A few hours before leaving Cairo for Washington, Anne Patterson, the former US ambassador to Cairo, held a farewell party attended by a group of journalists where she expressed her considerable satisfaction with her time in the Egyptian capital. However, Patterson's words did not reflect the tense atmosphere that surrounded her in her last few months on the job, particularly during the countdown to the popular upheaval against former president Mohamed Morsi. Patterson had tried to help the Muslim Brotherhood avoid disaster, but she lacked any real vision of how to play a useful role in the political crisis in the country before the big bang on 30 June. Patterson's reassignment from the Cairo post had been expected for months, even before the popular revolution against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, but the way she meddled in Egyptian domestic politics has caused a lot of problems for American diplomacy, especially regarding how to deal with the dramatic changes that have taken place in Egypt following the ousting of the former regime. According to official reports, the US state department has suggested the nomination of veteran diplomat David Satterfield, a Middle East diplomat for more than 30 years and head of the Multinational Force and Observers Mission in Egypt, to serve as its temporary chargé d'affaires until a new ambassador is appointed. Patterson has been nominated as US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she will be in some sense still responsible for the Egypt portfolio at the State Department. She joined the US foreign service in 1973 and was promoted to career ambassador, the highest rank in the service, in 2008. She has been US ambassador to Pakistan (2007-10), Colombia (2000-03) and El Salvador (1997-2000), and she has served as US deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. It is expected that the former US ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, will be the country's next envoy in Cairo. The name has caused furious reactions, since Ford is widely believed to have been involved in US negotiations with the Syrian opposition, and some reports have accused him of being involved in arming the opposition Free Syrian Army and other militias that have ravaged the country. However, whether or not Ford is nominated as expected, the future US envoy to Cairo will be received amid much popular scrutiny as Patterson's legacy has led to wide mistrust of US policy towards Egypt. The career history of US ambassadors to Cairo has also been a matter of wide interest in Egypt since the arrival of Patterson in the country some years ago. Both the national and private sector media received the former ambassador with suspicion because of the role she had previously played in Pakistan. One of her main deficiencies in the Cairo post was her ignoring civic and secular forces in the critical months that preceded the collapse of Morsi's presidency, instead focussing on strengthening the relationship between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood and giving the leaders of the group advice on how to tackle the domestic crisis without pressuring the presidency to make meaningful concessions to the opposition. It seems that Patterson's vague messages of support to the Muslim Brotherhood and the close contacts she had with the group's strong man, Khairat Al-Shater, sent the wrong signal to the group, which considered this US support to be a message to both the army and the opposition not to interfere against the elected president. As a result, the 30 June demonstrations and their repercussions have been seen as a failure for US diplomacy in Egypt and the wider region. Washington has tried to contain the policy damage through various channels, but the new leadership in Cairo has not been paying attention to US efforts. However, the White House has stopped short of describing what happened to Morsi as a “coup”, and in subsequent statements the US secretary of state and the Pentagon have both avoided criticising the Egyptian military. “The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descent into chaos,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in early August. “The military did not take over, to the best of our judgment… to run the country. There's a civilian government,” he added. Such statements have done something to control the damage to bilateral relations, even though Washington has also tried to indicate to the Islamists that it rejects the military move to oust Morsi and calls for an inclusive government. The history of Egyptian-American relations shows that the strategic partnership between the two countries is built upon certain premises that come before internal political turbulence. The Egyptian military is considered to be the main guarantor of the peace treaty with Israel, for example, and another dimension of the relationship is geopolitical and based on access to the Suez Canal and allowing the US navy to use it on an expedited basis. Although the US government has held up some military contracts in order to exert influence over the transitional process in Cairo, most of the US military aid for fiscal year 2013 has already been delivered. “The US will want to safeguard the influence it does have with the military due to our vital interests in Egypt itself. Good relations with Cairo are critical for maintenance of the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, for Egypt's help on counterterrorism in the region, and to assist in blocking Iran's ambitions for power in the Middle East. Washington will work very hard, as it should, to preserve American ties with the Egyptian government,” former US diplomat Nicholas Burns has said. The mismanagement of US diplomacy during Patterson's time in Cairo is, however, likely to affect the moves of future US ambassadors to the country. US contacts with political forces in the country will now be tailored to reflect the new realities and to contain past miscalculations. While the US has moved to recognise the popular upheaval against its short-lived ally in the ousted former president, any further misbehaviour on the diplomatic side could result in more damage to the US's reputation and position in the country.
