Thanksgiving has come and gone.
It’s almost Christmas and it’s about to be the year 2021.
Next year is shaping up to be immeasurably different from 2020, but also promises to be more or less the same.
Maybe one of the most profound changes that is coming is the end of the Trump administration. Not that ‘Sleepy Joe’ is my ideal candidate, but I would pick a literal rock over Donald J Trump.
However, one of the areas that is unlikely to see any substantial changes between 2020 and 2021 - between Trump and Biden administrations - is the relationship between the United States and Egypt.
There is a dangerous and unfounded conspiracy within the Coptic community that the Republican Party is more sympathetic to the Copts within Egypt than the Democratic Party. There is the notion that Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and by extension, Joe Biden, are in support of radical groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and lack empathy for persecuted minorities such as Copts.
So, is there any truth to this?
This article from The Wall Street Journal that was published in September 2016 (two months before the previous presidential election) puts it succinctly:
“Many Egyptians, including senior government officials, believe that Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi won the June 2012 presidential election thanks to pressure from Mrs. Clinton. As with many conspiracy theories, this one is rooted in a twisted interpretation of what Mrs. Clinton actually said at the time.”
The author goes on to explain just how and why that is a conspiracy theory and can be read more fully in the link above.
Nevertheless, the damage was done. This misinformation combined with ill-conceived notions regarding Barack “Hussein” Obama effectively put an end to any headway the Democratic party could have made within the Coptic community, and communities like it.
While I could write an entire book about the lack of effort and broad stereotypes the Democratic party does employ in its communications with non-whites generally, this post’s focus pertains to the foreign policy machinations within the American two-party system.
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Let us compare how Barack Obama and Donald Trump have dealt with Egypt (and the Coptic community), and how Joe Biden is expected to do so. While only going back to 2009 is by no means a comprehensive analysis of American foreign policy with regards to Egypt, it should lend us a snapshot that shows that it does not change much based on the president’s political party.
Barack Obama
While Obama’s presidency overlapped with the downfalls of Mubarak and Morsi, it was the rise of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood mentioned above that drew the ire of the Coptic community.
However, it is after the current president el-Sisi took power, that Obama’s policy will be analyzed here.
In this article from The Intercept in 2015, it is noted that Obama actually lifted a freeze on transferring weapons to Egypt, after el-Sisi’s ascent to power.
“President Obama informed President al-Sisi that he will lift executive holds that have been in place since October 2013 on the delivery of F-16 aircraft, Harpoon missiles, and M1A1 tank kits. The President also advised President al-Sisi that he will continue to request an annual $1.3 billion in military assistance for Egypt.”
At the same time, this Foreign Policy article from 2017 states that the beginning of the Trump presidency marked a restart of a long-running military exercise with Egypt, after President Obama canceled it in 2013 to protest the killing of protestors in Cairo.
“The exercise was last held in 2009, as Cairo called off the 2011 event due to the Egyptian revolution that eventually ousted Mubarak, and president Obama halted the follow-on event in 2013 after Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of civilian protesters.
Obama is widely seen as having given Sisi the cold shoulder. But he’d started to roll back some of the penalties imposed on Egypt well before Trump took office. In March 2015, he ended the freeze on $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, resuming the shipment of F-16 fighter planes, Abrams tanks, Harpoon missiles, and other equipment.”
Donald Trump
While Obama’s policy was attempting to be cognizant of human rights violations, the foreign policy machinery eventually forced his hand and churned its way into status quo military support of the Egyptian government.
Enter Donald Trump.
This article from Politico Magazine in 2019 asks a crucial question: why is Trump helping Egypt’s dictator entrench his power?
But it also answers it with a profound caveat:
“By embracing Middle Eastern autocrats, American presidents have been making the same mistake for decades—with dangerous consequences.”
In another piece from CNN written in October 2020, the author notes that
“Trump can't be wholly blamed for the catastrophic situation in the Middle East. He inherited a legacy of missteps, delusion and muddled thinking going back decades.
The Arab Spring -- as it was once optimistically called -- took the Obama administration by surprise. Washington fumbled in Egypt, first dithering over whether to drop the creaking regime of Hosni Mubarak, and then watching as the Muslim Brotherhood won Egypt's one and only democratic election in its 5,000-year history.
And when, a year later, a military coup d'état brought the officers back to power, Washington shrugged, and continues to shrug as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime ruthlessly cracks down on even the most benign forms of dissent. The Egyptian president is, after all, Trump's ‘favorite dictator.’”
That is all to say that there truly is no substantial difference between the ways in which both Presidents Obama and Trump dealt with Egypt.
The only difference is that Obama attempted to enforce consequences for human rights violations, and in the end, he was not able to. Trump on the other hand, acknowledged these human rights violations without attempting to do anything about it, which was proven in his toothless admonishment of el-Sisi when he called him his ‘favorite dictator’.
Joe Biden
So, what can we expect from President Biden? More or less of the same.
In this piece from the Financial Times published in November 2020, the author opines that President Biden is likely to return to Obama’s stance on human rights, but is unlikely to change anything substantial regarding American-Egyptian relations
Again, unlike Mr Trump, Mr Biden is unlikely to refer to Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the general who came to power in Egypt in a 2013 coup, as “my favourite dictator”. US policy towards Egypt zigzagged under the Obama administration, which acquiesced in the 2011 fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the brief rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Washington’s long view is that the annual $1.3bn US stipend for Egypt’s military is good value in terms of the security of the Suez Canal. That will not change, but attitudes towards unbridled autocracy may.
It is therefore unreasonable to believe that one political party has a more favorable view of Egypt or Copts than the other.
The truth is that, foreign policy does not really change depending on whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat.
And the harsh truth is that American presidents do not really care about the lives of Egyptians, and especially not of Copts. It is therefore illogical to cast your vote on the issue of American-Egyptian relations, believing that one party will care more about the Coptic community.
So, with the holiday season and new year upon us, we can expect many things to be different in 2021. But we should not expect the treatment of Copts to be effected by an American president.