By: William B. Quandt
Egypt has just about completed the lengthy process set out months ago for electing its parliament. Many more months will pass before we have a clear picture of how power will be configured in the new Egypt. But one point is already clear: Political Islam is moving from being the dominant opposition voice in the largest Arab country to being a dominant voice of government.
Something similar has happened in Tunisia and, to a lesser degree, in Morocco We should anticipate comparable changes elsewhere in the region.
This is not to say that all manifestations of political Islam are the same. Indeed, the important point for Americans to understand about the new Middle East politics is that the political manifestation of Islamic values can take many forms. U.S. policymakers and diplomats are going to have to understand the important distinctions among different tendencies within Islam — just as, in the past, they came to terms with the many dimensions of Arab nationalism.
Two real-world models from the Middle East region are worth considering as we prepare for our engagement with political Islam in the Arab world. First, there is the relatively successful model of U.S.-Turkish relations. Second, there is the negative example of our relations with Iran — a picture of almost unrelieved hostility over the past three decades.
It is very much in our interest that U.S.-Egyptian relations resemble those we have with Turkey rather than with Iran. And there is no intrinsic reason why that should be impossible.
Turkey and Egypt are not, of course, identical cases, but they are both geo-strategically important countries with which we have had a long, and generally positive, relationship. Both relationships were nurtured by close military-to-military relations — but there were also strong political and diplomatic ties to the largely secular political leaderships.
When the Justice and Development Party came to power in Turkey in 2002, some in Washington feared that the party’s mild Islamist coloration would result in estrangement. Indeed, there have been moments of strain in the relationship as Turkey has, at times, pursued more independent and populist policies within its region.
The same is quite likely to happen in Egypt as the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brethren) plays a growing role in determining Egypt’s foreign policy. But, on balance, those fears have not been borne out.
With both these countries, Washington is likely to find it has common interests which draw us toward cooperation as well as currents of public opinion – here and there – that drive us apart. Turks are frequently critical of what they see as U.S. insensitivity to their Kurdish problem — made more complex by our intervention in Iraq and the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish state there — and to our strongly pro-Israeli policies.
The new Egypt will likely share this latter concern. It will also likely nurture suspicions after decades during which Washington supported the regime of Husni Mubarak and shunned the Muslim Brethren.
President Barack Obama, like President George W. Bush before him, has seemed to appreciate the strategic importance of both Turkey and Egypt. Within months of entering the White House, Obama made trips to both countries and give major speeches that were generally well received.
But building on these initial moves proved to be more difficult. In May 2010, the Mavi Marmara affair – a Turkish ship carrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza was stopped by Israel on the high seas with the loss of life of eight Turks and one Turkish-American – created an acute crisis between Washington’s closest partners in the region.
This put the United States in an awkward position, and there were some in Washington who began to speak of Turkey as drifting “eastward” under the influence of its Islamist government. (A book I edited last year,“Troubled Triangle: The United States, Turkey and Israel in the New Middle East,” examines this).
Fortunately for U.S.-Turkish relations, common interests and good sense prevailed. Obama has invested considerable time and energy in cultivating a personal relationship with the sometimes prickly – but also popular and astute — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
As a result, differences over Israel/Palestine and Iran – clearly important issues – have not fractured the bilateral relationship. As former State Department official in the Bush administration, Philip Zelikow, noted in “Troubled Triangle,” when U.S. officials dealing with Turkey look in their inbox, it is filled with many areas of cooperation — from Afghanistan and northern Iraq to more recent policies on missile defense, Libya and Syria.
Turkey has also been an enthusiastic supporter of the Arab Spring — especially the changes in Tunisia and Egypt, where Erdo?an enjoys considerable popularity.
It is impossible to know how the U.S. relationship with Egypt will unfold. But it is not difficult to imagine that it might resemble the trajectory of U.S.-Turkish relations.
There will, of course, be tensions — especially as Egypt expresses an independent, and probably critical, stance toward Israel. But no political current in Egypt is talking about abrogating the peace treaty with Israel.
Some in Congress will, no doubt, call for pressure on Egypt if it supports the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. But Obama should follow the pattern he established with Turkey of engaging seriously with the new Egyptian leadership.
Military-to-military relations remain good. But more will be needed on the political and diplomatic level. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently visited and met with an array of Egyptians — including leaders from the Muslim Brethren. Such contacts could prove to be important for the future.
As the shape of the new Middle East comes into focus, we are likely to face an array of countries eager to assert their individuality and independent. Populism will be a major force in public opinion. We will have to get used to a restless, argumentative tone to the politics of the region.
The vision of a Pax Americana in the region — always a pipe dream – has evaporated. We should stop thinking in terms of “client states” that will do our bidding in return for aid.
We still have many key interests in the region – the free flow of oil at tolerable prices; Arab-Israeli peace; non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; encouraging peaceful democratic change, and defusing the intense anti-Americanism that has swept much of the region recently.
For most of these goals we will find partners in the region — including Islamists, who will be willing to cooperate if treated with respect. Obama had it right in 2009, when he spoke of the need for “mutual interests and mutual respect” as the basis for improved relations with the Muslim world.
Maintaining good relations with both Turkey and Egypt will be crucial to Washington’s ability to deal with complex challenges, including possible change in Syria, continued tensions with Iran, the adverse spillover from the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and other unforeseeable challenges that will flow from the changes underway across the region.
Learning to deal with politicians who come out of an Islamist tradition will take some getting used to on the part of many U.S. policymakers and diplomats. To say nothing of the broader American public. The current election-year atmosphere, where several Republican candidates engage in blatant forms of Islamophobia, does not make this any easier.
But whoever is president in 2013 will want to have good working relations with both Turkey and Egypt. As we try to forge ties with Egypt’s new leaders, let us look to the Turkish example in the hope that we can avoid the disaster than has befallen our relations with Iran.
William B. Quandt is the Edward R. Stettinius Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and served on the National Security Council Staff in the 1970s with responsibility for Arab-Israeli affairs. He is the author of “Peace Process: American Diplomacy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967,” and editor of “Troubled Triangle: The United States, Turkey and Israel in the New Middle East.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Freedom and Justice Party.
