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Donald Trump’s first meeting as president of the United States with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi offers a significant opportunity but also some risks for U.S. security interests and values. U.S.-Egypt ties have witnessed historic strains in the past few years at a time when the broader Middle East slipped into a state of violent fragmentation that threatens both U.S. interests and the global order. The region faces the confluence of global terrorist networks based within its territories; civil wars, state collapse, and mass migration; proxy battles between regional and global powers; and tensions between authoritarian states and young populations facing high unemployment.

Egypt currently appears tenuously positioned to avoid the worst fates of its neighbors. However, Cairo’s new political and economic order remains inchoate and brittle, lacking a concrete plan for defeating terror networks, advancing large-scale job creation, or offering more effective or representative governance. Instead, the country’s civic space has been smothered to deny openings for the open exchange of ideas needed to defeat extremism, while Egypt’s economy goes from crisis to crisis.

Regionally, Egypt has charted an independent course, but its influence in lessening regional tensions beyond its borders will depend on its recovery within them. Egypt’s leaders promise national renewal. However, absent significant reforms and credible plans to see them through, the Middle East’s most populous nation risks sliding back into stagnation and repression that heighten the chances that its simmering political, economic, security, and societal challenges will once again boil over. Under President Trump, there is also a new risk that cooperation between governments in Cairo and Washington deepens in ways that actually leave both countries worse off, mutually reinforcing their governments’ most repressive tendencies, leaving the relationship—and Egypt itself—on shakier foundations for the long term.

Egypt has an opportunity to take proactive steps to address each of these challenges, and the United States can play a meaningful role in helping Egypt succeed—to the benefit of U.S. national interests and the Egyptian people. But this will only happen if both nations demonstrate the vision and political will to make it so.

Renewed U.S. outreach toward a Cairo government hungry for international recognition could create new leverage and a fresh hearing for the United States with Egypt’s leaders and many of its people. However, warmer relations are not an end in themselves. What matters most is what they achieve for the interests of both countries and their people. It would be a dangerous outcome for both sides if closer ties between President Trump’s Washington and President Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi’s Cairo simply means abetting each other’s worst impulses, turning a blind eye to Egyptian domestic crackdown in exchange for an Arab leader vouching for President Trump’s most misguided policies. For decades, Trump has spoken of the need to demand more from U.S. partners around the world and his refusal to be beholden to outdated arrangements. Egypt should not be exempt from this Trump template. President Sisi has also said that he is not beholden to the old ways of doing business.

For more than a decade now, the relationship between the United States and Egypt has drifted and declined. Previously, Egypt was considered a pillar of America’s Middle East policies, from Israeli-Arab peacemaking to Cold War cooperation. But under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, relations soured over Egypt’s repression in defiance of U.S. calls for reform,¹ a lack of progress toward Mideast peace, and Egypt’s own declining regional stature as U.S. focus shifted eastward. Today, U.S-Egypt relations are beset by unmet expectations, a “two-way trust deficit,” an outdated framework for ties, and questions on both sides about the future.²

President Trump has struck a starkly different tone from his two predecessors on Egypt. In contrast to President Obama’s wary distance, in September, then-candidate Trump offered unreserved praise for Egyptian President Sisi’s leadership style after meeting him at the United Nations and pledged to be “a loyal friend, not simply an ally.”³ Sisi warmly reciprocated, praising Trump’s “deep and great understanding” of the region and expressing hopes that Trump will deepen U.S. engagement with Egypt.⁴ Meanwhile, Egyptian officials have ignored Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric to focus on his implicit endorsement of Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood, or MB, policies.⁵

If it wishes to renew ties, the Trump administration should insist upon credible plans from Egypt to repair stalled U.S.-Egypt cooperation and also to anchor it with the objective of helping Egypt build sturdier political, economic, and security-related foundations at home for a stability that can last.⁶ These two steps, more than any others, would demonstrate Egypt’s enduring value to the United States while also putting Egypt on a path toward renewed regional influence in the years ahead with U.S. support. To that end, the incoming administration should:

• Seek improved ties, but ask for better from Egypt in return. The incoming team should approach Egypt with a well-defined set of requests, including—as enumerated below—a public message from President Sisi to Egyptians that the United States is a partner and not a threat, actively facilitating U.S. economic and military cooperation, opening space for civil society and addressing outstanding cases involving U.S. citizens, and protecting religious minorities. The prospect of an eventual White House visit for President Sisi should be held as an incentive for progress on these issues.

• Continue to raise the issues of governance, preservation of open civic space, and government practices toward citizens. For the United States, one reason that Egypt’s repression represents a strategic liability is because it undermines long-term efforts to defeat violent extremists in the battle of ideas. For reasons both moral and strategic, the new U.S. presidential administration should expend some of its political capital with Cairo by encouraging tangible progress on opening Egypt’s forcibly narrowed public sphere and implementing good governance reforms and continuing to raise, publicly and privately, issues regarding the rights of Egyptian citizens. Congress should ensure that these issues remain on the bilateral agenda. Abandoning them is shortsighted.

• Focus security cooperation on the four pillars, plus training. Efforts to refocus military-to-military cooperation and assistance around four pillars, or priority areas—counterterrorism, the Sinai, border security, and maritime security—should continue. A fifth pillar should be training for Egyptian security personnel.

• Encourage Egypt to craft an integrated, broad-based strategy to counter violent extremism that enhances respect for basic rights of all. President Sisi has made advancing a more tolerant version of Islam a rhetorical centerpiece of his approach to countering extremist ideology. The United States should prioritize encouraging Egypt to implement a national strategy for countering violent extremism that includes outreach to at-risk youth and communities with tailored economic programs and community-police partnerships. U.S. government and technology companies can help Egypt ensure its religious authorities’ anti-extremism messages reach more people, faster, and in simpler language to have a global impact.

• Enlist U.S. technical experts and other partners to help Egypt reform economically, but only where Egyptians buy in. Egypt needs to create economic value. What Egypt needs most is a credible economic vision to carry the country from chronic crisis and dependency on aid toward reforms to install the economic “software” needed to attract investment and create jobs. The United States can encourage such a vision alongside international partners, but extensive support for economic reform should depend on Egyptian buy-in at the highest levels.⁷

• Help Egypt meet security threats—but not with overly broad, politicized U.S. terrorism designations. The new Trump administration should seek effective security and intelligence cooperation with Egypt, consistent with the rule of law, to help it confront the threat of violent Islamists. However, although the Egyptian MB opposes the current Egyptian government and many of its leaders hold extreme views worth pushing back against, that alone does not qualify the organization for legal designation as terrorists by the United States—nor does it justify brutality in response. U.S. terrorism designations should be reserved for violence, not ideology; for actors directly engaged in violence that threatens U.S. interests; made consistent with legal standards for past designations; and based on rigorous, professional, and independent intelligence assessments—not punditry, bigotry, ideology, or political interference or opportunism. The fundamentalist ideas of some nonviolent Islamists are best countered through civil society and through offering more compelling alternatives in the marketplace of ideas. Even if current U.S. and Egyptian leaders agree on the risk posed by the MB, that must not negate the concerns over Cairo’s human rights abuses and the counterproductive nature of some of its security measures in confronting Islamist opponents.

In researching this report, the authors conducted exhaustive field interviews in Egypt from May through July 2016 with President Sisi, top security and economic officials, parliamentarians, business leaders, cultural commentators, and other Egyptian and U.S. experts. On both sides, significant questions were raised about the future of the bilateral relationship.

U.S. critics rightly point to the limits of U.S. influence inside Egypt, laid bare in America’s inability to shape Egypt’s political path since 2011. They raise the issue of Egypt’s repression, which has closed off the civic and economic space Egypt needs to recover and could sow the seeds for further instability. They point to the pervasive Egyptian mistrust and obstruction of U.S. efforts and treatment one expects from an adversary rather than a partner.⁸ These analysts raise doubts about Egypt’s enduring regional importance and whether Egypt has the political will or inclination to translate an increased U.S. investment into tangible benefits to U.S. interests or the difficult steps it would take to achieve a more lasting stability. As one former National Security Council staffer put it, “If Trump thinks Japan is a bad ally, what will he make of Egypt?”⁹

Many Egyptians, for their part, find U.S. policy perplexing: human rights critiques that they feel single them out, an insistence on differentiating between the MB and Al Qaeda when they view both as extremists, and hypercomplex policies that do not send a clear message of support. Many Egyptians express confusion as to what the United States fundamentally wants from Egypt and reach for explanations as to why the Obama administration was not tougher on former President Mohamed Morsi, given the public criticisms of Sisi’s record.¹⁰

The opening to Egypt that the Trump administration is signaling will be an important moment to test many of these critiques—as well as the assumptions of those who have claimed that uncritical U.S. support for Cairo will yield enhanced Egyptian cooperation on America’s priorities. If greater U.S.-Egypt cooperation does not provide clear, direct benefits to U.S. national security interests or proves incompatible with values needed to defeat extremism, then policymakers should consider right-sizing the relationship. This alternative plan would entail a managed and amicable process of decreasing ties and lessening the focus in a bilateral relationship by both the United States and Egypt.¹¹ 

Egypt faces serious security threats that endanger its economy and stability. The downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai in October 2015 showed how vulnerable the country’s economy remains to terrorism.¹² A heinous attack on a Coptic church in Cairo in December 2016 killed 28 people and wounded many more.¹³ Still, despite some high-profile attacks and regular low-level attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt’s terror problem has failed to metastasize in ways seen regionally—in itself a measure of relative success.

Libya

The aftermath of the 2011 Libya intervention continues to reverberate in Egypt and across the region. Several Egyptian officials raised Libya and its long and porous border as Egypt’s paramount security challenge. Egyptians are concerned about IS, weapons smuggling via land and sea, MB networks, and the risk of Libya-based extremists infiltrating Bedouin communities in Egypt’s western desert.

On the Egyptian side of the border, Egyptian forces have uncovered weapons caches and suffered checkpoint attacks and firefights. Meanwhile, in western cities such as Marsa Matrouh, Egypt has taken targeted, measured nonmilitary steps to co-opt local Salafi clerics and prevent radicalization of local Bedouins after President Morsi’s overthrow. Security officials hope to develop this area of Egypt by investing in tourism and other sectors as a bulwark against spillover instability—an effort that might benefit from U.S. assistance.¹⁴

Egypt has also supported Libya’s General Khalifa Haftar, military leader of anti-Islamist east Libyan forces, despite international concerns that Haftar stands in the way of a united Libya.¹⁵ Egypt sees Haftar as a necessary bulwark against the Libyan MB and other groups on Egypt’s border.

Sinai

The security threats in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula are a challenge not only for Egypt but also for broader regional security, as the networks of terrorist groups in the Sinai have an effect on events next door in the Gaza Strip and Israel. Egyptian officials claim significant progress in fighting militants since extremists attempted to take over the city of Sheikh Zuwaid in July 2015.¹⁶ Today, security officials underscore that local ISIS-affiliated militants cannot capture or hold even a single town. They also claim that the conflict area is contained to a corner of northeastern Sinai.¹⁷ Still, the terrorist threat in the Sinai is far from gone, with militants showing their ability to strike from east of the Suez Canal to the Israeli border. Indeed, the first quarter of 2016 was the deadliest for Egypt’s security forces in the past two years.¹⁸ And although there are sometimes lulls in attacks after major military operations, militants have continued to attack checkpoints, assassinate security servicemen, and kill locals accused of working for the government.

Within the Egyptian military, there is a debate between those favoring more conventional security tactics and those seeking a more surgical application of force as part of a holistic counterinsurgency strategy.¹⁹ This second group of security officials speak of launching a new phase in Egypt’s Sinai operation focused on economic development plans to build mosques, medical centers, schools, and other infrastructure projects in northeast Sinai. Saudi Arabia has also pledged a $1.5 billion loan to develop the Sinai, and Egyptian officials hope to link ambitious plans for the east bank of the Suez Canal with development in the rest of the peninsula.²⁰ Despite difficulties to date, the United States should continue to seek opportunities to encourage and assist in economic development in the Sinai.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Differing threat perceptions regarding the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were a contentious issue in U.S.-Egypt relations during the Obama administration. From 2012 to 2013, Egypt was led by a president from the MB and a national parliament dominated by the MB that was elected by the Egyptian people in free and competitive elections. That government was ousted by the military in July 2013.

Since 2013, Egypt has suffered from a wave of violence by armed groups and individuals believed by Egypt’s government to have ties to or be taking inspiration from the MB. This violence ranges from sabotage of critical infrastructure to assassinations of security officers.²¹ Following former President Morsi’s ouster and the violent clearing of MB protest camps and anti-government violence by Islamists, the Egyptian government designated the entire MB as a terrorist organization, arresting many of its leaders and seizing its assets.²² Groups and political parties such as the al-Wasat Party and the Islamic Group that initially aligned with the MB but revised their positions have been allowed to operate within certain boundaries. In large measure, this post-2013 wave of violence against the Egyptian state has been checked.

However, the rise of new terrorist groups in 2016—Hassm and Liwaa al-Thawra—indicate that some elements possibly affiliated with or inspired by the MB are choosing violence. Hassm has launched several attacks that extend beyond targeting security forces, including the attempted assassinations of former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the assistant prosecutor general, and a prominent judge overseeing MB-related cases—the latter two with car bombs.²³ Liwaa al-Thawra’s most notable attack to date has been the assassination of Egyptian Army Brigadier General Adel Ragai in front of his home in Cairo in October 2016—perhaps the most senior army official assassinated in the Egyptian mainland since President Sadat’s assassination in 1981.²⁴ In its statements, Liwaa al-Thawra has explicitly acknowledged late MB leader Mohamed Kamal, who was accused by Egyptian authorities of founding a pro-violence wing inside the MB.²⁵

Under President Obama, U.S. officials acknowledged that individual MB members have engaged in violence but have not, to date, concluded that such steps reflect an official policy shift to abandon its past renunciation of nonviolence rather than independent actions by offshoots.²⁶ The fragmented nature of the post-crackdown MB makes such distinctions even more difficult to draw, although a wing of the organization that favors “revolutionary action” has recently assumed control over all formal bodies of the MB, sidelining leaders in exile who may have been rhetorically against violence.²⁷

The key issue for U.S. policy toward Egypt, however, is how both countries can most effectively combat terrorism and extremism in ways that produce real and enduring results. Even if Cairo’s approach can be said to have successfully tamped down violence, it remains unsustainable if the threat escalates. The Obama administration’s concerns with Egypt’s post-2013 crackdown on the MB stemmed not from favoritism or lack of understanding of the threat the MB poses to Egypt’s government but from lessons on how governments can most effectively treat political opponents, defeat terrorism, and prevent radicalization.

Egypt’s large-scale arrest of thousands of suspected MB operatives and others could have dangerous long-term results as prison conditions risk radicalization. A heavy-handed approach also risks alienating communities into becoming safe havens for militant extremists. So far, most would-be terrorists in mainland Egypt have been rank amateurs. A dragnet policy of arrest and brutal tactics may yield short-term results while doing longer-term damage. Still, more targeted approaches will be needed to counter better-trained terrorists with a higher degree of operational security, such as ISIS.

The Egyptian government should develop a credible plan that offers off-ramps for MB members and other anti-government Islamists. The Egyptian government has called on MB members to either abandon their group or cease demanding the overthrow of the government. As the government continues to succeed in weakening the organization, it will be necessary to create pathways for these individuals to re-engage in society and politics. Already the government pragmatically allows Islamists who accept the status quo, such as the Salafist Nour Party, to operate and win seats in Parliament.²⁸ This has arguably helped prevent the party’s rank and file from joining terrorist groups in large numbers. Yet this does not mean that Sisi secretly supports Salafists.

Egypt’s government should recognize that the same is true for other countries in the region, such as Jordan and Morocco, that allow the participation of Islamists. It was also true of the U.S. government during the Obama and previous administrations, which was not endorsing Islamists when it advised Cairo to allow a degree of pragmatic political participation of Islamist elements who abandon violence or do not challenge the government’s legitimacy. Doing so now could arguably weaken the MB’s appeal by giving its members an alternate path. Furthermore, allowing secularists, intellectuals, and progressive Muslim scholars the necessary political and civic space could counterbalance the voices of political Islam and fundamentalism in society, as to not repeat the mistakes of the Sadat and Mubarak regimes whose policies inadvertently facilitated the growth of these factions in Egypt.

Future U.S.-Egypt Security Cooperation

Despite policy disagreements, military-to-military cooperation shows some signs of improvement, particularly in the area of countering roadside bombs. Given Egyptian challenges and hard-won U.S. expertise in Iraq and Afghanistan, this should be an area of growth in security cooperation. But American military trainers and operators stress that technology offers no so-called magic bullet. Assistance to Egypt must be accompanied by both better access to U.S. personnel and transparency regarding the nature of the threat of roadside bombs in the Sinai and advanced training for Egyptian forces tasked with addressing it. U.S. military officials also hope Cairo heeds advice regarding the need for a new, more comprehensive program for Egyptian troops to more effectively use American equipment and counter terrorists in the Sinai.²⁹ Future requests for advanced equipment or Excess Defense Articles for Sinai should be predicated on Egypt showing progress in these areas.

The capacity of Egypt’s security forces also remains an issue, from airport security to operations in the Sinai to policing by the Ministry of Interior. In addition, Egyptian authorities continue to be wary of implementing law and order in places such as Upper Egypt where sectarian violence is often followed by so-called reconciliation sessions, which give legal impunity to attackers of religious minorities instead of prosecution and prison terms, in a bid to appease often-armed rural citizens.³⁰ If properly designed and executed, a more robust liaison relationship between the FBI and Egypt’s National Security Agency—Cairo’s key agency tasked with fighting domestic terrorism—could have an effect on its professionalism and institutional culture, leading it to rely less on coercive methods and more on sound interrogation methods and technology. A more robust relationship between the CIA and Egyptian General Intelligence could also help both countries address threats and transfer expertise—but this must be navigated in a way that ensures a sharp focus on terrorist threats consistent with the rule of law and protections for basic rights and not broader campaigns to close off civic space.

Egypt has completed the political road map President Sisi set forth in mid-2013, but it has neither fully consolidated its new political order nor delivered anything approaching the “real democracy” it promised.³¹ A period of hypernationalistic fervor has given way to growing public frustration over economic issues. However, as one liberal Egyptian lamented, “There is no organized effort to push back against authoritarianism.”³² While spiking prices for basic staples such as sugar raise the prospect of a so-called revolution of the hungry, Egyptians traumatized by years of instability seem wary of further unrest. In an interview with the authors, Sisi said, “I do not have a political support base, but I have a popular one.”³³

While the Sisi government has shattered Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood beyond coherence or recognition,³⁴ government leaders perceive themselves as still engaged in a kill-or-be-killed struggle against the Islamists they helped depose—a campaign that has affected Egyptians who are not Islamists as well. This fight not only represents the Sisi government’s rationale for ruling, it extends into every aspect of governance, from the treatment of civil society to economic reforms. The fear is that anything other than tight state control creates opportunities for Islamists to exploit. Having come this far, the key question for Egypt is how this threat perception evolves. Can Egypt find the self-confidence to move beyond such a stifling paradigm or will these constraints calcify into brittle politics that leave Egypt permanently on its back foot, vulnerable to each new shock, and without the resilience that broad-based governance offers or the pathways to employment or civic participation that give young people alternatives to violence and protest?

Egypt’s choice so far is clear, and it is troubling. By many accounts, Egypt is in the midst of the broadest and most intense crackdown against political dissent since the 1960s. Even activists who supported Morsi’s ouster have been exiled, jailed, put on trial, or intimidated off the political stage.³⁵ As General James Mattis, now U.S. secretary of defense, acknowledged last April in calling for support for President Sisi, “Obviously, we’re concerned about [the fact that] any political system has to have a counterweight, and whether or not there is sufficient allowance for legitimate political dissent.”³⁶

Speaking to the authors, President Sisi was bracingly frank about Egypt’s social and political troubles. Since the late 1960s, Sisi said, “The Egyptian state has deteriorated in all areas.” His goal for his first four-year term, he declared, is to “prevent the state from collapsing” as it almost did five years ago. Sisi argued for patience with Egypt, pointing to South Korea as a successful example of modernization and democratization by an American ally with American support. “It took 20 years,” he asserted, “but America’s priority was for South Korea to succeed, so [America] looked the other way on abuses.”