February 2015 saw the dawning of a new strategic reality in the Middle East: Egypt completely broke its strategic dependence on the United States.
And, once again, no one in Washington noticed. Once again? Let us begin with the first episode.
It was on April 9, 1972, that this writer debriefed a source who had returned to the U.S. from Cairo with startling news from his meetings with senior Egyptian Defense Force commanders: The Egyptian Government of Anwar Sadat would terminate its strategic relationship with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) within six months, and all Soviet advisors would be asked to leave Egypt. And yet Egypt was, at that time, 100 percent dependent on Soviet military equipment, advice, and aid.
The source was impeccable; his access was unquestionably top-level (and his relationships in Cairo were on a personal level; he was not a U.S. Government official). The information was used in the second edition of the weekly Defense Newsletter, the forerunner of this journal, and published on April 10, 1972. It was distributed to the yawning disinterest of some and the angry incredulity of others in Washington, DC: This could simply not be the case; Egypt was locked in to the Soviets and had no recourse or strategic maneuvering room. Egypt, for Washington, DC, was irretrievably in the enemy camp.
Less than six months later, on July 18, 1972, President Anwar Sadat did indeed evict the Soviets. The U.S. was, in any event, preoccupied and still failed to pick up the threads. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was deeply engaged in negotiations with North Vietnamese officials, led by Le Duc Tho, in Paris; the Vietnam War was winding down; the U.S. Administration of Richard Nixon was negotiating the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I).
Just over a year later, on Oct. 6, 1973, Egypt launched its military offensive against Israel — with its existing Soviet equipment, but without Soviet support and without any supplies of spare parts or Soviet servicing for more than a year — to recover control of the Suez Canal and the Sinai. The war transformed Egypt, and the U.S. — with the Camp David Accords signed on Sept. 17, 1978, following Anwar Sadat’s peace offensive with Israel and his visit there in 1977 — began to pay attention to the reality that Egypt was not in “the enemy camp”.
What President Sadat had successfully done was undertake a two-stage transformation of Egypt’s strategic position in such complete secrecy that, despite the massive, national-level nature of the preparations for each stage, had gone unnoticed by the Soviets, the U.S. and NATO, and by Israel.
When he inherited the leadership of Egypt, with the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, the nation was still in the grip of depression as a result of the humiliating Six Day War with Israel (June 5-10, 1967). Sadat inherited a military force in which just six percent of its officers had a university education.
By 1973, when the war began, more than 60 percent of Egyptian officers had received, or begun, university education. The Egyptian military had gone from a system which had totally eschewed initiative at all levels to one which began to think.
Sadat transformed the global strategic framework by moving dominance over the Red Sea/Suez from Soviet influence and ensuring that the Suez could reopen; he transformed Egypt’s economic and military framework; and he achieved peace with Israel. And no major foreign power knew what he was planning until he executed his strategies.
Egypt’s current President, Abdul Fatah Saeed Hussein Khalil al-Sisi, has demonstrated that he has Sadat’s strategic grasp and courage.
He moved on July 3, 2013, to terminate what had been a blatant distortion of a democratic process which — with the strong insistence of the U.S. Barack Obama White House — had put in place a Muslim Brotherhood Government under President Mohammed Morsi. In subsequent elections, on May 26-27, 2014, former Gen. Sisi was overwhelmingly elected to the Presidency.
President Sisi, in nine months, has transformed Egypt, while Washington, essentially, ignored him. Apart from significant economic initiatives to revive the country after a devastating year of collapse under Morsi, the Government of Sisi and Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehlab have begun to rebuild Egypt’s strategic posture and future, essentially operating on the premise that Washington will no longer be a supportive ally.
To begin with, a new strategic framework is emerging in the region, with a bloc consisting of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt and Israel have the capacity to call on Russia; Israel has increasingly close relations with Greece and Cyprus, and Egypt, too, is cooperating with Israel, Cyprus, and Greece on the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In October 2014, the Government signed contracts worth $375 million (out of a total project cost of $8.4 billion) to, within less than one year, deepen and widen the Suez Canal, including the construction of a 50km parallel section of the canal to allow ships to transit simultaneously in both directions, and widening and deepening a number of existing sections to a depth of 24m.
Despite economic and security concerns, the government took the risk to deliver the finished, wider canal for use by August 2015. That is on schedule, and stands to significantly increase the income potential of the Canal, Egypt’s most significant earner of foreign exchange.
Once it became clear that the Obama White House was using its military supply relationship with Egypt to attempt to enforce a relaxation of the Government’s ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sisi government began to discuss the prospect of buying Russian military systems.
U.S. officials, when told of this development in 2014, laughed off the suggestion that Egypt could so easily replace its extensive U.S. inventory, including its 250 or so Lockheed Martin F-16 combat aircraft variants, its almost 1,500 M-1A1 Abrams and M-60A1 main battle tanks, and other systems.
They forgot how easily Sadat had replaced the Soviets, and that he had been able to continue military operations without immediately finding a new supplier state. The significance of the Egyptian military industrial community, particularly centered around the Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI), was critical for that process.
Discussions with Russia for combat aircraft have not yet yielded results, but the Sisi Government had also begun negotiations with France for major combat systems. Much of these negotiations were delayed by the complexities of financing arrangements and Egypt’s struggle to rebuild its economy. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE had immediately pledged $20 billion in financial aid when Gen. Sisi won the presidency, and $12 billion was made available almost immediately.
Not insignificantly, U.S. aid to Egypt under the Camp David accords amounts to only $1.3 billion a year.
Then, quietly, the Egyptian Navy in late October 2014 ordered four Gowind 2500-type corvettes from the French shipyard, DCNS, in a 600 million euros ($684 million) deal. These vessels, at 102m (335 ft.) length overall (LOA) more like light frigates than corvettes, represented the first French ship order by the Egyptian Navy4. This was a major step forward for the Egyptian Navy, and demonstrated that the Sisi Government was not waiting for U.S. civil or military aid to move forward.
Then Egyptian government, on Feb. 16, 2015, confirmed an order for the rapid delivery of a new 6,000 tonne disp. FREMM frigate, plus an additional vessel of the same class rapidly thereafter, and 24 AMD Rafale combat aircraft, in an order worth 5.2 billion euros ($5.9 billion). The move culminated months of negotiations over payment terms, but allowed the Egyptian Navy to take delivery in June 2015 of the frigate from the French DCNS shipyard where it had been undergoing completion for the French Navy as the Normandie. The ship was undergoing sea trials at the time of the contract, and it was understood that it could be handed over to the Egyptian Navy in operational condition by Aug. 5, 2015. At the same time, the Egyptian Air Force would take delivery of the first three of the 24 Rafales, out of French Air Force stocks, to enable their participation in ceremonies for the opening of the expanded Suez Canal in August 2015.
Clearly, the Sisi Government wishes to utilize the unveiling of the massive increase in capacity of the Suez Canal as a major step forward for Egypt, similar to the opening of the original Suez Canal in November 1869. Isma’il Pasha, the Khedive (ruler) of Egypt and Sudan, utilized the Canal opening to portray Egypt as a transformed strategic entity. Giuseppi Verde’s opera, Aïda, was written to celebrate the Canal’s opening, and its opening performance was at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on Dec. 24, 1871. The greatest yacht in the world — the Mahrousa (still in commission and now known as the el-Horia) — was built in London so that the Khedive could transit the Canal for the opening ceremonies, which were, rightly, of paramount interest to the global maritime community.
The aircraft order was for 16 Rafale B two-seat variants and eight Rafale C single-seaters. It was possible a total of six Rafales could be delivered in 2015, taking them from the final assembly line in Mérignac, where they were originally intended for the French Air Force. It was understood that the order would also include some Black Shaheen cruise missiles (with their range shortened to comply with the Missile Technology Control Regime limitations). This made Egypt the third country in the region (with Saudi Arabia and the UAE) to have the missile. It was unclear whether the Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVR AAM) would be part of the deal.
Egypt will go much further down the path of reasserting its strategic independence, and now has the education base, the commercial sector, and the energy production which was not available to President Sadat. When it built its defense industrial base, with the help of other Middle Eastern states (particularly Saudi Arabia), it also developed the capacity to build armored vehicles and aircraft, as well as a range of guided weapons. Much of this capacity atrophied under the U.S.-Egyptian alliance which had included the license manufacture of the French Alphajet advanced jet trainer/strike aircraft.
AOI, in the 1990s, was only part of the Egyptian military industrial capacity within the Ministry of Defense Production, and yet it had a workforce on its own of 19,000. Joint-venture companies, such as Arab-British Dynamics (joint venture with British Aerospace), and Arab American Vehicles (joint venture with American Motors), produced advanced missiles (such as Swingfire and Milan) and vehicles. Other companies manufactured complete jet aero-engines, and so on.
AOI and the Ministry of Defense Production should be expected to be moving now back into full productivity. The fact that Egyptian shipbuilding facilities are being redeveloped with French technical assistance shows that this is already taking place. AOI facilities are almost certainly taking up the slack in supporting Egypt’s now active air combat operations against Islamic Caliphate operatives based in neighboring Libya.
Egyptian Air Force (EAF) F-16s struck Islamic Caliphate bases and fighters in Derna, Libya (between Tobruk and Benghazi) on Feb. 16, in response to the beheading by Caliphate militants of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian workers in Libya. The Libyan Air Force also struck at the sites in Derna, in apparent cooperation with the EAF. Significantly, the U.S. has refused to support the Egyptian and Libyan actions, further exacerbating the Cairo-Washington rift, but reinforcing Washington’s ongoing support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The White House rift with the Egyptian Government flies in the face of historical U.S. interest in maintaining a hand in freedom of navigation — the global maritime commons — by ensuring that the U.S. ability to have a hand in the Suez Canal/Red Sea sea line of communication (SLOC) is diminished. And the White House action seems predicated on ideological and religious grounds, rather than U.S. strategic interests.
This has opened the door not only, once again, to Moscow, but to European states, such as France, which has, in the space of a few months, added more than $6 billion worth of orders in the defense sector alone. So the U.S.-Egyptian rift — which will cost U.S. manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney (United Technologies), General Dynamics, and others — billions is also reinvigorating the European defense industrial sector, and simultaneously deepening the U.S.-European rift.
But what is certain now is that the U.S. has ended its almost four decades of strategic influence in Egypt. This, with attendant reduction in influence in the Mediterranean-Suez-Red Sea-Indian Ocean SLOCs, may be the most decisive loss for the U.S. global posture in recent years.
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http://www.worldtribune.com/2015/02/23/transforming-u-s-egypt-ties-sadat-accomplished-obama-administration-undone/
