far, the Obama administration has tailored its response to each affected nation, intervening militarily in Libya while offering only tepid criticism of the clampdowns in Bahrain and Yemen, for instance — frustrating pundits looking for some sort of grand democracy-promotion doctrine for the uprisings.

Clinton though said “a one-sized-fits-all approach doesn’t make sense in such a diverse region at such a fluid time. As I have said before, the United States has specific relationships with countries in the region,” citing the decades-long friendship with Bahrain as an example.

Although she added that Bahrain’s ruling monarchy should refrain from violence, Clinton barely mentioned the brutal security crackdown that has drawn widespread condemnation by human rights groups. Likewise, she glossed over the violence targeted at protesters in Yemen, merely saying that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh should “resolve the political impasse with the opposition so that meaningful political change can take place.”

Rather, Clinton saved her harshest words for Qaddafi, blasting the Libyan leader for turning his guns on his own people and unleashing “a rein of terror against people who had no means to defend themselves.”

The sharp differences in tone are a reflection of the struggle the United States confronts in balancing its strategic and security interests while adhering to its democratic principles (also see “As Arab World Roils in Uncertainty, What’s at Stake for U.S. Interests?” in the current May 2010 issue of The Washington Diplomat).

Yet even in Libya — where the Obama administration seems to have only reluctantly joined the air campaign against Qaddafi, adamantly refusing to put U.S. boots on the ground — an overarching theme has emerged: American power abroad, weighted down by the invasion of two Muslim nations that’s stretched U.S. military and financial resources, has its limits, and the United States can’t be a global policeman.

So unlike George W. Bush’s sweeping efforts to instill democracy in the Middle East, President Obama has made it clear that democracy can’t be dictated or shaped by the outside forces.

The secretary of state confirmed that the onus will be on Arab citizens to devise their own governments because “democracy cannot be transplanted wholesale from one country to another.”

“But there are universal rights that apply to everyone and universal values that undergird vibrant democracies everywhere,” Clinton added, citing freedom of speech and protest, human rights and “core” American values such as countering Iran and the threat of extremism.

On that front, Clinton offered another prescient tidbit, arguing that al-Qaeda’s hold on the region has been eroded — three weeks before Osama bin Laden, the terrorist group’s spiritual leader, was killed by U.S. forces, finally ending the world’s biggest manhunt.

“Al-Qaeda’s propagandists have tried to yoke the region’s peaceful popular movements to their murderous ideology. Their claims to speak for the dispossessed and downtrodden have never rung so hollow. Their arguments that the only way is violent change have never been so fully discredited,” Clinton said.

But whether Arab leaders, or the United States for that matter, get credit for ushering in fundamental change in the Arab world is a whole other question, one for which Clinton had no answer, as she openly wondered whether this forum, like so many others before it, would wind up being just another impotent talk shop.

“Will the people and leaders of the Middle East and North Africa pursue a new, more inclusive approach to solving the region’s persistent political, economic, and social challenges? Will they consolidate the progress of recent weeks and address long-denied aspirations for dignity and opportunity?” she asked. “Or, when we meet again at this forum in one year or five years or 10, will we have seen the prospects for reform fade and remember this moment as just a mirage in the desert?”

FMCT Rejection

WITH the first plenary of the 2011 session of the Conference on Disarmament due to be held in January in Geneva, the National Command Authority in Pakistan — the body tasked with shaping the country’s nuclear policy — has declared that Pakistan will not support a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty unless existing stocks of fissile material are also made part of a treaty. The position taken by the NCA is not surprising. Pakistan’s nuclear programme is explicitly linked to that of India and the argument here is that an FMCT which does not take into account existing stocks of fissile material would put Pakistan at a permanent disadvantage because of India’s greater existing stockpiles.
While the facts are often shrouded in mystery, here’s what is argued by experts and policymakers in Pakistan. India’s civilian nuclear deal with the US, its growing conventional military superiority over Pakistan, its long-term plans for a ballistic missile defence system and its interest in dangerous war strategies such as Cold Start are all believed to put pressure on Pakistan’s declared goal of maintaining a credible minimum nuclear deterrent. The more offensive and defensive capabilities the Indian war machine acquires, the more Pakistan would need to ensure its own nuclear deterrent is viable. An FMCT negotiated without taking into account existing stockpiles would mean Pakistan would be at a permanent disadvantage in the nuclear equation with India because of India’s alleged greater fissile material stockpiles.
Yet, experts outside government circles suggest the real motivation may be that Pakistan has fissile production facilities which are expected to come online soon, meaning that a treaty any time soon would render those investments useless. Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks cables suggest that key army personnel may also have opposing views on the FMCT: DGMO Gen Javed Iqbal was allegedly in favour of the treaty, arguing that the Indo-US nuclear deal would allow India to pull away in the long term; SPD chief Gen Khalid Kidwai (retd) was opposed to the treaty. Perhaps key though is another suggestion buried in the WikiLeaks cables: if the US were more willing to address Pakistan’s strategic concerns, the possibility of a deal on the FMCT would increase.