As the death toll from Egypt’s spiraling political crisis rises past 800 with no end in sight to the violence, many in the United States are rethinking the wisdom of providing $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt’s now-ruling generals. Given the bloodshed, this is understandable, but concentrating solely on Egypt sidesteps the larger issues that often come with providing large amounts of military assistance to undemocratic countries.
First, it must be stated plainly that democracy promotion has never been the primary point of U.S. military aid to Egypt or, for that matter, anywhere else. Instead, it is primarily a tool for peddling U.S. influence amongst the people that really matter – generally the folks holding the guns – in countries of great strategic interest to Uncle Sam. The point is not, as Roosevelt allegedly quipped about Somoza, that they are “sons of bitches,” but that they are, “our sons of bitches.”
In return for military toys paid for by U.S. taxpayers, the ray-banned and gold-braided generals, colonels, generalissimos, kings, potentates and presidents-for-life whom we wine, dine and arm to the teeth promise to take our interests to heart. These interests, in turn, usually revolve around issues of U.S. military access to foreign territory via bases or aerial and naval transit rights, intelligence cooperation, and access to strategic commodities like oil and gas. Democracy, poverty alleviation, and sometimes even trade liberalization come last in terms of what Washington really wants from the despots we do deep military business with.
In Egypt, for instance, the billions we provide that country in military assistance began to flow as a result of the Camp David Accords, which established a cold peace between Cairo and Jerusalem after the end of the Yom Kippur War. This peace agreement, which began with Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and finished up with handshakes at Camp David, was midwifed by Washington and effectively ended competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for pride of place in this most strategic of regions. Military aid, then, was just a means to an end – cementing the Egyptian jewel into the crown of the U.S.’s newly acquired Middle-Eastern empire.
Military aid keeps Americans employed?
Other undemocratic developing countries that had similarly interested Cold Warriors back in D.C. also received massive amounts of aid. Iran, before the Shah was deposed, was a close U.S. ally that purchased billions in advanced weapons using both its own funds and copious amounts of U.S. aid. In Latin America, the threat of internal subversion by leftist elements led to close relationships – accompanied by rich military aid packages – being forged between the U.S. armed forces and military and police organizations south of the border that routinely overthrew democratically-elected governments and carried out brutal, genocidal campaigns against their own civilian populations.
In Asia, the pattern continued, with the U.S. government providing military assistance to Indonesia even as that country invaded, occupied and carried out a brutal campaign of oppression and genocide against the people residing on the tiny half-island of East Timor. Even Apartheid South Africa was once on the list of countries receiving aid from Uncle Sam before shifting racial attitudes and subsequent public shame forced Washington to cut Pretoria off from U.S. weapons sales.
This madcap rush to arm the world against whatever Washington believes to be the geopolitical devil du jour doesn’t just have a strategic logic of international “stability” to it. It also feeds the increasing appetite of our domestic military-industrial complex and serves – just like normal, domestic military spending — as a grossly inefficient domestic jobs program and economic stimulus package gussied up in air-force blue or olive drab.
The dirty little secret of U.S. military aid to countries like Egypt is that this money is overwhelmingly spent on big-ticket equipment sales directed at U.S.-based arms manufacturers. In this respect, Uncle Sam serves as both middle-man and financier for arms-industry customers residing in the developing world who spend billions every year in order to provide jobs to middle-class Americans working in the U.S. gun belt. That this aid might be better spent on foreign schools and medicines rather than tanks and planes is not the point – those things do not enrich U.S. companies or employ U.S. workers.
‘Leverage’: not actually a thing
Military assistance – despite the hype and hopes of U.S. policymakers – actually gives us very little leverage with an unpleasant government if that government feels the U.S. is pressuring it on something it feels is a vital national interest. Cutting off that aid may, therefore, have very little actual impact on that government’s actions and could conceivably shut down those government-to-government channels of influence that do exist.
This in turn diminishes not just the very little leverage we actually do have, but also gives us a reputation for being a fair-weather friend that only sticks around when things are calm and peaceful. It is depressing to say, but the influence that comes with friendship has to be earned by sticking with a country through both thick and thin – which in this case amounts to looking the other way as atrocities are carried out.
Influence and friendship, unfortunately for us, is not simply bought via an annual aid package no matter how rich that package happens to be. Like with cancer and moving, massacres demonstrate who your true friends really are.
So, given all this, what is to be done? Should Egypt’s military aid be cut off? Does the massacre of Muslim Brothers by the U.S.-backed armed forces qualify Egypt for pariah status? Sure, legally the United States may be required to cut off aid as a result of the military coup that ousted President Morsi, but as Washington’s current dithering and past examples of flouting law in pursuit of the national interest abroad show, this doesn’t much matter.
A depressingly obvious future
What does matter is whether policy-makers in Washington D.C. see more to gain from cutting off aid than from continuing it.
There really is no easy answer. On the face of it, aid to Egypt has long since passed being useful. The threat of war between Egypt and Israel, for instance, is very low. Similarly, it does not seem likely that Egypt would deny the United States access to its territory – meaning passage through Egyptian airspace and the Suez Canal – in a true emergency such as instability or war in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
In terms of economic losses that may come with cutting off aid, U.S.-Egyptian trade is miniscule and the country has no vital resources coveted by our multinational oil companies. Lockheed Martin may fail to sell some jets and General Dynamics some tanks, but that’s about it.
So, on that side of the ledger, it would seem that there would be no costs to cutting off our military assistance. In Imperial Washington, however, there are a whole host of other concerns to think about.
Cutting off aid might, for instance, be taken as a slight by an Egyptian military that has long depended on U.S. assistance and which has cooperated intimately with U.S. intelligence in the War on Terror, e.g. tortured prisoners for us. Like in the mafia, scorning such blood ties carries a long shadow going forward.
Even more damaging, cutting off Egypt now would demonstrate to our other Arab allies – who happen to be quite rich in oil – that U.S. friendship and protection is never, under all circumstances, a guaranteed thing. It is, rather, much more like an insurance policy – terms and conditions may apply.
Thus, this prediction: the powers-that-be in Washington will decide (and indeed likely have done so already) that cutting off aid to Egypt’s military would be an unwise move in the long run.
America’s true face
If we could truly stop the bloodshed and bring the parties in Egypt to the negotiating table by threatening aid, then doing so is obviously the course to take, but given the remote possibility of that actually happening, the strategy looks less good from Washington’s perspective. It could severely damage relations with Egypt’s powerful military, threaten our standing with our other long-term regional allies and potentially create an opening for competitor nations such as China or Russia to gain influence at Washington’s expense.
This, of course, was also the argument put forth by Washington to justify sticking by Iran’s Shah until the very end, and it makes as much sense then as it does now. In a situation where principles and values never take first place, the cold logic of realpolitik is inescapable. For Washington, the situation in Egypt, like in revolutionary Iran, is lose-lose. What matters in Washington is picking the option whereby the powers-that-be in United States — not the American or Egyptian people — lose least.
And that’s depressing, because the chaos in Egypt shows us once again what the United States really is: a hegemonic power controlled by a small minority bent on maintaining their global position at any price, especially if it’s paid in other people’s blood and treasure. It demonstrates that though the U.S. talks a good game about democracy and human rights, the people who actually control America never actually do anything about them that might imperil their long-term interests. Egypt thus presents something of a teachable moment for interested observers – it temporarily removes Uncle Sam’s smiling mask to reveal the calculating, stone-faced psychopath underneath.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy.