WASHINGTON, DC – The “two biggest strategic priorities in the Middle East, in the short-term, are the Iranian nuclear issue and the Israel-Palestine negotiations”, said Shibley Telhami, at an event on Thursday. He is the Anwar Sadat Professor for the Middle East at the University of Maryland.
On the eve of four separate bomb attacks that ripped through Cairo’s neighborhoods and killed up to six people on Friday, The Atlantic Council organized a panel in Washington DC to address US foreign policy toward Egypt.
Amy Hawthorne, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and former appointee at the State Department, presented a paper arguing that democracy is an important strategic concern for the US in Egypt, and that American influence in the country is underutilized.
She said that “ultimately, what the United States needs to secure its core abiding security interests in Egypt is stability.” She furthered that stability can only come about through democratic transition and a consensus-based political system.
“This really, in my view, is the only way that Egypt will stabilize. A path of repression will not stabilize Egypt.”
Shibley Telhami sat on the panel with Hawthorne and acted as a counterweight to her analysis.
He said that he agreed with Hawthorne that democracy is an American interest in Egypt and that US influence in the country may be underutilized.
However, he argued that those concerns need to be balanced against the main American strategic interests in the region and what is possible in the short-term.
He said, “I think we need to keep a sense of realism about the outcomes”.
Telhami argued that concerns for democracy and human rights in Egypt need to be contextualized within America’s present situation in the Middle East. He also said there should be confidence that elevating certain priorities, such as the promotion of democracy, can be accomplished. In the current climate, he doesn’t think they can.
Telhami said he doesn’t think anybody imagines that the type of democratic changes Hawthorne presented are possible within the next three years, which is the duration of President Obama’s presidency. For that reason, he says that there is no reason for the president to emphasize such changes.
“When you have a president that highlights an issue and makes it a priority, then he’s measured by what he says. And if he’s not prepared to follow up, which he’s not, then he’s going to be criticized… And so it will be more of a failure than a success. Why would he [Obama] want to do that?”, he asked.
Telhami said that when somebody is advising a president or Secretary of State it is not enough to say that something is in America’s interest. He said that you have to show how that interest fits within other strategic interests that may be bigger in the short term.
“Whatever you say about Egypt, whether we intervene or not, whether it’s democratic or not in the next three years, it’s unlikely that whatever happens in Egypt will drag us into a war in the Middle East.”
“If we fail in our diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon… the pressure on this president to engage in war before he leaves office is going to be tremendous. If there’s one issue that could drag the United States into war in the Middle East right now, it’s the Iran issue. So the president is right in making that a top priority for him”.
The panel discussion can be viewed here:
