Friday, August 16, 2013: A day of anger as proclaimed by
Morsi supporters in Egypt. A day of death and carnage. A day of intransigence on
both sides. Just a day earlier, the U.S. government had cancelled planned joint
military exercises. Besides being largely symbolic rather than real sanction,
the exercises were due to be downsized anyway due to the ongoing,
across-the-board, sequester of the U.S. Government’s budget. Can something so
convenient be counted as even “sending a signal?” Meanwhile, American foreign
aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion—second only to what the U.S. gives Israel—continued,
as if there were no sequester. As a direct result of the financial complicity,
thousands of protesters in Turkey were shouting anti-American slogans. The
protesters were so well informed that they were protesting the decision of the
Obama administration not even to decide whether there had been a coup in Egypt
when the military deposed Morsi. Turkey had emerged as one of the fiercest critics
of what it has called an “unacceptable coup.”[1]
It is not as though the American aid gives the U.S. much
leverage with the Egyptian military; aid from Middle East states, including
Saudi Arabia (whose statement on the Day of Rage voiced support for the
military), dwarfs that of the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government,
fearful of something worse (for the U.S.) in Egypt than its military, was not
fooling the Turks or the rest of the world. The sad truth is that Americans
could be harmed as a direct result of their government’s attempt to hold onto
whatever leverage existed.
It is not as though cutting off foreign aid to Egypt would
be so “radical” that the option was not realistic. On the Day of Rage, Germany,
ein Land—wirklich Staat—auf die Europäische
Union, suspended $25 million in aid to Egypt for climate and environmental
protection projects.[2] Meanwhile,
Germany, Egypt’s largest trading partner, joined with the French Government in
calling for a federal response from the E.U.’s Council of Ministers and
presumably the E.U.’s Foreign Minister. Indeed, one of the reasons for creating
the E.U. had been that the states would have more influence together than separately. The states’ rights
ideology was yet again obstructing Europe from attaining that goal.
I suspect that the difference in the respective reactions of
the E.U. and U.S. with respect to foreign aid have to do with the power of the
Israeli lobby being greater in the U.S. than the E.U. The U.S. Government was
thus vulnerable to the accusation of hypocrisy on its democratic principles out
of a rather obsessive concern for Israel’s safety. Had both unions withheld
both foreign aid and trade with Egypt, the question would be whether the
foreign aid from within the Middle East would be sufficient to sustain the
Egyptian military in power. Ich weiß es leider
nicht. At any rate, it is unfortunate that democracy and human rights can
be so eclipsed by politics in the U.S. and even the E.U., the latter behaving
as though it had one arm tied behind its back.
1. Clare Richardson, “Hundreds in Turkey Protest Against Egyptian Crackdown,” Reuters, August 16, 2013.
2.
Associated Press, “Germany
Suspends Egypt Aid As World Continues To React To Crisis,” The Huffington
Post, August 16, 2013.