Resetting U.S.-Egyptian Relations

In the four decades since U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat ended Egypt’s two decades of close relations with the Soviet Union, U.S.-Egypt relations have never seen a more negative trajectory than that experienced during the past eight months. News this week that a court in Egypt has sentenced 528 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death will likely further exacerbate the crisis. Increasingly, the reaction of U.S. opinion and decision makers to this downturn in Egypt-U.S relations is a mix of despair and abandonment. Thus, many in DC—in the administration, in Congress, and in the media—seem to have “given up” on Egypt.

At the root of this downturn is the huge gap between the two sides’ narratives regarding the implications of Egypt’s experience in the aftermath of the Arab Awakening. To make matters worse, Washington and Cairo seem unable to demonstrate sufficient sensitivity to one another’s priorities and concerns. Thus, the U.S. seems not to appreciate the extent to which the Egyptian civic nationalists (madaniyya) regard their struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood as existential. Equally, the Egyptian government seems insensitive to what Washington regards as clear signs of Cairo’s return to authoritarianism.

Competing Narratives

The Obama administration views itself as having made a huge investment in the Egypt’s “Awakening.” By urging President Mubarak to heed the demand of the masses gathered in Tahrir Square two and half years ago, the administration set aside three decades of strategic partnership with a dependable ally in favor of advancing its version of a “freedom agenda.” Despite signs that the Muslim Brotherhood was better positioned to take advantage of the new situation than any other political force in Egypt, the administration advocated an electoral process that saw the Brothers winning elections to the legislature as well as to the Presidency.

Obama administration officials were not blind to the fact that in the aftermath of these elections, the Brothers’ performance in office was highly deficient and that as president, Morsi made many mistakes. Still, the U.S. insisted that as “Egypt’s first democratically elected president,” Morsi should have been given the chance—as in any democracy—to defend his actions whenever the next elections were to take place and that he should have been judged in the polls.

Given these inclinations, it is hardly surprising that Washington regarded Morsi’s removal on June 30 as a “coup” if not a “counter-revolution”. The millions demanding Morsi’s removal were not equated with the millions who gathered in Tahrir Square in late January 2011 to demand Mubarak’s ousting. In this narrative, the two cases were very different because while Mubarak could not be removed from office through elections, the revolution established a mechanism for punishing incompetent leaders at the polls.

Not surprisingly, the narrative of Egypt’s civic nationalists about these same developments is very different. In their view, Washington has falsely equated democracy with elections, ignoring the fact that what Egypt experienced in the aftermath of the January 2011 revolution was anything but pluralist democracy. Instead, what emerged was a crude form of majoritarian rule, where minorities such as Egypt’s Copts were disenfranchised and their views were ignored.

In the eyes of Egypt’s civic nationalists, instead of ruling democratically, the Brothers launched a “power grab”—a process of systematic penetration of the government and institutional organs of the state, issuing a presidential decree that provided the presidency immunity from checks by all other branches, including the judiciary,[1] and using the 2012 constitution to rapidly move Egypt toward an Iranian-style theocratic state.