The number of hearings involving Egypt held by congressional committees (in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate), the innumerable seminars and discussion circles organised by various research centres and think tanks that hosted both Egyptian and US experts on Egyptian affairs, the plethora of editorials and opinion articles on developments in Egypt that have appeared in major US newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc), and the extensive coverage that US media has accorded to events in Egypt following 30 June 2013 testify to the extensive interest in the US in political developments and future directions in our country. US interest in developments in Egypt was not suddenly born with the outbreak of the revolution of 25 January 2011. Well before this, during the era of former president Hosni Mubarak, political, academic and journalistic circles were concerned by the political future of the country and, specifically, by the question of who would succeed Mubarak as ruler. However, the concern would increase following the 25 January Revolution in view of the extreme fluidity of the political situation, the intensity of conflict between the political forces and the general unpredictability of events. Concern was heightened further by the populist rhetoric of Egyptian presidential candidates and the consequent spectre of difficulties in US-Egyptian relations that could jeopardise US interests in the region. Such interest has, in turn, led many in Egypt to speculate on the extent to which the US would attempt to determine the identity of the next Egyptian president. It is the common impression among both public opinion and official circles that any Egyptian president must have Washington's blessings because of Egypt's strategic position in the Middle East and the influence of developments in Egypt on the stability of the region and US interests. Such an outlook has naturally engendered widespread concern over this question. Elections: Opportunity to regain influence: The bulk of US commentary and analysis agree that US influence in Egypt has declined since the 25 January Revolution. They cite mounting anti-Americanism, but some also suggest that US hopes in having a positive effect in promoting democratisation in Egypt have diminished as the consequence of the US administration's approval of the intervention of the Egyptian military establishment in the political process twice since the January revolution. They also hold that in view of Washington's shrinking influence and resources the US has reverted, since the beginning of the Arab Spring, to an approach akin to the “striking bargains with dictatorship” policy it adopted in the past. According to one body of opinion, the US administration has wasted a number of opportunities to regain its influence on developments in Egypt and the current elections, held this week, offer a chance for Washington to rectify its past mistakes. Accordingly, the US administration must stress the principles of freedom, fairness and transparency in the electoral process, offer Egyptian authorities all possible assistance to ensure that the polls are conducted in manner that fully meets these criteria, and avoid any attempt to influence the choices of the Egyptian voter. Then, after the elections, the US administration must sustain pressure on the new Egyptian government to press forward with the process of democratic transformation in a manner that brings on board all shades of the Egyptian political spectrum so as to revive the spirit of national consensus missing in Egyptian political life since January 2011 and that promotes respect for human rights. Advocates of this view also underscored the need for officials in Washington to work with their counterparts in the newly democratically elected government in Cairo toward re-establishing US-Egyptian relations on the basis of mutual respect and common interests. They added that, especially given the current state of fluidity and tensions between the rival political forces in Egypt, Washington must refrain from any display of support or bias in favour of one group and at the expense of another in the course of its communications with the various political stakeholders in Egypt. In contrast to the foregoing view that sees the Egyptian presidential elections as an opportunity for the US, another camp of opinion there believes that the victory of a populist president in free and fair elections would augment Egypt's soft power and that this would not be in US interests. They argue that a democratic Egypt would be stronger than a non-democratic one and that the more Egypt democratises the more its political foreign policy decisions will become independent — and from Washington in particular. That absence of democracy has been one of Egypt's chief sources of weakness in its relations with the US. The Mubarak regime's lack of democratic legitimacy made it more vulnerable to US pressures. No government can establish its relations with world powers on a footing that serves national interests unless its back is protected on the home front by a national consensus over a core set of principles and positions. The January revolution has made this possible by ushering in real political liberalisation that can empower a collective national consensus. The US and Egypt's next president: The level of attention the US has given the Egyptian presidential elections does not signify that it sought to support a particular candidate or camp or that it had personalised its relationship with Cairo in terms of its preference for one candidate over the other. The US has grasped the lessons of the failure of the George W Bush administration and its neoconservative ideologues to impose their views on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of direct military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, at unfathomable expense to the US budget, in order to establish new systems of government, the people had the final say in both countries on who their new rulers would be. The US will not worry about who Egypt's next president is as long as that factor poses no threat to US strategic interests in its bilateral relationship with Egypt which are primarily served by safeguarding the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, continuing security and military cooperation, and preventing nuclear proliferation in the region. Both candidates have explicitly supported these principles. This said; a number of opinion circles in the US made it clear that they favour Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi over Hamdeen Sabahi. The former hails from the Egyptian military establishment that enjoys close relations with its US counterpart. Al-Sisi is personally on good terms with a number of officials in the US State Department and he received part of his military education in the US (he obtained a fellowship at the US Army War College in 2006). This body of US opinion argues that, as a member of the military establishment, Al-Sisi will not oppose the mutual strategic interests of the two countries, that he will safeguard the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, and that he will do his utmost to fight terrorism and the groups that the US has listed as terrorist organisations, such as Hamas and Hizbullah whose influence had grown after the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt. They also believe that with an Al-Sisi administration, Egypt will draw closer to the US on issues related to security and stability in the region. Another body of opinion in the US was opposed to Al-Sisi's nomination from the outset and hold that Washington's support of Al-Sisi as president would lead to growing anti-Americanism fed by US support for military regimes, which has long been a source of hostility toward the US in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Proponents of this view would have preferred to see Al-Sisi remain minister of defence because they feared that the military establishment's involvement in the political process at a time of security fluidity, political tensions and economic straits could rebound against the military establishment which, in turn, could ultimately impact on security and stability in the region as a whole to the detriment of US interests and those of its regional allies. None of the foregoing suggests that the US would have either supported or rejected a Sabahi victory as long as he was the choice of the Egyptian electorate and as long as he supports the core principles on which Egyptian-US relations are founded. Regardless of who comes out the winner in the Egyptian presidential elections, the US will be eying the next juncture in the post-3 July roadmap, namely the parliamentary elections. In this regard, Washington will be pressing on the new Egyptian president the need to include all political forces, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, in power and in the political process. The fear is that the closing of civil political horizons through policies of exclusion and repression will drive the Muslim Brotherhood toward violence and extremism and/or precipitate the growth of violent and extremist split-off groups. From the US perspective, this development would threaten US national security in the Middle East and, specifically, Israeli security, which is regarded as a US interest. It is noteworthy in this regard that, in March 2014, the US State Department spokesperson stated that the US has maintained contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, stressing that this did not signify that the US agreed with the MB on all issues but only that these contacts were necessary in the context of the US's desire to communicate with all political forces in order to help Egypt emerge from the situation that has existed since 30 June 2013. The writer is a researcher at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
