Turkey, Brazil and Egypt: The stakes for the United States

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In light of the radical changes in the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab Spring, civil unrest has become an issue of utmost concern for policymakers, analysts and academics. Nowhere can the implications of ignored or improperly addressed public discontent be seen more clearly than in Syria’s brutal and potentially regionally destabilizing civil war. Widespread protests are also disrupting — and even overturning — the status quo in Brazil, Turkey and Egypt. In the first of a seven-part Baker Institute Viewpoints series, we evaluate the impact that this new wave of civil unrest will have on international politics. In the coming days, institute experts will address the effects on U.S. foreign policy, unexpectedly stable regimes, analytical tools for understanding civil unrest and political philosophical conceptions of “just” societies.

Read other posts in this series:

All hell has broken loose in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt, where public discontent has exploded into widespread unrest. The three countries are important to the United Sates. Brazil is the most populous country in Latin America, a regional leader, and a state with ambitions on a global scale. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States and a major player in the Middle East. Egypt has long been a bulwark of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world.

I will leave it to others to speculate on what broad lessons, if any, should be drawn from the unrest in Brazil and Turkey. The disturbances there represent a profound political challenge to the parties and personalities of incumbent governments in Brasilia and Ankara.  But the unrest does not yet threaten the constitutional order in either country.

Events in Egypt present a far more acute problem for Washington. Unlike the disturbances in Turkey and Brazil, conflict in Egypt represents both a direct threat to governmental legitimacy and an immediate challenge to U.S. interests. A complete collapse in public order or even civil war would further complicate foreign policy in a region where the United States is already overextended. Our protracted and costly intervention in Iraq is only a few years behind us; the Obama administration faces mounting pressure to expand U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war; and, despite the election of moderate Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran, relations between Washington and Tehran remain tense. The last thing Washington wants right now is chaos in the Arab world’s most populous country. But chaos, unfortunately, is what we’ve got.

Last week’s military coup marked a dramatic and perhaps decisive moment in the ongoing Egyptian crisis. The armed forces ousted President Mohammed Morsi; suspended the constitution; set about installing an interim cabinet; and promised new elections. Supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have, unsurprisingly, taken to the streets.

Where does the coup leave U.S. support for Egyptian democracy?  In a muddle. The problem: all sides can lay plausible claim to the democratic mantle. Morsi’s supporters will point to his election just one year ago; his opponents will counter that they represent popular will; the military will assert that it is only acting to preserve the stability necessary for government to function.

Obama administration officials, from the president on down, have been hesitant to call last Wednesday’s events a coup.  The reason: Designating the military takeover a coup could lead, legally, to a cut-off in assistance to Egypt.  The administration wants to maintain assistance at this time; ergo, what happened cannot be called a coup. The logic is impeccable, even if it bears no relationship to the actual events of July 3.  (What the Egyptian military did may have been necessary. It may, perhaps, have been good for Egypt. But it was unambiguously a coup.)

In any case, Washington’s support for democracy routinely takes a back seat when we believe our vital national interests are at stake. Egypt itself is an example. We abandoned strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011 only when he had outlived his usefulness to us. For decades, we supported his regime, limiting ourselves to occasional complaints about his authoritarian rule. Why?  Mubarak helped guarantee the peace between Egypt and Israel entered into by his predecessor, Anwar Sadat; after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he collaborated in our efforts to combat terrorism.  Mubarak was, in other words, “our man” in Cairo. He may not have been a puppet. But he was a reliable client. That Mubarak was a dictator may have been, from Washington’s point of view, regrettable. But his authoritarianism was something with which we were willing to live.

Washington’s preference would clearly be for a broad-based interim government and a fairly quick return to democratic government. But, from the U.S. perspective, the bottom line will be our interests. In the case of Egypt, those interests are best served by a government in Cairo which, whatever its ideological complexion and constitutional form, a) manages to maintain a semblance of domestic order; b) continues to support U.S. policy in the Middle East, most notably our long-standing commitment to the security of Israel, and c) cooperates on a broad ranges of issues related to terrorism.

Our “review” of U.S. assistance gives Washington some leverage with the Egyptian military. But our power to shape events is limited. The situation on the ground remains unpredictable. This suggests a “wait and see” attitude on Washington’s part — not a very inspiring policy but, in this instance, a wise one.

Joe Barnes headshotJoe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.