While the US peddles the virtues of democracy, it is democracy that will allow regional regimes, including Egypt, to withstand pressure to comply with US regional policies, writes Hassan Nafaa* Egyptian-American relations these days are not what they should be. It seems they are undergoing a stage of suppressed tension, which may well develop into a serious crisis in the near future. Official statements on both sides are guarded, reticent over publicly acknowledging the numerous fault lines of discord, one of which erupted in a 17 January editorial of The Washington Post newspaper. The editorial suggested that Washington feels the time has come to search for a regime more capable of putting Egypt on the threshold of real democracy. It stated that Washington refused to respond to the Egyptian government's request for an extra several million dollars in aid (as a reward for the role it played in making the Israeli plan for unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip a success) and that it has decided to freeze negotiations over establishing a free trade area between the two countries. Washington has even gone to the point of stressing that Congress will review the military aid offered to Egypt since the Camp David agreements -- and which adds up to $1.8 billion per year -- as long as President Hosni Mubarak does not take a number of specific steps this year. The editorial included within its list of American demands the following: ending the state of emergency, granting permission to middle currents wishing to establish parties and allowing them to carry out their activities freely, ending censorship of the press and restrictions limiting the freedom of movement and activity of independent groups in civil society, and releasing Ayman Nour and enabling him to publish and implement his thoughts and reform programmes. Some may say that there is nothing new under the sun, and that what was published in the Post 's editorial is nothing more than one of the campaigns the American press and media undertake from time to time and does not necessarily express the viewpoint of the American administration. And yet the sharp tone used this time by one of the most important and widely distributed American newspapers -- one most knowledgeable of what is in the mind of the American administration and key institutions -- indicates that the matter has reached a climax; that the cup of bitterness has been filled to the top and is now overflowing. It was unknown previously for matters to be diagnosed in this manner -- so explicit a renunciation of a regime that was and remains an important strategic ally to the United States. Nor has it been common to suggest reconsidering military aid, or cutting it off completely, if certain measures are not taken in a period of less than one year. In following, we are facing something closer to an unofficial warning. If this new tune indicates anything, it is that an appreciable deterioration of Egyptian-American relations has taken place; that this moment may be prelude to a qualitatively different stage. This calls for closer examination in an attempt to understand from where this deterioration issues, and what may be its possible consequences. The Post 's editorial suggested that the core of the dispute between Cairo and Washington revolves, first and foremost, around the issue of democracy. Tension supposedly arose over the conduct of Egypt's legislative elections, in particular during the third round. The United States believes that promises made about ensuring the elections' integrity were broken. It appears that this feeling augmented a sense of lost hope in the Egyptian regime's ability to carry out political reform, which the current US administration considers vital to American national security, especially after the events of 11 September. And yet this same administration does not seem aware of the dilemma it is facing in the region; that its policies do not at all aid the spread of democracy. Rather, they allow regional dictatorial regimes a wider margin of manoeuvre and, in following, justifications for remaining in place and holding on to power. The peoples of the region are fully convinced that its present regimes are not serious about promises of political reform and that the US is also not serious about demands made upon these regimes to bring about democracy. Both the US and the region's regimes are attempting to deploy the democracy card in a mutual process of blackmail and in the context of a special relationship that resembles a game of cat and mouse. Thus current tensions in American-Egyptian relations are tied to the predicament of American policies in the Middle East more than to American efforts to spread democracy in the region. Hence it is no coincidence that the Post 's editorial, so angry and threatening, came hours after an important meeting between Mubarak and the American Vice- President Dick Cheney in Cairo on 17 January. The editorial is perhaps evidence of his failed efforts; the US left without having accomplished anything after believing it was possible to close a great deal. The American vice-president, per se, does not possess any real executive powers or authorities, and therefore no one usually takes much interest in his political activity, including meetings with world leaders. Yet the situation of Cheney seems different and exceptional due to the limited abilities of the current American president, on the one hand, and Cheney's leadership of the neo- conservative current in the administration on the other. It is not strange that some have called Cheney the "partner president" in affirmation of the important role he plays in the process of forming policies. To prove the significance of the Mubarak-Cheney meeting, it is sufficient to point to two facts: firstly, Cheney returned less than three weeks following a visit to the region that he was forced to cut short for domestic reasons. This unexpected rapid return affirms a pressing need. Secondly, no assistants to the two major figures were present in a meeting that lasted several hours -- not even the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, or the American ambassador in Cairo. This affirms the sensitivity of the matters discussed. In this context, it is possible to say that Cheney came to the region in search of an exit strategy for the American administration from the quicksand it has sunk into by its own volition and through the policies it constructed. However, it would be naïve to believe that the man came to listen or to plead. It is more likely that he came to speak and demand. And yet all evidence indicates that the demands made on Egypt in the context of this quest have been difficult to respond to, even for a regime that avoids confrontation with the US and seeks to satisfy it at any cost. Regarding the Iraq issue, it is well known that the US wants Egypt to contribute, with other Arab and Islamic countries, to the formation of forces that it believes would lighten pressures on the US, contribute to the realisation of stability and security and pave the way for the success of the "political process" as it sees it and which it has set in Iraq. Yet this administration is incapable of realising the fact that the lack of a clear strategy and timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, and the lack of any request from a body representative of all Iraqis, make it impossible for such forces to perform their requisite role. They would be viewed as though they had come to fight by the side of one party against another -- to solve the problems of the Americans in Iraq, not the problems of Iraqis. This is something that no regime in Egypt would be able to accept without placing itself in direct contradiction with its own people. With regard to the Iranian nuclear programme, it is clear that the US wants Egypt to take a frank and public position by condemning Iran's attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and demanding that it halt its enrichment programme. Yet Egypt believes there is no proof until now that Iran has violated obligations to which it is bound under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It prefers to address the Iranian nuclear issue within a comprehensive framework that seeks to rid the entire Middle East, including Israel, of weapons of mass destruction. The US refuses this because of its blind and unconditional bias towards the Israeli position. As for Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, the American administration wants Egypt to continue to place pressure on the Syrian regime to cooperate still further with the international investigation committee into the assassination of Rafik Al-Hariri, support the Lebanese government's position of pressuring for the disarmament of Hizbullah and Palestinian organisations in Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and place pressure on Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other armed resistance factions to continue their one-sided truce and not to incite Israel. However, Egypt views that it is necessary to avoid politicising the investigation into Al-Hariri's assassination. It believes that the arms of Hizbullah and the Palestinian refugee camps must be dealt with as internal issues, and that international parties must place pressure on all sides, including Israel and not just on the Palestinian factions alone, to implement the roadmap and move towards a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This gap between American and Egyptian positions is well known and remains standing. Thus efforts to narrow it do not warrant a special visit from Cheney himself; that is not his task. In all likelihood, Cheney came to Egypt and other countries in the context of wider and more serious plans now being prepared for the US to strike, or sanction Israel to strike, Iranian nuclear installations or to topple the Syrian regime and replace it with one more cooperative with American policies in the region. Although some think it unlikely that the American administration will move forward with such follies due to the extreme danger they may present to American interests regionally, I consider it possible for one simple reason: I don't view this American administration, and particularly a man like Cheney, as rational. At the same time I expect that President Mubarak has refused cooperation with American plans, which may explain the unofficial angry position that the Post 's editorial expressed indirectly. Here the predicament of democracy, as a goal all the peoples of the region aspire to, crystallises perfectly. While the US carries out policies the peoples of the region cannot accept and pressures its ruling regimes to comply with it, and them, through the use of carrots and sticks, Arab regimes themselves are forced in some cases to reject these policies in part or in whole in fear of popular reaction, or out of a desire for stability. In such cases, the US can find no other means for getting close to Arab peoples and swaying their hearts than by appearing to defend democracy. In this context it becomes clear that the Arab peoples are squeezed between internal despotism and external avarice. There is no exit from this predicament other than democracy. No Arab regime, and foremost the Egyptian regime, will be able to withstand American pressures without the support of their peoples. This support will only be granted if there is popular participation that will allow for a genuine rotation of power. Democracy is the most effective method of at once preventing the blackmail of regimes and the deception of peoples. * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
