Nimrod Novik on Troubling Developments in Egypt

Steven Spiegel - What is happening in Egypt? What is the meaning of arresting Americans and where is the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty?

What is happening in Egypt is that the white knight that was supposed to preserve stability is a dead man walking.

That is the military you mean?

That is the military. The victory just twelve months ago perceived the uprising as the outcome of the democratization process in terms of a squash game: You politicians and civilians will be free to play ball inside the walls, but we the military will determine where the walls and the roof are, and we’ll make sure the ball does not exceed those boundaries. So you want to do socio-economic, political policy, that’s fine, but there are three clusters of interests that you are not going to touch: They are national, organization and personal. National, nobody will conduct policy that risks security friction with Israel—you don’t want to be exposed. Second, nobody will conduct a policy that risks U.S. military aid to Egypt. The Egyptian military budget is all taken by salaries and constant domestic expenditures. There is no money for procurement either spare-parts or new weapons, that all comes from the American FMS (Foreign Military Sales). These are the national interests that we will preserve. The organizational interests are: nobody will touch the military budget, it will be outside of civilian oversight. And nobody will touch the military’s substantial economic interests. The Egyptian military is mega producing machine, producing civilian goods of any type, from televisions and VCRs to street lamps. This is the military income for the military organization as such, and for retirees. The personal interests: Egyptian officers will not be subject to prosecution by civilian courts.

That was the story 12 months ago, 10 months ago, 8 months ago, with time the Egyptian military – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – grew political incompetent and was outmaneuvered by the Muslim Brotherhood, step-by-step on the sequence of political process, on the timing of political process and on the substance of the political process. This process of castrating the military by political maneuvering reached obviously its peak with the election results, which gave the Muslim Brotherhood the legitimacy of a majority, or at least a potential plurality in parliament. And the next two points of contention are no longer as threatening to domestic stability as they seem just five months ago than is the composition of the 100 person committee that is supposed to draft a new constitution. The army was going to determine that, no longer so. And the timing of the presidential elections, the army wanted it in 2013—as far as possible from the revolution so that they can run some ex-uniform for president, and time would allow spirits to subside, the people to be less hostile to someone who was previously associated with the Mubarak administration—that is no longer the case, the elections will be in June 2012. The army has loss one struggle after another. If the large processes were not enough, it was even such tragic incidents as the football match massacre in Port Said two weeks ago, where seventy plus people were killed in a football match. This allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to blame the military for what happened there, not just for the incompetence for security on site, but for having instigated it in order to demonstrate what happens when you go civilian rather than listen to the military for law and order. So, we have a situation that things are getting out of hand.

The NGO story with the 19 Americans detained is another outgrowth of this story. It started off with the Muslim Brothers trying to evade investigation of the sources of funding that they used in the election. They got hundreds of millions of dollars from the Gulf, which were illegal spent in the elections. So the way to go was to blame the NGOs for doing the same. They had a minister, the Minister of International Cooperation who was a holdover from the Mubarak era, a female, who found this as an opportunity to cleanse herself of the sin of being associated with the previous regime by becoming more anti-American and more patriotic than anybody.  In this situation where there is no responsible adult in the neighborhood, patriotism is going wild, populism is going wild and even risking relations with the United States, which they cannot afford—not just for strategic reasons, but even for immediate economic reasons. Without a U.S. supported position there is not going to be any money from the IMF, from the World Bank and probably not from Europe either. So we see Egypt losing any central force that preaches reason and we see forces competing for populism for cheap headlines, and there is no adult in the neighborhood to call it into order.

Is the peace treaty still secure between Israel and Egypt? And what happens to these arrested Americans?

The peace treaty as a policy, the peace treaty is secure. From everything I can tell, from everything I hear, there is no intention to challenge the peace treaty. However, the peace treaty can fall victim to something very different. As you know, the security situation in the Sinai is beginning to look like an island of Afghanistan. You have islands of al Qaeda; you have islands of Salafis, the Bedouin community there is 550,000 strong having been neglected by the central regime for decades making a living on smuggling everything from weapons to women, and have been infiltrated by al Qaeda-like ideologies. We are building a fence to secure our border and that fence is going to deprive them of their livelihood, and I’m afraid that they will go for more violent ways of earning money. On contract for Iran, on contract for al Qaeda, on contract for elements in Gaza and with SA-16s and SA-18s allegedly have been reached those ground to air missile and reached the Bedouin trades from Libya over the past months. Just imagine one scenario, an Israeli helicopter is shot down from over Israeli airspace from a missile in Sinai. Do we send our air force into Egyptian sovereignty, to take care of it? This is just one scenario, how the peace treaty can fall victim to the failure of the Egyptians to secure their sovereignty in the Sinai.

And the Americans, do you see them getting out or not?

I can only tell you following President Obama’s telephone call to Mohamed Tantawi that there was an effort to make it happen. The fact that it hasn’t happened is probably the most striking recent evidence of the extent to which the military has lost its influence over policy.

That is a frightening ending. Tell me, do you therefore believe the Muslim Brotherhood is simply going to take over?

No, the Muslim Brotherhood is taking over, there is no doubt about that. I didn’t see that in such dark colors as some others. I think the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood is mostly intelligent people, who understand the difference between being in the opposition to an repressive regime and being responsible for 85 million Egyptians. Their foreign currency reserves went down from 36 billion to 10 billion and counting. They are going to have to take very harsh economic measures when expectations are that the opposite would be the case—the average Egyptians says we got rid of corruption we should have prosperity. What is going to happen is not only subsidies on basic foodstuffs will not be deepened, they will be removed. You are going to have social unrest in Egypt for a long time to come as a result of harsh economic realities. The Gulf is very stingy with resources until it sees a stable Egyptian administration. Europe has its own difficulties and it is not in the mood for coughing billions and billions for Egypt, the U.S. likewise. And if that was not enough than what we just discussed, the Egyptians misbehave. The Muslim Brothers will have a tremendous challenge from the Salafis who will stay out of government in order to try and strengthen their base the next time around with the same electorate. So the real question is when the Muslim Brothers prove unable to deliver for the Egyptian people, with unrealistic expectations. Will the liberals use that time to get their act together? I don’t know. If they do, they have a shot in the next Egyptian government, the elections after this. If they don’t, Egypt may slide further in the direction of more extreme religious elements like the Salafis.

This is a very stark image, and obviously we are hearing that Egypt is in real trouble and this is an ominous sign for both the United States and Israel.

We had thirty years of a good neighborhood; we have to get adjusted to a very difficult reality.

Note: This phone conference took place on February 8, 2012.