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Egypt: Balancing Interests Over Values

(National Interest) Chuck Freilich - Egypt, under the thrall of the Muslim Brotherhood, was undergoing democratization only in the sense that Germany was after free elections gave rise to the Nazis in 1932, the mullahs in Iran in 1979, or Hamas in Gaza in 2006. It is not by chance that the liberal camp in Egypt strongly supported the military's ouster of Morsi and the harsh measures adopted since then to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentally anti-democratic organization. The U.S. needs a stable Egypt that will remain the head of a moderate, pro-American Arab camp. Without Egypt, there is no pro-American Arab "camp." If America can be a strategic ally of the Saudi regime, it can support the new Egyptian regime too. Paradoxically, the greatest hope for a semidemocratic, stable, moderate, economically viable and pro-American Egypt, at peace with Israel, is for the military to successfully put down the Muslim Brotherhood counter-rebellion and reassert its authority. The writer is a senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School.
2013-08-22 00:00:00
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