Hostage Crisis

Mubarak was obviously not a democrat but the head of an authoritarian military regime who was satisfied keeping Egypt stable, or, as his critics say, static. But the Americans, and to a lesser extent the Europeans, pumped in all sorts of money to promote Egyptian civil society. If Mubarak wanted military aid, he had to tolerate pro-democracy money—for human-rights initiatives and voter-registration drives, among other programs—as well. You can argue that he had no choice, but it is now obvious that he did: Like the current ruling authorities, he could have leveled trumped-up charges against American democracy activists in order to leverage Egypt’s economic and political position.

As Washington policymakers understand, the Egyptian hostage crisis does not merely touch on the fate of 19 Americans. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as lawmakers like Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, has warned that the $1.3 billion Egypt receives annually from the U.S. in military aid might be in jeopardy. However, it’s highly unlikely that Washington will forfeit the only instrument it has to influence Egypt’s political order.

Perhaps some U.S. officials think that with the Egyptian economy in such bad shape—declining tourism receipts, flight of capital, dwindling hard currency reserves, and lack of foreign direct investment—this might be a good time to pump U.S. aid money directly into the pockets of regular Egyptians. After all, why should we fund a military caste that kidnaps the sons of American Cabinet secretaries and will likely use its expensive U.S.-made weapons against its own people, as it did against Coptic Christians in October, or against American allies, like Israel? Instead of the $250 million scheduled this year for economic aid, we should give the whole package, more than $1.5 billion, to the Egyptian people.

It’s doubtful we could get money past the military. And even if we did, who knows that it wouldn’t set the stage for civil war. The army could play on the various divisions already at work in Egyptian society—Muslims vs. Christians, Muslim Brotherhood vs. Salafis, as well as the competing security services already at each other’s throats—to create conflicts that would require Egyptian military intervention backed up by U.S. support and money to restore the peace, such as it is.

But there is already a real wedge between the Egyptian people and its army: The former has said it doesn’t want U.S. aid while the latter needs it. In fact, the Egyptian army is so desperate for American money that it wants more of it, which is why it is going to put 19 Americans on trial. From the perspective of Cairo’s current ruling clique, at approximately $2 billion a year, Mubarak sold Egypt for way too little over the past 30 years, and now, given Egypt’s economic bind, it needs as much as it can possibly squeeze out of the White House. A visiting Egyptian military delegation canceled its meetings with U.S. policymakers on Monday to make explicit to Washington that Egypt has the much stronger bargaining position.

Here’s how things are likely to shake out: Most of the money will continue to flow to the military because that is the only instrument Washington has in the post-Mubarak Egypt to affect Cairo’s political system. Moreover, as U.S. policymakers know, U.S. military aid means that Washington has a more or less accurate accounting of the Egyptian army’s budget and that it will not seek to buy the majority of its arms elsewhere, like Russia.

Therefore, given the explicit anti-U.S. nature of Egypt’s population, the choice before our policymakers is whether or not to fund an army that is ruling a state hostile to our national interests, where domestic dynamics may drive it to war with Israel. The other option is to let someone else equip that same army, over which we will therefore have no control at all. At least opting for the first means that those 19 American citizens will be released by the regime sooner rather than later.

Lee Smith is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations.