The dissipation of influence can do strange things to leaders. It can leave them disoriented, incoherent or at a complete loss for explanation. The impact can even be grave enough for them to forget the dictionary meaning of the most basic words which they will have first encountered in school.
Said to be the world's most powerful man, US President Barack Obama appears to be suffering from this syndrome with regard to Egypt, where he and his country have as much influence left as Karl Marx's communism had in Britain during Margaret Thatcher's regime. As a result, Obama is not sure whether the recent change in regime in Cairo can be called a ‘coup'. If he were, he would have by now called a coup by its name as easily as he would call a spade a spade
The President's reluctance is because he does not want to burn bridges with the new dispensation that has replaced the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi. He does not want to annoy Egypt's Army which engineered the coup against Morsi. He is desperate to cling on to whatever residual influence Washington, DC, has in the crucial Arab state in the hope that sooner or later the US will edge itself back into the prime slot it occupied in the Hosni Mubarak era and earlier in the later years of the Anwar Sadat regime when it seemed that the US had brokered a lasting peace in West Asia. At the same time, the US has refrained from condemning the ousted Morsi Government for having betrayed the people's mandate.
But already Obama must have begun to realise the futility of the balancing act. From all accounts, the US is as disliked by supporters of the interim regime effectively controlled by the Army as it is hated by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. The strange situation is not difficult to decipher. While the Brotherhood is upset with the virtual approval that Washington, DC, has given to the military coup, the anti-Morsi camp has not forgotten the warmth the US shared with the Morsi regime, reflected in the many gestures of the US Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson. At the anti-Morsi rally that led to the Brotherhood's fall from power earlier this month, Patterson appeared on the placards that the agitationists held, with a big red cross across her face, signifying her unpopularity.
Obama's refusal to go by the dictionary meaning of a coup — any dictionary he refers to will lead him to the same meaning which he has been dodging — may provide him a short-term, much-needed bargaining point. ‘Be nice to us, else we will utter the C-word', can bring Cairo around to being more friendly to the US. After all, if the US officially acknowledges Morsi's removal as a coup, American laws such as Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act will come into play instantly and cut off aid to Cairo. The US provides $1.5 billion in assistance to Egypt.
But with nearly a month gone since Morsi was summarily sacked, the US appears to have given up on any serious attempt to recognise his ouster as a coup. Never mind if the incompetent Brotherhood leader who became President through a genuine democratic process, was not just deposed but taken into custody. Nobody knows for sure where he has been held or when he will be released. He has been charged with a 2011 jail break and espionage, of all things. Meanwhile, the Army continues to fire at pro-Morsi rallies and kill people. Any democratic leader worth his or her salt will find this revolting. Not Obama.
If the President circumambulates, why should his key officials walk a straight lineIJ They have been going round in circles too. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki termed the Egypt situation as “very fluid”, while House Speaker John Boehner said it was a “tenuous one”. And, with Obama himself calling it an “uncertain period” that heralded a “transition to democracy” (by the overthrow of a democratically elected leader!), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had nothing but this to say: “We have not made a determination about what to call or label the events in Egypt.”
In any case, Obama need not have taken the trouble to choke on words. Even if he had called Morsi's ouster a coup, all that would have happened is a temporary if immediate suspension of aid to Cairo. But then, ways would have been found to renew the assistance. The US is adept at such manoeuvring. We don't have to go far to find an instance of that; neighbouring Pakistan offers it to us. General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf ousted democratically elected leaders but the US showered their regimes with aid that was even more than what it had been giving to the deposed Governments. As a recent article in The New Yorker points out, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, President Jimmy Carter offered General Zia $400 million in economic and military aid to win him over. This came months after the US had suspended assistance when the dictator and religious bigot had hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and had begun supporting Islamist organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami. Insultingly for the US, General Zia rejected the offer, calling it “peanuts”.
The magazine goes on to add, “Under Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, US aid nearly quintupled: about three billion dollars in economic assistance and two billion in military aid. The Reagan Administration also provided three billion dollars to Afghan jihadis. These funds went through the sticky hands of the Inter-Service Intelligence directorate…”
The US continued with its hypocrisy. In 1990, President HW George Bush cut off military aid to Pakistan ostensibly because Islamabad had pursued the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It lost interest in Pakistan after the Soviets left Afghanistan. Then, as The New Yorker says, “After the September 11 attacks, Pakistan abruptly became America's key ally in the ‘war on terror'. Under President George W Bush, the US gave billions of dollars to Pakistan, most of it in unrestricted funds, to combat terrorism. Pervez Musharraf, who served as President between 1999 and 2008, now admits that during his tenure he diverted many of those billions to arm Pakistan against its hobgoblin enemy, India.” That the same Musharraf had overthrown the democratically elected Nawaz Sharif regime, did not come in the way.
In fact, as the magazine wrote, “American aid began flowing into Pakistan in 1984, when a mutual defence agreement was signed. During the next decade, nearly two and half billion dollars in economic assistance, and seven hundred million in military aid, went to Pakistan.” Remember, during much of that period, military dictators who had usurped power ruled Islamabad. Part reason for this generosity was that the US saw Pakistan on its side, while the latter's ‘enemy', India, was perceived to be in the Soviet camp. Whatever, such reasoning does not mitigate the double game that Washington, DC, has indulged in over the decades.