Egypt at its Red Sea

Ian Boyne, Contributor

"Egypt has the clout to bestow legitimacy on any idea - and to change the direction of the region. In shaping the Middle East over the past century, Egypt rallied other Arabs to make war on Israel ... . In shaping politics inside Arab countries for the next century, what happens among Egyptians will, again, have the greatest influence in defining the path and pace of change."

We might soon come to regard as prescient that statement from foreign policy expert Robin Wright in her 2008 book Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East. The eruptions in Egypt, part of a wave which first began in Tunisia and which have swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could well prove a defining moment for that volatile part of the world. Journalists and others in the commentariat are stunned at the developments in Cairo and Alexandria. But some who have been closely observing developments in Egypt and other MENA countries are not as clueless as many we see on international television.,

In the July 2010 issue of the journal, Washington Quarterly, Alastair Cooke, author of Resistance: The Essence of Islamist Revolution, says perceptively in an article titled 'The Shifting of State Power in the Middle East': "This unanswered time bomb underlies wider fears that the region might explode like Europe did from 1912 to 1914, due to a small incident in Sarajevo. A similar incident in today's Middle East might unleash forces and dynamics that movements and states alike might struggle to contain."

A mighty flame

A little spark lit in Tunisia has grown to a mighty flame which has reached the region's most populous nation. One in every four Arabs is Egyptian. In Egypt, more than half its population is younger than the 30 years its president has been in power. (Thirty-six per cent of the entire population of the Middle East is under 15 years.)

One of the most significant elements of the regional revolts is its high concentration of youth leadership. The youth bulge in the Middle East has been one of the factors fuelling the fire in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2007, the Population Reference Bureau put out a paper, 'Youth in The Middle East and North Africa: Demographic Opportunity or Challenge?', which insightfully highlighted the problems posed by this burgeoning youth bulge.

The regimes in these countries are unable to satisfy the demands for jobs and economic advance-ment of their youth, even at a time when economic opportunities have opened up. Says the policy paper: "Greater numbers of students in MENA are acquiring more education but the numbers do not always translate into higher rates of employment and wages." A World Bank study projected a 40 per cent increase in MENA's labour force from 2000 to 2010 - and 80 per cent from 2000 to 2020.This demographic explosion will continue to pose significant challenges to the region.

The Arab Reform Bulletin quoted a 2008 interview with demographer Ragui Assaad who predicted that: "The presence of a large number of underemployed and frustrated young men, with potential access to weapons, is often a recipe for civil conflict. Thus, the youth bulge could result in political instability and civil conflict."

disguised explanations

As usual, when things explode, there is a rational, often disguised, explanation or set of explanations. Another point to keep in mind is that Egypt is also reeling from the effects of lopsided capitalist development and neoliberal policies, which have been worsened by the global economic crisis. Beginning in the 1990s, Egypt began to implement structural reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to reduce debt and encourage liberalisation. This picked up in 2004 when President Mubarak installed a so-called dream team of economic wise men who recommended a drastic slashing of tariffs and taxes. They also courted foreign investment (which increased nearly tenfold in the last decade), and speeded up trade liberalisation.

These Washington Consensus polices bore macroeconomic fruit. While growth averaged four per cent in the 1990s, it accelerated to eight per cent in the years just before the 2008 global economic crash. And even with the global economic crisis, Egypt still enjoyed five to six per cent growth last year. But as progressive economists have pointed out over the years, this phenomenon of growth without development, and growth with rising inequality contributed to Egypt's' meltdown.

In an expert brief published by the United States (US) Council on Foreign Relations, senior fellow for US foreign policy, Isobel Coleman, says, "Rising income inequality and a failure to address root poverty have given rise to widespread economic grievance. Gains from structural reforms in recent years have not trickled down to the population at large ... . Ordinary Egyptians felt they were not reaping the benefits of this (economic growth)."

Urban poverty is chronic in Egypt, with ever-expanding slums. Egypt's people are so poor that it is spending US$15 billion a year on food subsidies to those living below the poverty line. (Its population is estimated at between 82 and 85 million). But Egypt's problems are more than purely demographic and economic.

Indeed, geopolitical challenges have bedevilled it since its overthrow of the monarchy on July 23, 1952. Egypt has parlayed its geopolitical significance since the days of the Cold War when it was at first in the Soviet camp. Egypt has adroitfully played off the two superpowers in the Cold War era to its elite's benefit. The US alone has pumped more than US$600 billion to Egypt over the past three decades of Mubarak's rule, doling out more than US$1.5 billion in assistance yearly. That has made Egypt the second-largest recipient of US aid behind Israel, which gets more than US$3 billion.

Strategic gamemanship

America's special relationship with Egypt and the offshore balancing role that nation has played in US strategic gamesman-ship have been critical in America's overarching Middle East realpolitik. The 800lb gorilla in that seething Cairo street is Israel. The US first felt obliged to support Israel because of the Cold War, and the fact that the Soviet Union had an affinity to the Arab world because of the former's support for anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, as well as its authoritarian approach to politics. To geopolitical idealists, Israel shared the values and cultural ethos of America.

Mubarak would not have survived so long if he were not thought to be crucial to stability in the Middle East; and if it was not feared that his departure might open the way for radical Islamist groups which would endanger peace with Israel.

Mubarak has successfully exploited the fear that any alternative to him is chaos and mayhem - a view he repeated in that ABC interview last Thursday - and has used that to resist US prodding to implement reforms. Give George W. Bush his due, he did try to encourage Mubarak to reform and he, however, inconsistently, pushed for democracy promotion in the Middle East.

The pressure on Mubarak was particular strong in 2002 to 2005, as Bush pressed him to give space to civil-society groups and to hold free and fair elections. The Bush administration went as far as impose penalties on him, by withdrawing pledge of more than US$130 in supplemental assistance in 2003, and then cutting off free-trade talks in 2006 in reaction to repressive measures which Mubarak took against dissidents. All to no avail.

Mubarak calculated that the US needed him more than it needed the Muslim Brotherhood. And the US agreed.

The war on terror, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increased bellicosity of Iran and the spreading wings of al-Qaida and jihadists, ensured that US support for Mubarak. To keep Israel stable, it was felt you could not afford to push Mubarak too hard and provoke a crisis. Progressives might say that the US always finds itself on "the wrong side of history", but hard-nosed realists say in the real world, options are cruel.

In the view of some, the support for Israel has proved too costly, too deadly for US foreign policy. In one of the most controversial and explosive books to have been published in 2007, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, two of America's leading foreign-policy scholars, Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt make a compelling case for the US to drop Israel. In a chapter, 'Israel: Strategic Asset or Liability?': "Even if Israel was a valuable ally during the Cold War, that justification ended when the Soviet Union collapsed," say the scholars. They point out that the reason America is so hated in the Arab world is because of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.

"Claiming that Israel and the United States are united by a common terrorist threat has the causal relationship backward. The United States did not form an alliance with Israel because it suddenly realised that it faced a danger from 'global terrorism' and urgently needed Israel's help to defeat it. In fact, the US has a terrorist problem in good part because it has been so long supportive of Israel."

ingenuity taxed

Walter Russell Mead, one of the most distinguished foreign-policy scholars the United States has produced and certainly no radical, writes in the January/February 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs ('Change They Can Believe in: To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians their Due'): "No issue in international affairs has taxed the ingenuity of so many leaders or captured so much attention from around the world. Winston Churchill failed to solve it; the wise men who built the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Marshall Plan handed it down, still festering, to future generations. Henry Kissinger had to contend with incremental progress. The Soviet Union crumbled on Ronald Reagan's watch, but the Israeli-Palestinian dispute survived him. George W. Bush failed at every-thing he tried ... ."

The issue of Israel and its pariah status is the primary reason Egypt is such a delicate and sensitive issue to the Obama administration. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs (January/February 2011), professor emeritus of modern history and international affairs, Howard Sachar, asks: "Will a US president risk alienating the so-called Jewish vote by adopting a policy of firm even-handedness in the Middle East - one that confronts Israeli territorial aggressiveness no less than Arab guerrilla terrorism?" The answer to that has much to do what the US will do next in the Middle East.

Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.