Issue No. 596
Opinion
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25 - 31 July 2002 Issue No. 596 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Stumbling into radicalism?
The July Revolution was never as radical as it sometimes seemed, writes Gamil Mattar*, tracing the main lines of Egyptian foreign policy since 1952
Articles are not generally supposed to sum up, let alone set in motion, global rivalry, or shape the tone of international events. But two articles did just that. In 1947, the US journal Foreign Affairs published an article in which George Kennan urged the United States to start a policy of containment of the Soviet Union. Truman's administration took the advice, and set in motion the Cold War, which, over the course of the next half century or so, may have spared the world total destruction, but did so at the expense of smaller nations among whom the Superpowers fought their proxy wars. Some 45 years later, the same periodical published American political theorist Samuel Huntington's article on the "Clash of Civilisations," with results that have been similarly global in reach.
At that time, Egypt was close to the Allies, the winners of the Second World War which were now setting about creating NATO. Egypt's ruling elite was predominantly anti-Communist, and while they were eager to get rid of the British, they were suspicious of the Soviet Union, which had supported the Zionist movement and had been a major force behind the creation of Israel. Egypt's opposition parties favoured close ties with the US, hoping that it would put pressure on the British to pull out of Egypt, but they too preferred to stay out of developing US-Soviet rivalry.
Some months after the end of the Second World War, the United States called on Egypt to take part in a regional defence agreement. The request's content and timing did not please the Egyptians. The Egyptian forces' defeat at the hands of the Israelis was still fresh in people's memories, and the British had not shown any willingness to withdraw from the Suez Canal zone. Egypt was in no mood to co-operate with the West in any regional or international pact.
At the same time, Iran now topped US priorities in the Middle East, with, from the 1940s on, US oil interests in Iran beginning considerably to develop. Saudi Arabia had also emerged from under Britain's influence and was moving closer to the United States. Egypt, therefore, was not a priority for the US. It had no oil, few investment opportunities, and its strategic assets were firmly under British control. The political situation in Egypt was volatile, with cabinet changes and street demonstrations becoming an almost daily affair. The army was waiting for an opportunity to intervene, and in July 1952, it did so.
For the first two years following the revolution, Egyptian foreign policy remained substantially unchanged. The US did not feel that the new government harboured any particular hostility toward the West or posed any immediate threat to Israel. The Egyptian government, the Americans thought, had no intention either of encouraging communism or of forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. The revolutionaries wanted to stay on good terms with the Americans, and, if possible, get US weapons and aid.
There was a basic continuity in Egypt's foreign policy, which put the emphasis on expelling the British from the country, retaining the Sudan and limiting the influence of the Hashemites in the Levant. There was no shift in regional alliances, and business continued as usual with both Britain and the United States.
However, the revolution did coincide with a change in Soviet intentions towards Israel. The Israelis, having created their state, were drawing closer to the West and allying themselves with the West in the developing Cold War, which caused Moscow to try to forge ties with leftist forces in Syria and Egypt. Early confrontation between the Egyptian government and the communists did not discourage the Soviets, who began to make overtures to many governments in the Middle East.
However, this situation of calm external affairs did not last for long. First, the West made the end of the British occupation conditional on Egypt's joining the Baghdad Pact, which was given a prominent role in containing the Soviet Union. And second, the West was reluctant to grant Egypt's requests for military and economic aid, for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of power in the region.
Neither Washington nor London understood how strongly the leaders of the July Revolution were opposed to any military alliance involving Britain, however. Such an alliance would have undermined the credibility of the revolution's leaders, and this was enough to scupper the Baghdad Pact. Similarly, the revolution's leaders needed arms, and if the West would not give them, then they would look elsewhere. As a result, the post-revolutionary Egyptian government almost stumbled into radicalism inadvertently. Through its populist stance and opposition to British interests, the revolution found itself fighting other, newer forms of Western imperialism. As time went by, it became clear that this would mean a collision course with the United States.
Whether the revolution's leaders were fully aware of the consequences of their policies is a matter of speculation. Nothing in the early months of the revolution indicates that the Free Officers as a whole had a radical agenda. Those of them who did had little say in the country's foreign policy, and the revolution continued to adopt long- standing policies, only turning radical at a later stage.
In the face of strong Western opposition, the revolution refused to join Western-inspired regional security arrangements. It also refused to tone down confrontation with Israel. These were radical decisions, and perhaps costly ones too, since the United States wanted to see the Soviet Union contained, and Egypt did not play along. Egypt's refusal to be part of the Western containment of the Soviet Union brought it regional and international fame, but it was also in no small way responsible for the 1956 and 1967 wars.
In words that were later to have a familiar ring, US Secretary of State John Foster Dallas early on stated that Washington should not tolerate neutrality in the conflict between communism and capitalism, or between good and evil, as he described the Cold War. Nevertheless, the Americans remained pragmatic on the details, since Washington needed the support of some of the neutral countries, and it hoped that the Non-Aligned Movement created by Nasser, Nehru and Tito in 1955 would function as a buffer zone between East and West.
The Islamic countries, the US also thought, even those opposed to the West, were good "natural barriers" to the spread of communism, and despite their flirtation with socialism, even populist regimes normally distanced themselves from communism. These facts were enough to tone down the zeal of US policy-makers at the time.
As a result, Egypt discovered that it had room for manoeuvre in this bipolar world. The West benefited from Egypt's leadership of the Arab world, Egypt serving as a buffer against communism, while the East benefited from Egypt's refusal to become part of the military alliances targeting the Soviet Union. Things were manageable, until Washington decided that the Non-Aligned Countries were becoming too close to the Soviet Union for US comfort.
Eventually, Egypt switched sides, many believing that the 1973 War marked the turning point in Egyptian foreign policy. In reality the change had started a few years earlier when Egyptian leaders began to explore all possible options for getting Israel out of Sinai. Eventually, Egypt regained Sinai, sacrificing its special ties with the Soviet Union and the Arabs in the process. Furthermore, the about-turn was complete, with Egyptian foreign policy abandoning the radicalism that had boosted its Arab and international standing from the mid- 1950s to the early 1970s.
This coincided with a return to a market economy.
In a sense, Egypt's about-turn was a harbinger of things to come. Egypt's abandonment of East for West with its centrality in the Arab world, and in Third World politics more generally, may have had a global impact, beginning an international snowball effect. However, it seems more likely that the balance of power between East and West was already shifting in the early 1970s, and this caused the shift in Egyptian foreign policy.
As soon as the new alliance was made, Egypt offered to help the United States in its proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, offering to obstruct Soviet attempts to infiltrate the Horn of Africa and other parts of Africa and the Arab world.
In 1993, Samuel Huntington published his article "Clash of Civilisations" , which has much in common with Kennan's, published some 45 years before. Both were written by insiders to the US elite, but whereas the impact of the first article was immediate, owing to changes that were already underway, Huntington's prophecies had to wait a few years to take effect.
In both cases, however, Egypt bore the brunt of the shift in US strategic thinking. In the first case, Egypt was seen as a vital link in the containment of the Soviet Union, whereas in the second, Egypt was both a target and a potential tool in the new War on Terror spawned, in part, by the prophecies of Huntington's article. In both cases, Egypt resisted, but arguably Egypt now is more central to US global thinking even than it was during the Cold War.
* The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
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