Egypt and the United States formally began relations in 1922 after Egypt gained nominal independence from the United Kingdom. Relations between both countries have largely been dictated by regional issues in the Middle East such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Counterterrorism. But also domestic issues in Egypt regarding the country's human rights record and American support for the regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for which the United States had come under controversy for in the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, and with many dissidents of the current regime describing Sisi's rule as tyrannical.
History Background
The United States had minimal dealings with Egypt when it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire (before 1864) and Britain (1882–1922). President Ulysses S. Grant visited Egypt during his world tour. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956–1970) antagonized the US by his pro-Soviet policies and anti-Israeli rhetoric, but the Americans helped keep him in power by forcing Britain and France to end their invasion in 1956 immediately. The Americans' policy has been to provide strong support to governments that supported US and Israeli interests in the region, especially Egyptian Presidents Anwar Sadat (1970–1981) and Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011).
Between 1948 and 2011, the US provided Egypt with a cumulative total of $71.6 billion in bilateral military and economic aid. That is the largest amount given to any nation in the same period after Israel.
1950s and 1960s Initially, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 did not alter relations with the United States, which continued to send foreign aid, with some claiming that the Nasser regime was initially backed by the United States modeled in the Project FF of the CIA.
The Eisenhower administration saw the Near East as a huge gap into which Soviet influence could be projected, and accordingly required an American-supported security system. The region was perceived as strategically important due to its oil, but the United States lacked sufficient troops to resist a Soviet invasion of the Middle East alone. As a consequence, American diplomats favoured the creation of a NATO-type organisation (the Middle East Defense Organization, or MEDO) in the Near East and centred on Egypt to provide the necessary military power to deter the Soviets from invading.
American policy was torn between a desire to maintain good relations with NATO allies such as Britain and France who were major colonial powers, and to align Third World nationalists, who resented British and French influence, with the Free World camp. From 1953 onwards, American diplomacy had attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the powers involved in the Near East, local and imperial, to unite against the Soviets. After his visit to the Middle East in May 1953 to drum up support for MEDO, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles found to his astonishment that the Arab states were "more fearful of Zionism than of the Communists".
In May 1953, during a meeting with Secretary Dulles, who asked Egypt to join an anti-Soviet alliance, Nasser responded by saying that the Soviet Union hasNasser did not share Dulles's fear of the Soviet Union and insisted vehemently he wanted to see the end of British influence in the Middle East. The CIA offered Nasser a $3 million bribe if he would join the proposed Middle East Defense Organization; Nasser took the money, but refused to join. Nasser wanted an Egyptian-dominated Arab League to be the principal defence organisation in the Near East, which might be informally associated with the United States.
Dulles told Eisenhower in a report of May 1953 that the Arab states believed that the United States would back Israel in aggressive expansion, and that the prestige of Western democracy in the Middle East was very low. The immediate consequence was a proposed new policy of "even-handedness" where the United States very publicly sided with the Arab states in disputes with Israel in 1953–54. Moreover, Dulles did not share any sentimental regard for the Anglo-American "special relationship", which led the Americans to lean towards the Egyptian side in the Anglo-Egyptian disputes. During the negotiations over the British evacuation of the Suez Canal base in 1954–55, the Americans supported Egypt, though trying hard to limit the extent of the damage this might cause to Anglo-American relations.
Most of all, Nasser wanted the United States to supply arms on a generous scale to Egypt. Nasser refused to promise that any US arms he might buy would not be used against Israel, and rejected out of hand the American demand for a Military Assistance Advisory Group to be sent to Egypt as part of the arms sales. His frequent anti-Zionist speeches and sponsorship of the Palestinian fedayeen rendered it difficult for the Eisenhower administration to get the approval of Congress necessary to sell weapons to Egypt.
By 1956, the US was alarmed at the closer ties between Egypt and the Soviet Union and prepared the OMEGA Memorandum as a stick to reduce the regional power of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. When Egypt recognized Communist China, the US ended talks about funding the Aswan Dam, a high-prestige project desired by Egypt. The dam was later built by the Soviet Union. When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, the Suez Crisis erupted with Britain and France threatening war to retake control of the canal and depose Nasser. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proposed creating an international consortium to run the canal, a solution that Nasser rejected.
At the same time, the United States grew unwilling to support a foreign intervention against Egypt for fear of Soviet intervention. It also was opposed to European colonialism and worried that Western intervention in Egypt would weaken its authority to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Israel invaded the Suez in October 1956, and Britain and France, in league with Israel, sent in troops to seize the canal. Using heavy diplomatic and economic pressure, the Eisenhower administration soon forced Britain and France to withdraw.Burns, William J. "Punishing Nasser." In Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt, 1955-1981. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. The US delegation to the United Nations voted in favor of Security Council resolutions condemning the invasion and creating the United Nations Emergency Force. More significantly, the US threatened to sell its bonds and deny emergency International Monetary Fund assistance for oil shortages, which would cause a devaluation of the pound sterling that would have left Britain unable to import crucial goods.Kyle, Keith (2003). Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East. I.B. Tauris. . That American pressure led to a temporary warming of Egyptian relations with the United States, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the US would consider closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping as an act of war.
Relations became strained again in the 1960s because Egypt purchased Soviet arms and refused to accept a US-brokered arms control agreement for the Arab-Israeli conflict, which led to the US selling M48A4 Mag'ach tanks and Douglas A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft to Israel in 1965. The arms sale escalated tensions further, with Egypt expelling the Emergency Force and closing the Straits of Tiran. After US President Lyndon B. Johnson had failed to gain diplomatic support for an international naval operation to reopen the straits by force, he reluctantly decided to support a unilateral preemptive invasion by Israel. The Six-Day War ended with the Israel Defense Forces occupying most of the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, which Egypt had occupied. The United States tried to negotiate a ceasefire to prevent a Soviet intervention and endorsed United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which encouraged Israel to return its occupied territories in exchange for peace agreements. However, Egypt accused the US of supporting Israel during the war. On June 8, 1967, Egypt severed diplomatic relations with the US and expelled Americans in Egypt. During and after the war, Egypt aligned with the Soviets, who airlifted arms and ammunition to rebuild the Egyptian Armed Forces and sent thousands of advisors to train the Egyptian Army and manage its air defense. Egypt, along with the Soviet Union and Israel, rejected the Rogers Plan, by Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, to resolve to the Arab-Israeli conflict but accepted a lighter agreement to end the War of Attrition.
1973–2011
At the beginning of the 1970s American-Egypt relations remained poor because of the presence of anti-aircraft batteries near the Suez Canal. After the death of Nasser, his more moderate successor, Anwar Sadat, opened backchannel negotiations with the Nixon administration for a peace agreement with Israel, but they stalled because of Israel's unwillingness to withdraw the IDF from the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Confident that Egypt would not try to invade Israel, Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger delayed negotiations until after the 1972 United States presidential election and the 1973 Israeli legislative election. Instead, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise invasion of Israel starting the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and Egypt rejected a joint American-Soviet ceasefire proposal. During the war, the United States agreed to an airlift to resupply Israel and accepted Soviet ceasefire proposals at the Security Council, but Kissinger encouraged Israeli forces to continue to advance into Egypt after the tide of the war had shifted. The United States finally convinced Israel to accept a ceasefire because of the OPEC oil embargo and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's threat of direct intervention by the Soviet Armed Forces.
After the war, Egyptian foreign policy began to shift as a result of the change in Egypt's leadership from the fiery Nasser to the much more moderate Anwar Sadat (October 1970) and of the emerging peace process between Egypt and Israel. Sadat realized that reaching a settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict was a precondition for Egyptian development. To achieve that goal, Sadat ventured to enhance relations with the US to foster a peace process with Israel. After a seven-year hiatus, both countries re-established normal diplomatic relations on February 28, 1974. At the same time, the United States engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" to negotiate disengagement agreements between the Arab world and Israel. Israel and Egypt signed the American-brokered Sinai Interim Agreement in 1975.
Sadat asked Moscow for help, and Washington responded by offering more favorable financial aid and technology for the Egyptian Army. The advantages for the US included Egypt's expulsion of 20,000 Soviet advisors and the reopening of the Suez Canal which were seen by Nixon as "an investment in peace."Craig A. Daigle, "The Russians are going: Sadat, Nixon and the Soviet presence in Egypt." Middle East 8.1 (2004): 1. Encouraged by Washington, Sadat opened negotiations with Israel that resulted most notably in the Camp David Accords, which were brokered by US President Jimmy Carter, and peace with Israel in a historic peace treaty in 1979.Adfi Safty, "Sadat's Negotiations with the United States and Israel: From Sinai to Camp David," American Journal of Economics & Sociology, July 1991, 50#3 pp 285–298 Sadat's domestic policy, Infitah, was aimed at modernizing the economy and removing Nasser's heavy-handed controls. Sadat realized that American aid was essential to that goal since it allowed him to disengage from the Israeli conflict and pursue a regional peace policy.Mannin G. Weinbaum, "Egypt's 'Infitah' and the Politics of US Economic Assistance," Middle Eastern Studies, March 1985, Vol. 21 Issue 2, pp 206–222
2011 Egyptian Revolution and aftermath