Egypt’s Revolution Giving Way to Sense of Lost Opportunity

Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations is visiting Cairo for the third time this year. He says excitement and optimism have given way to a sense of drift and lost opportunity.

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Lisa Mullins: Just as the new Liberia is emerging from the ashes of war, a new Egypt is beginning to emerge from its post revolutionary chaos.  Problem is nobody’s quite sure what the new Egypt will end up looking like.  Steven Cook is a senior fellow from Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  He’s now in Cairo.  Cook arrived there just after protestors stormed the Israeli embassy there. He says Egypt today feels much different from the Egypt he witnessed back in January at the height of protests against President Hosni Mubarak.

Steven Cook: January was a time of tremendous hope and anticipation about the possibility of building a new descent, more open, democratic political system.  When I returned in June I think that there was still a sense that that was possible and although there were a whole host of problems that kind of revolutionary creativity and energy was still very much at play. Here, now, in September there’s a tremendous sense of duress and perhaps lost opportunity.  The problems keep mounting, it’s a complex situation.  There’s a sense really that no one is in charge here.

Mullins: But there is a leadership, at least a temporary leadership right now, and it is a leadership that has overseen what has been happening in the last few days.  I mean you arrived right after the Israeli embassy there had been ransacked forcing in fact, the Israeli ambassador to flee.  Can you explain why this is happening and if sentiment has turned against Israel?

Cook: Well, there’s been for a long time sentiment that has run opposed to Israel and among many of the youth activists that instigated the revolution has long had ill feelings toward Israel.  But this particular situation has to be situated in a context of something that happened about 10 days before in which Israeli forces killed six Egyptian soldiers on Egyptian territory. This was clearly by mistake, but the Israelis have been slow to express their regret, and at the time there were demand for the recall of the Egyptian ambassador from Tel Aviv and to kick the Israelis out.  The march on the Israeli embassy was conducted by a few people and many people regretted it and thought that despite their feelings toward Israel it was Egypt’s responsibility to protect the embassy. So by no means was this a widely held sentiment that they go after the Israeli embassy, but nevertheless, sentiment, the political climate in which public opinion matters more in Egypt is likely to run against Israel and the United States for that matter.

Mullins: And how is that exemplifying itself against Israel or the United States aside from the violence…

Cook: Well, I think that in general, there has a been a call for a renegotiation of the Camp David Accords for a, there’s a pipeline that runs gas from Al-Arish to Ashkelon in  Isreal, demands that the company that runs that pipeline renegotiate the prices that it sells the gas to the Israelis. For the United States it signals that the Egyptians are interested in reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran after some odd years, a renewed or different perspective on Hamas, some of the key issues for the United States in the Middle East.  And much of this is being driven by public opinion.

Mullins: How much American aid, foreign aid comes to Egypt now per year?

Cook: Well, there’s $1.3 billion that is allotted annually to the military, and then most recently there’s been about $250 million in economic aid to the masses, $1.55 billion dollars.  It’s less than what we’d been giving in years past, considerably so.  In the mid 1980s Egypt got more than $2 billion a year.  It’s still a significant amount of money, but in an economy that is over $100 billion economy it’s really a drop in the bucket.

Mullins: But even it is a drop in the bucket it still comes with strings attached, I mean America still wants to keep Egypt as its ally.  The new Egypt now, does it need America the way Egypt under Mubarak did?

Cook: Well, in some ways it needs it more and there was some hope that the United States would step up very quickly and provide in particular, economic assistance for the new Egypt.  But at the same time there is significant sentiment that the United States should stay out of Egyptian politics.  There was a perception that President Mubarak was too close to the United States and public opinion generally doesn’t like the idea of the United States trying to influence or manage this transition. So in one sense the Egyptians very much want our technical assistance and our economic assistance, but at the same time would like us to take hands off of their building a new political system.

Mullins: Steven Cook is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council of Foreign Relations.  He spoke to us from Cairo.

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