US relations with Egypt: one problem at a time
American-Egyptian relations are structured in a piecemeal fashion, lacking strategic thinking and planning for long-term stability.
President Barack Obama’s recent decision to end the halt on sending military equipment to Egypt, resulting in the release of aircraft, missiles and tank kits, took many by surprise. The recent court decision in Egypt that led to a life sentence for Egyptian-American citizen Mohamad Soltan on charges of funding a pro-Mohammed Morsi sit-in and "spreading false information" — charges criticized by Amnesty International — reinforced doubt about the American-Egyptian funding relationship. But the military funding issue is somewhat more complicated than that — and may need to be investigated further, for both American and Egyptian interests, going forward.
On the one hand, Egypt has fallen, tremendously, in terms of being a priority for the Washington Beltway in general and the Obama administration in particular. Part of this is due to fatigue, after seeing what appeared to have been a majority of Egyptians turn against the Muslim Brotherhood when it was in power, and embrace the military-led ouster of a deeply flawed but democratically elected president.
Another part of it is the shifting geopolitical realities in the region, where Egypt is, correctly, identified as being in a more stable state than Syria, Iraq or Libya. Alignments against the Islamic State (IS) also play a role, as do the broader genuine security considerations that the Egyptian state has; while Washington might think Egypt's tactics in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere are counterproductive, the Obama administration does not think Cairo’s security concerns are unfounded.
Finally, there is the "bandwidth" issue in DC, where the administration cannot focus heavily on too much at once, despite the resources at its disposal. This has meant that other issues of importance, such as the Russian annexation of Crimea, as well as the framework for the Iran deal, have stolen a lot of attention from a policy establishment that generally suffers from attention deficit disorder. On the other hand, even those who do focus on Egypt at all within the administration have been arguing about which way to move forward, making any unified policy difficult.
