A United States Marine shakes hands with the leader of the Egyptian military band who is dressed in a Pharaoh contume October 23, 2001 during Bright Star exercises on Egypt's north coast. (Norbert Schiller/Getty Images)[/caption]Ever since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has looked to the US as its major supplier for its armed forces, building up a huge arsenal of American weapons paid for by more than a billion dollars of US financial assistance every year. Nonetheless, at the end of last year, speculation began to appear in Egypt and abroad that Cairo was re-evaluating its ties to the US. But is the Egyptian military willing, or even capable, of making a decisive break with the US?
A Fraying Lifeline?
A visit to Cairo by Russian Minster of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in November 2013 was accompanied by a spate of news stories that Russia was offering Egypt 2 billion dollars’ worth of new equipment, including combat jets for its air force. This followed the suspension in the deliveries of some American military equipment due to be delivered to Egypt after Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Mursi was deposed by the military. Washington also announced that the biannual military exercise that US forces conduct with the Egyptian military, Operation Bright Star—originally scheduled to take place in September 2013— had been cancelled.
It is unsurprising that this, together with Russian overtures, has led to speculation about a re-alignment of Egyptian policy. In the Middle East, as in many places, patterns of arms sales have been held up as indicators of foreign policy, with the world’s militaries still divided between those equipped with Western-designed (and particularly American-designed) weapons, and those armed with Russian or Chinese arms, with only a very few willing or able to “mix and match” in a big way. This remains true even as the world enters the third decade after the end of the Cold War.
Nor is this the first sign of antagonism in the military-to-military relations between Egypt and the US. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that American opinions of the abilities of the Egyptian Armed Forces have been declining for some time. Under pressure of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US also downgraded the scope and scale of the Bright Star exercise, to the annoyance of Egyptian military leaders, who also expressed increasing dissatisfaction at the direction US policy was taking in the Middle East after 2003.
A 2008 cable from the US Embassy in Cairo to Gen. David Petraeus, then the head of US forces in the Middle East, warned that “the tactical and operational readiness of the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) has decayed” under the leadership of its former commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. It warned that the Egyptian military was still pre-occupied with “force-on-force [conventional] warfare with a premium on ground forces and armor,” at the expense of developing expertise in anti-terrorism and other operations.
The costs of changing course
Despite these differences, most of the evidence suggests the Egyptian military is still dependent on US assistance. Even with the recent chill in US¬–Egyptian ties, the Egyptian armed forces continue to operate a large number of major American weapon systems across all three branches, weapons that cannot easily be replaced. Egypt’s air force flies F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, the army drives around in American tanks and personnel carriers, and the navy operates several American-built frigates and smaller warships. New missile boats in particular are still being transferred to Egypt, while delivery of new jets, tanks and missiles is frozen.
If Egypt does make a decisive shift away from the US it will face serious problems keeping its American-made arsenal running—assuming it does not acquire like-for-like replacements from elsewhere, or undertake a major restructuring of its armed forces—without the aid program from the US. According to the New York Times, a sizeable amount of US annual military aid is spent on maintenance programs for its complex American weapons, without which experts say the Egyptian military could grind to a halt.
Other US diplomatic cables available via Wikileaks discuss the scale of Egyptian dependence on American weapons and the aid needed to buy them. A cable dating back to 2005 revealed that the Egyptian Ministry of Defense told US embassy officials that US “security assistance pays for 80 percent of Egypt's military procurement budget,” and that “the bulk of the 1.3 billion US dollars in annual assistance goes to maintenance and upgrades of existing systems.”
The cables also stress the importance that both sides put on the relationship. On the American side, they are full of references to the importance of the “access” that the military relationship gives US diplomats and officials to their Egyptian counterparts on favorable terms, and emphasize the access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace. On the other side of the equation, the Egyptian military, according to a 2006 cable, “views the USD 1.3 billion in annual foreign military assistance as an entitlement, granted at the time of the Camp David Accords.” They also speak of Egyptian anger at Congressional attempts to make portions of the aid conditional on steps towards democratization.
Aside from the cost of maintaining its existing arsenal, it goes without saying that buying and equipping a whole new inventory of major weapons would cost money that Egypt doesn’t have. It is perhaps worth remembering that the air force of Iran, which has oil resources that Egypt lacks, is still largely comprised of American jets purchased before the 1979 revolution. Egypt and Israel are unique in that their military aid packages allow them to essentially buy American military kit on credit. Absent pressing political reasons to extend Egypt credit, Russia would likely insist on far more stringent payment conditions.
Professor Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military who recently retired from the US military’s Naval Postgraduate School, told The Majalla that a stronger relationship between Cairo and Moscow based on military sales was unlikely. The Egyptian Armed Forces “still have lots of old Russian equipment, so some upgrades could be effected. Russia might want to buy a bit of access with some discounted stuff, but it would not be terribly significant,” he said. “Moreover, the [Egyptian] high command is now entirely US-trained, as the last of the old Russian-trained officers were retired last year.”
Hedging bets
However, the example of Iran shows that this is, ultimately, a political decision. As things currently stand, there seems little reason for Cairo to make dramatic changes in its relationship with Washington as long as the aid keeps coming in—even if the delivery of new tanks and jets is held up—given the inertia that the Egyptian armed forces have demonstrated up to now. The flirtation with Russia is thus probably an attempt to hedge bets on the part of Egypt’s military leadership. As well as increasing its leverage with the US, it opens the door to alternative sources of weapons in the event that relations with Washington do turn sour in the future.
Egypt is doubtless counting on the US keeping the events of the 1970s and 1980s in mind. If Egypt does seek to bolster ties with Russia in the long term, particularly by seeking to equip its armed forces with Russian weapons, it would not be first time that Egypt has made this kind of changeover. Egypt, like many Arab states, sought superpower patronage after its emergence as an independent state after the Second World War. The Soviet Union emerged as Egypt’s patron in the 1960s, and provided vast amounts of military equipment to Egypt and stationed thousands of military advisors in the country. Soviet pilots even took part in the ‘War of Attrition’ between Egypt and Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967, flying against Israeli pilots while the Egyptian Air Force recovered from its losses.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s decision to re-align with the US in the early 1970s changed all this. Following the Camp David Accords that led to the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Egypt switched from being a Soviet military client to an American one, with the first US jets—ironically, aircraft of the same type used by Israel—arriving in 1979 to begin replacing Egypt’s arsenal of Russian MiGs.
If any one single trend can be picked out of the most recent period of Egypt’s foreign relations, it is arguably a move away from a search from patrons among so-called “great powers,” and towards closer links to regional allies. Saudi Arabia, and most of the other Gulf monarchies, have looked to Egypt as a source of “strategic depth” and as a Arab counterweight to Iran for many years. This was demonstrated by the billions of dollars in aid they extended to Egypt after the ousting of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Mursi, and with the ties with the US cooling—but not disappearing completely—this may be a link both sides hope to strengthen in the future .
