Partners or Adversaries: President Obama’s strategy and the Egyptian Revolution

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Partners

or

Adversaries

Tiemen de Graaf

University of Amsterdam

Student no: 10221344

Email: tiemendegraaf@gmail.com

Supervisor: dhr. prof. dr. R.V.A. Janssens

Partners or Adversaries

President Obama’s strategy and the Egyptian

Revolution

Tiemen de Graaf University of Amsterdam Student no: 10221344 Supervisor: dhr. Prof. dr. R.V.A. Janssens

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Introduction

Between January 2011 and March 2015, President Obama and his administration faced a significant foreign policy test in Egypt. In December 2010, the world had witnessed what would become the start of the Arab Uprisings, also known as the Arab Spring. The self-immolation of the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi on the 17th_{of December 2017 in Tunisia,}

set a chain of events in motion that was unprecedented in the Middle East.1_{It was the start of}

massive protests in favor of democratic rule and aimed at ousting their authoritarian leaders. The United States, a traditional leader in democratic reform across the world, saw itself drawn into conflicts across the Middle East, with no easy solution.

President Obama started his first term as President of the United States in 2009. During this first year, the Obama administration presented the world with its declaratory strategy and made an effort to make its plans for the Middle East known, a region which traditionally has been of significant interest to the United States because of its role on the fuel market. Within this region, Egypt has been one of the United States’ closest allies. Especially Egypt’s location near the Suez Canal and its proximity to Israel makes it one of the strategically most important countries for the United States. Aside from being strategically important, Egypt is also the biggest Arab nation in number of inhabitants, has a significant military force, and has been on the receiving end of over $50 billion in U.S. aid.2_{No wonder,}

therefore, that the protests, which started in January 2011, gained the United States’ immediate attention.

Seven years after the start of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 we can observe that some things have changed in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak is no longer the President of Egypt, a position he had held since 1981. Egypt has had several elections, one of which was arguably the most democratic election the nation has ever seen. The elections in 2012 were won by Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi became president and the Muslim Brotherhood the largest party in the Egyptian parliament. This democratically chosen government was overthrown by the Egyptian military roughly a year later, a coup which put General Al-Sisi in the position of President of Egypt. President Morsi was unable to fulfill the promises of the Egyptian Revolution, but President Al-Sisi was not exactly the poster child of

1 Elizabeth Day, “The slap that sparked a revolution”, The Guardian (15-05-2011). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/15/arab-spring-tunisia-the-slap

2 Robert Satlof and Patrick Clawson, “U.S. Economic Aid to Egypt”, The Washington Institute (07-07-1998). http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/u.s.-economic-aid-to-egypt-designing-a-new-pro-growth-package

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democratic leadership either. Even though much has happened between 2011 and 2015, Egypt was under authoritarian rule once again at the end of this period of turmoil.

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 was the first real test for the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Obama could no longer rely on the rhetoric of his foreign policy speeches, and unexpected events made a continuation of the status quo impossible. President Obama and his administration became heavily involved with the Egyptian situation, to such an extent that President Obama became the subject of fierce protests in Egypt. In four years, President Obama supported a protest movement against President Mubarak and later on supported a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Even though the United States is not the deciding power in Egypt, its involvement created a situation in which President Obama and his administration were seen as one of the principal actors in the events that unfolded in Egypt between 2011 and 2015.

The Obama administration’s decisions regarding its strategy in Egypt divided academics in the field of international relations and United States foreign policy into two camps. One camp applauded President Obama’s initial approach in Egypt and credited the Obama administration with the removal of President Hosni Mubarak. The other camp heavily criticized the administration for dropping its support for a longtime ally, supporting an organization that was considered as the root of fundamentalist Islam, and being indecisive at the moment decisions had to be made. Martin Indyk, a Brookings Institute fellow in the field of American foreign relations in the Middle East, has been one academics that has been predominantly positive about the Obama administration’s strategy in the Middle East.3_All

though Indyk acknowledges in his 2013 article “Obama and the Arab Awakenings” that it is too early to determine the outcome, he states that: “I believe he made the right choice.”4_In

this quote, Indyk refers directly to President Obama’s choice to stand on the right side of history in choosing the protesters on Tahrir Square over President Mubarak. Robert Malley, a former member of President Obama’s National Security Council, also defended the Obama administration’s strategy. Malley stated in an interview with Foreign Policy’s Aaron David Miller that: “I am confident that much of what we have done will be judged to have been both effective and prudent.”5_{Mr. Malley’s point is interesting for this discussion because}

3 Martin Indyk, “Obama and the Arab Awakenings:”, The Arab Revolutions and American Policy (Aspen Strategy Group, 2013) 71-82.

4 Martin Indyk, “Obama and the Arab Awakenings:”, 74.

5 Aaron David Miller, “A Defense of Obama’s Middle East ‘Balancing Act’”, Foreign Policy (15-08-2016). http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/15/a-defense-of-obamas-middle-east-balancing-act-syria-russia-iran-nsc/

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‘effectiveness’ and decisive decision making were among the vital things which the Obama administration was lacking in Egypt, according to its critics.

Shadi Hamid, a Brookings Institute fellow, specialized in United States relations with the Islamic world, was on the side of the debate that expressed disappointment regarding the Obama administration’s strategy in Egypt. Hamid called the Obama administration’s approach passive and criticizes the administration’s lack of conviction in the area of democracy promotion. 6_{Tarek Masoud, a Harvard scholar and expert in the area of political}

Islam, has also been critical of the Obama administration’s performance in Egypt. In his article “Losing Egypt” Masoud states that the Obama administration’s response to the situation in Egypt after the election of Mohamed Morsi made many Egyptians believe the United States did not care about who was in charge in Egypt.7_{Hamid and Masoud were far}

from the only ones to criticize the Obama administration’s actions in Egypt. Furthermore, the Obama administration was blamed for not succeeding in influencing the outcome of the events in Egypt. The Egyptian Revolution has been, together with the other Arab Uprisings, seen as a stage on which the Obama administration failed to form a working strategy.

I have divided the discussion into three parts; the first part focuses on the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy and the second on the Obama administration’s emergent or actual strategy. The first part, which discusses the Middle East declaratory strategy of Obama’s administration, uses the speeches President Obama gave during his campaign during his first year as primary sources. The Obama administration used the power of rhetoric to spread its ideas and plans across the world. Obama’s speeches in Cairo, Berlin, and Oslo were the most important in determining the administration’s declaratory strategy. Scholars such as Peter Feaver and Colin Dueck have taken the same approach in determining what the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy was. Peter Feaver is specialized in American foreign policy and is an expert in the field of strategic planning; he wrote the article “Has the Obama Response to the Arab Revolutions Been Effective?” in which he analyses President Obama’s strategy during the Arab Uprisings.8_{Colin Dueck, an expert in the field of national security}

policies, published the book “The Obama Doctrine” in 2015.9_{Feaver’s article focuses mostly}

6 Shadi Hamid, “What Obama and American Liberals Don’t Understand About the Arab Spring”, Brookings

Institute (01-10-2011). https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/what-obama-and-american-liberals-dont-understand-about-the-arab-spring/

7 Tarek Masoud, “Losing Egypt”, The Arab Revolutions and American Policy (Aspen Strategy Group, 2013) 92. 8 Peter Feaver, “Has the Obama Response to the Arab Revolutions Been Efective?”, The Arab Revolutions and

American Policy (Aspen Strategy Group, 2013) 49-68.

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on the goals of the Obama strategy, while Dueck concentrates much attention on the Obama administration’s ‘anything but Bush’ attitude.

The second part of the debate on the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East focuses on the administration’s emergent strategy and uses the Egyptian Revolution as a case study. President Obama’s speeches and the statements his administration published on the subject of the Egyptian Revolution are the primary sources in this debate, as well as congressional resolutions regarding the situation in Egypt. Martin Indyk and Shadi Hamid are among the most significant scholars who have taken part in the discussion on how the Obama administration handled the situation in Egypt during and after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Martin Indyk has written the article “Obama and the Arab Awakenings” and co-authored the book “Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy.”10_Indyk

compares the Obama administration’s strategy in Egypt to the strategy presidential administrations have traditionally followed in the Middle East. Hamid has written several articles on the Obama administration’s engagement in the Egyptian Revolution and its role in promoting democracy in Egypt.11

The third scholarly debate I will discuss is a specific component of the debate on the Obama administration’s foreign policy strategy. This debate is about American democracy promotion in the Middle East. Promotion of democracy played a significant role in the decisions the Obama administration had to make during and after the Egyptian Revolution, and it was also one of the aspects on which the Obama administration received some of its most fierce criticism. Furthermore, democracy promotion is one of the key components in which we can observe the differences between the Obama administration’s declaratory and emergent strategies. Shadi Hamid is one of the scholars that has engaged extensively in this debate. Hamid argues the Obama administration was not prepared to go far enough in promoting democracy and stated in a 2017 article that: “Obama had never seemed comfortable with a robust democracy promotion agenda.”12_{In this thesis, I will use Hamid’s}

articles and arguments to explain what kind of criticism the Obama administration has

10 Martin Indyk, “Obama and the Arab Awakenings:”, The Arab Revolutions and American Policy, 71-82. Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Michael E. O'Hanlon, “Bending History: Barack Obama's Foreign Policy” (Brookings Institute, 2012).

11 Shadi Hamid, “The Struggle for Middle East Democracy”, Brookings Institute (26-4-2011).

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-struggle-for-middle-east-democracy/ Shadi Hamid and Peter Mandaville, “A Coup Too Far: The Case For Reordering U.S. Priorities In Egypt”, Policy Briefing Brookings

Institute (5-9-2013).

12 Shadi Hamid, “Obama’s good intentions in the Middle East meant nothing”, Brookings institute (23-1-2017). https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/01/23/obamas-good-intentions-in-the-middle-east-meant-nothing/

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received regarding the promotion of democracy. Democracy promotion played a significant role in President Obama’s declaratory strategy because it formed one of the key aspects in which the Obama administration wanted to step away from the Bush administration. Emiliano Allesandri, Oz Hassan, and Ted Reinert discuss this in their article “U.S. Democracy Promotion from Bush to Obama.”13_{All three authors are academics in the field of}

international relations and U.S. foreign policy.

These three debates point to the fact that there was friction between the ideals which the Obama administration presented to the world in its declaratory strategy and the reality of a revolution in a country in which the United States only has limited influence. Therefore this thesis will answer the following question: Which choices did the Obama administration make in choosing between its ideals and the reality of the regime changes in Egypt? In the conclusion of this thesis, I will also point out my deductions on why the administration made these choices and what the consequences were. I will answer this question by analyzing the debates mentioned above, reading the available literature and analyzing the speeches and statements given by members of the Obama administration.

In this thesis, I will analyze the period between February 2009 and December 2010, which is the period in which the Obama administration presented its declaratory strategy to the world. As well as the Obama administration’s decisions on Egypt between December 2010 and March 2015. These four years formed the time-period between the moment large-scale protests started on Tahrir Square and the moment President Obama decided to release the Egyptian military aid which had been frozen in 2013 after Al-Sisi’s military coup.

I have divided this thesis into three chapters, which together will form an orderly framework that explains the different strategies and actions of the Obama administration, as well as the critiques it received. The first chapter will focus on the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy, using the speeches President Obama gave at the beginning of his presidency as the most significant primary sources. The primary concern of this chapter will be the scholarly discussion on what the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy was for the Middle East. This chapter aims to answer this question and analyses the role of the Bush administration’s Middle East strategy in the development of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Obama’s foreign policy speeches were the preferred method of bringing across the administration’s messages, and the administration relied heavily on President Obama’s charismatic persona to rebuild the United States’

13 Alessandri, Hassan and Reinert, “U.S. Democracy Promotion from Bush to Obama”, German Marshall Fund

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reputation in the Middle East. Rebuilding the United States’ reputation in the Middle East was among the administration's most important foreign policy goals. The speeches President Obama gave in 2009 are the best sources in determining the administration’s declaratory strategy. In addition, they prove the point that the Obama administration’s foreign policy changes in the Middle East were largely rhetorical. This chapter will also analyze the role of Joseph Nye’s soft power ideas within the Obama administration.

The second chapter is an analysis of the Obama administration’s actions in Egypt in which I examine the actions of the Obama administration related to its declaratory strategy. The subchapter on the relationship between Egypt and the United States clarifies the traditional strategy the United States has had regarding Egypt. The relationship between the United States and Egypt was a relationship that fitted perfectly into what Martin Indyk refers to as ‘Middle East Exceptionalism;’ a foreign policy in which the United States government is prepared to deal with authoritarian leaders as long as it is in the interest of the United States.14

In this thesis I will examine the difficulties President Obama and his administration had in changing this strategy; opposition came from both within and outside of the administration. The analysis in this chapter supports the argument that the Obama administration had trouble forming a defining strategy in Egypt. Statements from the administration form the primary source material in this chapter. Several academic articles will show the academic debate, and I have used newspaper articles to form a chronological timeline of the events after the start of the Egyptian Revolution. The analysis will end with the moment President Obama decided that the delivery of military equipment, which he had frozen in 2013, should be unfrozen. At this point, it became clear that using the most important leverage the United States had in Egypt, did not lead to the desired outcome.

In the third chapter, I analyze the main critiques the Obama administration has received on its actions in Egypt. In the first subchapter, I focus on the critique the Obama administration has endured on the subject of democracy promotion, a subject that has played a significant role in American foreign policy since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The subchapter shows the Obama administration’s troubling relationship with democracy promotion. In the second subchapter, I analyze the comments the Obama administration has received on its actions during the Egyptian Revolution itself; a period which lasted from the 25th_{of January till the 11}th_{of February. This period was a period with much confusion on the}

Obama administration’s position in the Egyptian Revolution. This confusion was one of the

14 Martin Indyk, “Obama and the Arab Awakenings:”, The Arab Revolutions and American Policy (Aspen Strategy Group, 2013) 71.

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aspects that, in both the minds of the academics and the public, that the Obama administration was unsure of how to handle the situation and lacked decisiveness. In the last subchapter, I discuss the criticism the Obama administration received on being indecisive and being unable to make right on its promises.

By analyzing the different decisions the Obama administration made before and after the Egyptian Revolution, this thesis will shed light on the friction between the administration’s ideals and the reality of international politics. Furthermore, this thesis will show that the ideals of the administration’s declaratory strategy frustrated decisive action in Egypt.

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Chapter 1 Obama’s Declaratory Strategy in the Middle East

I know -- I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much

of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.15

Barack Obama, Cairo 2009

In the Summer of 2009, President Obama gave one of the defining speeches of his presidency, less than half a year after his inauguration. President Obama’s speech took place in Egypt, after long consideration. According to an official White House statement, Egypt is both the heart of the Arab world, as well as a center of American influence in the Middle East.16_This

speech showed the vision Obama’s administration had for the Middle East. About democracy promotion, he said: “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other.”17_{This speech in Cairo announced a push away from the ‘Bush years.’ President}

George W. Bush was very clear wanting to spread democracy in the Middle East, and it was one of the key components of President Obama’s foreign policy not to follow a similar pad.

This chapter will focus on the foreign policy strategy of the first Obama administration in its first years and the campaign year. When writing about these policy plans, I will use the term declaratory strategy, similar to how Peter Feaver used this in his article “The Obama Response: Has it been effective.”18_{A declaratory strategy reflects intentions and aspirations.}

When an administration is forced to step away from its declaratory strategy because something unanticipated happens, it is considered an emergent strategy. At the end of this chapter, it will be clear what the declaratory strategy of the Obama administration was in the Middle East and how this related to his predecessor.

The declaratory strategy of the first Obama administration included several main pillars of which the opening quote of this chapter is an example. To an arguably more significant effect, however, it leaned on the charismatic persona of President Obama. President Obama’s election came with a reasonably substantial victory within the United States, but in the rest of the world, his popularity appeared unprecedented. President Obama and his staff used this wave of popularity during the election both inside and outside of the United States, an example being one of his most well-known speeches which he delivered in

15 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”, The Obama White House Archives (Cairo, 9-6-2009).

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning

16 Ewan McAskill, “Obama to deliver speech to the Muslim world in Cairo”, Website of the Guardian (8-5-2009). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/08/obama-islam-muslim-world-cairo

17 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

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Berlin, Germany, during the summer of 2008.19_{Similar to President Obama’s speech in the}

summer of 2009, this speech focused on rapprochement towards both allied countries and adversaries. President Obama’s persona and personal history gave him the perfect tools, at least in the eyes of his staff, to present himself as a bridgebuilder between societies. His father being of Kenyan descent, having lived with his mother in Indonesia and being an African American were some of the reasons why President Obama was more advantageous position than his predecessor, President Bush, to opt for rapprochement towards the Islamic world. In all of his significant foreign policy speeches, President Obama used his background to point out he was better suited to play the role of mediator in world politics than his predecessors.20

The general tone of President Obama’s foreign policy speeches was very straightforward; President Obama aimed at peace while letting everybody know that the United States would not disappear from the world stage. The speeches also had a highly ideological tone at times, especially the Cairo speech.21_{These ideological ideas, however, did}

not result in a very recognizable foreign policy. This explains why many scholars have criticized the Obama administration for not having an identifiable strategy. There has been a scholarly debate on the ‘Obama Doctrine’ and what this would entail. I analyze this scholarly debate in this first chapter by using mostly primary source material from the speeches President Obama gave at the beginning of his presidency. I have also used several secondary sources. However, I have largely limited my sources to academics who have specifically analyzed the Obama administration’s strategy during the Arab Revolutions as well.

To dissect the administration’s emergent strategy during the Egyptian Revolution, we need an unadorned view of his declaratory strategy. To offer this plain view of President Obama’s declaratory strategy, I have divided this chapter into three subchapters followed by a conclusion. First off, I will talk about the importance of President Obama’s predecessor in creating the foreign policy ideas of the first Obama administration. Secondly, there will be a subchapter on how President Obama’s declaratory strategy fits in Joseph Nye’s idea of soft power. The third and last subchapter will be about the goals that the administration had for the Middle East.

1.1 I am not my predecessor, no more Bush

19 Barack Obama, ‘Obama Delivers Address: "A World That Stands as One"’, The Washington Post (Berlin, 24-7-2008). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/24/AR2008072402293.html

21 Shadi Hamid, “Obama’s good intentions in the Middle East meant nothing”, Brookings institute (23-1-2017). Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist”, The New Yorker (New York, 2-5-2011) 4. Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

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States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.22

George W. Bush, Washington DC 2002

After President Obama got elected in 2008 and his inauguration had taken place in 2009, the Obama administration took a step away from the rhetoric of the Bush administration. Indeed, the administration even tried mending the relationship with one of the former axis of evil countries: Iran. This change in tactic was a prime example of the new foreign policy vision the Obama administration wanted to show the world. A president creating some distance between himself and his predecessor is not at all unusual, especially when taking into account that the predecessor is from the opposing party. However, according to many academics the Obama administration did this in a manner that was so strong, it can be identified as one of the pillars of his foreign policy.23

To analyze the differences between the Middle East visions of the two administrations, we first have to return briefly to the Middle East vision of the Bush administration. In 2003 Philip Gordon, at the time a fellow at the Brookings Institution and later Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, divided the Bush administration’s vision for the Middle East into four main assumptions.24

The first one of these assumptions was that the status quo in the region had become unacceptable. The instability of the Middle Eastern region with its repressive regimes and growing terrorism was no longer just a threat to the region itself but also to the United States.25_{The second assumption regarded Iraq. The Iraqi regime under the leadership of}

Saddam Hussein was supposedly developing weapons of mass destruction and therefore formed the most significant threat to the region and American interests in the stability of the region.26_{The third one had everything to do with the situation of Israel. The Clinton}

administration had put much effort into sorting the conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, but the Bush administration was very wary not to get ‘bogged down’ as Clinton and his administration did. Therefore peace between Israel and Palestine was not a top priority, at first. This third assumption is a part where history caught up with Gordon’s article because

22 George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address 2002”, George W. Bush White House Archives (29-1-2002). https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html

23 Colin Dueck, “The Obama Doctrine” (Oxford University Press, 2012) 44-45. 24 Philip Gordon, “Bush’s Middle East Vision”, Brookings Institute (1-3-2003). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/bushs-middle-east-vision/

25 Ibidem, 156-157. 26 Ibidem, 157.

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several months later the Bush administration published a ‘Road Map’ towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians.27_{The fourth assumption Gordon mentions concerned democracy,}

which in the eyes of the Bush administration was somehow equivalent to peace and stability. This part of the administration’s vision would become known as the ‘Freedom Agenda.’28_{It is}

fair to say that it was Iraq and the fourth assumption that really put their marks on the Bush administrations vision for the Middle East. Furthermore, the combination of these foreign policy assumptions caused many critics to accuse President Bush of waging war on Islam, which is something that is both hard to prove and something that has been heavily denied by President Bush and his administration.29

Now that we have a brief overview of the Bush administration’s vision for the Middle East we can start looking at the assumptions the Obama administration strongly disagreed with and how they communicated this to the world. The Obama administration was so set on pushing away from the Bush administration that every foreign policy speech had to make clear that things had changed. It was also one of the main reasons to name the Cairo speech: A New Beginning.30_{Colin Dueck, an academic who specialized on national security strategies,}

described it as a constant antipathy towards the Bush administration and an ‘anything but Bush’ strategy.31_{When we take the Cairo speech as an example, we can see that instead of}

identifying an axis of evil, President Obama talks about opening up to Islam. The administration wants to rebuild a relationship that had taken a huge hit during the Bush administration. The emphasis of all of President Obama’s speeches was therefore not on fear or danger but on tolerance.

The reason they named the speech in Cairo ‘A New Beginning’ was that they wanted to let the world see they were not the Bush administration and that the United States would not be acting in the same manner it had done so the previous eight years. President Obama’s speech in Cairo was aimed at making a start in closing the gap between the Muslim world and the United States. We can conclude that there was a large difference in rhetoric between the administrations; President Obama and his administration pushed for better relationships between all countries and governments while the Bush administration sought out bad apples and pointed them at what they thought these governments should change.32

27 Ibidem, 157-158.

28 Philip Gordon, “Bush’s Middle East Vision”, 158. “The Freedom Agenda”, White House Website: Archive

President George W. Bush. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/freedomagenda/

29 “Remarks by President Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia” Yale Law School Library (19-11-2001). http://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/president_020.asp

30 Shadi Hamid, “Obama’s good intentions in the Middle East meant nothing”. 31 Colin Dueck, “The Obama Doctrine”, 45.

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Dueck rightfully observes that the general tone and aim of President Obama’s foreign policy speeches was an opposite approach compared to the first assumption Philip Gordon made in his article.33_{Unlike President Bush, the Obama administration was cautious not to}

offend the Islamic nations in the Middle East. In the eyes of the Obama administration, pointing at the Middle East and saying the situation was unacceptable, diminished the chances of negotiating for improvements in for example the relationship between Iran and the United States.34_{Ellen Hallams phrased it as followed: “Obama rejected his predecessor's crusading}

tone and style, seeking instead to reposition America firmly back into the exemplary tradition of US exceptionalism.”35_{This rapprochement towards the Muslim world stood at the core of}

the vision which the Obama administration wanted the world to hear. Just like it wanted to let the world know that the war in Iraq had been a mistake.

Iraq was the subject President Obama, and his administration distanced himself from the most vocally. Obama had built much of his political career and presidential campaign on his criticism of the war in Iraq. Some even consider it to be one of the critical elements which gave him an edge over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.36_{President Obama}

aspired to be a realist when it came to making decisions on foreign policy in the Middle East region. According to him, the Iraq war was not a war based on realistic goals but one driven by ideology. In a speech at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs Obama said the United States needed: “A strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics but one based on realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests in the region.”37_{In this}

speech, he was making the argument that President Bush was missing a realistic goal in the decision making around the Iraq war. Two weeks later, Senator Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States.38

On the subject of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the Obama administration had once again a different opinion. Whereas the Bush administration had been afraid to get bogged down, the Obama administration made it a major priority. The ongoing conflict in Israel returned in almost every major foreign policy speech President Obama gave in his first years, most notably in his Cairo speech.39_{In this speech, he names it as the “second major}

source of tension,” second only after the subject of violent extremism a subject on which

33 Colin Dueck, “The Obama Doctrine”, 46.

34 Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist”, 4. Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

35 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the reinvigoration of America’s Soft Power”,

European Journal of American Studies (Spring 2011) 1.

36 Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist”, 4.

37 Barack Obama, “Speech at Chicago Council on Global Afairs” (Chicago, 20-11-2006). http://obamaspeeches.com/094-A-Way-Forward-in-Iraq-Obama-Speech.htm

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Presidents Obama and Bush might have had their differences but which topped the list of priorities for both administrations.40_{Academics such as Julie Norman in her article “How the}

Israeli-Palestinian conflict resisted Obama’s efforts,” mention another significant difference between President Obama’s way of handling the conflict than his predecessor: namely that President Obama was more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, according to many academics and politicians.41_{President Obama’s actions concerning Israel would, later on, influence his}

success rate in the Middle East region and cause negativity around his track record in Middle East foreign policy, I will return to this in chapter three.

The last of the four points that Gordon identified as the primary assumptions of the Middle Eastern vision of the Bush administration was the ‘freedom agenda.’ This Middle East strategy that was pursued by the Bush administration since the attacks of 9/11 was another ideological idea that did not fit into the foreign policy plans of the Obama administration.42

President Obama separated the term freedom and democracy when he talked about democracy promotion in his Cairo speech.43_{Democracy promotion was no longer a goal in itself for the}

United States government, and the administration wanted to step away from the term freedom which had gained a bad reputation during the Bush years.44

A key element Gordon did not name, maybe because it was not specific to the Middle East, was the Bush administration’s tendency to move towards unilateral solutions. Many academics have written about the unilateral tendencies of the Bush administration. Strobe Tallbot, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, saw unilateralism as the most important factor in the failures of the Bush administration in the Middle East.45_{One of the key}

components of the Bush doctrine was that it was prepared to go to war or to attack, unilaterally. The Bush administration made the credible argument it did not act unilaterally in the Iraq war. It is true that the Bush administration did not act alone, but in the case of the Iraq war the administration received so little international support, it felt like a unilateral action at

39 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”. Barack Obama, "A World That Stands as One". Interestingly enough the subject did not play a role in Obama’s speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.

41 Julie M. Norman, “How the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resisted Obama’s eforts”, Website The Conversation (18-11-2016) http://theconversation.com/how-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-resisted-obamas-eforts-65823 Barack Obama, “Obama's Speech at AIPAC”, Website NPR (4-6-2008).

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432

42 “The Freedom Agenda”, George W. Bush White House Archives. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/freedomagenda/

44 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigorating of America’s Soft Power”, 5. 45 Strobe Tallbot, “Unilateralism: Anatomy of a Foreign Policy Disaster”, Brookings Institute (21-02-2017). https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/unilateralism-anatomy-of-a-foreign-policy-disaster/

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times.46_{It is hard to deny a push away from multilateralism when an administration leaves}

some key institutions like the Kyoto accords and the International Criminal Court. These unilateral actions did not sit well with many allied countries.47

The Obama administration moved in the opposite direction; the Cairo speech focused on globalization and partnership and so did a town hall speech in Strasbourg in 2009.48_{In this}

townhall speech, President Obama said: "We must be honest with ourselves. In recent years, we have allowed our alliance to drift."49_{The alliance he is talking about in this case is NATO.}

Just like in the Middle East, the longtime U.S. partners in Western Europe were not as close to the United States as they were before the Bush era and the Obama administration was keen on telling the world this had been a mistake from the previous administration. The thought behind his actions was that it had to be clear to everyone that the United States was no longer planning on solving the world’s problems alone. The seeming eagerness on the subject of the unilateral action of the Bush administration, however, marked one of the significant differences between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the way the Obama administration was presenting the world with its declaratory foreign policy.

When adding up these proposed changes away from the Bush era, we can conclude that most of them were rhetorical. President Obama’s speeches were the moments in which one could see the most significant difference between the approach of the two administrations. In reality, the Obama administration did not make significant changes, especially in the Middle East where most foreign policies seemed a continuation of the status quo when taking Egypt and Saudi Arabia as examples.50_{In the second chapter, I will argue}

that Obama and his administration changed very little in its relationship with Egypt. The administration held on to previous strategies which mostly fitted into Indyk’s ‘Middle East exceptionalism.’ However, it would be unfair to say the Obama administration did not change anything. Efforts were in fact made to withdraw from Iraq and rhetoric does matter in

46 Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, “Unilateralism Disgraced”, Brookings institute Op-Ed (Brookings Press, 1-10-2003). https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/unilateralism-disgraced/

47 Strobe Tallbot, “Unilateralism: Anatomy of a Foreign Policy Disaster”.

48 Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall”, The Obama White House Archive

Website (3-4-2009). https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-strasbourg-town-hall

49 Jake Tapper and Karen Travers, “President Obama Says America Has Shown 'Arrogance'”, Website ABC News (3-4-2009). http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7246844&page=1

50 Indyk, Lieberthal and O’Hanlon – “Scoring Obama’s Foreign Policy, A Progressive Pragmatist Tries to Bend History”, Foreign Affairs (May/June-2012) 30.

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international relations, especially when you, as a nation, need allies on your side. Judging from Obama’s popularity among Western European leaders, the last part was successful.51

Some countries in the Middle East were not convinced that President Obama would be different from President Bush and would remain not convinced until the Obama administration would take action.52_{Much of the declaratory strategy was only presented to the}

world through rhetoric, not yet by action. Critical Egyptian citizens were one of these groups that were positive about the message that Obama sent to the world in his Cairo speech but remained unconvinced Obama would change the close relationship with the Egyptian government they opposed, and they would be right.53_{The Obama administration continued its}

relationship with the Egyptian government in a similar way the Bush administration had. The US-Egypt relationship stayed one of the cornerstones of American influence in the region, and this relationship would stay the same until early 2011.

1.2 Appealing to the World through Soft Power

It is true that the new threat of transnational terrorism increased American vulnerability, and some of our unilateralism after September 11 was driven by fear. But the United States cannot meet the new threat identified in the national security strategy without the cooperation of other countries. They will cooperate up to a point out of mere self-interest, but their degree of cooperation is also affected by the attractiveness of the United States.54

Joseph Nye Jr.

Related to the Obama administration’s push away from President Bush and the rebuilding of America’s reputation in international relations is the attention the administration paid to soft power, especially in these first declaratory strategy years. Joseph Nye’s definition of soft power is: “the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion.”55_{As mentioned in the previous subchapter, the Obama administration took a}

different road in the way they addressed allied and non-allied nations. The administration took a more ‘soft’ approach and invested more energy and resources into soft power. These soft power influences were visible in a few essential policy plans: a more prominent role for public diplomacy, less use of military power, multilateralism and the goal to improve the

51 Richard Wike, “Obama’s Middle East Problem”, Website PEW Research Center (27-8-2010). http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/08/27/obamas-middle-east-problem/

52 Deborah Amos, “Mixed Reaction In Cairo To Obama Speech”, Website National Public Radio (4-6-2009). https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104967625

53 Ibidem.

54 Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”, Foreign Affairs (June 2004) 129. https://www.foreignafairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2004-05-01/soft-power-means-success-world-politics 55 Ibidem.

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relationship with hostile nations. All these plans were presented by President Obama in his foreign policy speeches of 2009, most importantly his Cairo speech.56

Another part of the Obama administration’s foreign policy plans was to increase foreign aid. According to Joseph Nye’s theory, foreign aid is not typical of soft power. Nye saw foreign aid as purchase power and did not make it a part of either soft or hard power in his articles.57_{President Obama presented his intentions to invest more money in countries like}

Pakistan during his speech in Cairo. He pledged $1.5 billion a year in foreign aid to help Pakistan with building hospitals, roads, and schools.58_{Investing money into other nations is}

one of the most common ways to persuade nations to become or stay allies. In a way, it is what the United States did with the Marshall Plan after the Second World War when it wanted to make sure the nations of Western Europe did not become communist. Although these plans do not fit perfectly into Joseph Nye’s definition of soft power, Nye’s ideas left their mark on them and the Obama administration’s tendency to step away from hard power. The State Department led by Secretary Clinton came up with a new term and called their strategy ‘smart power’, a combination of hard and soft power. Although Clinton’s definition of smart power had elements of military might in them, the Obama administration’s new strategy still seemed fitting to Nye’s short soft power definition.59

The intentions to improve the United States’ relationship with countries that have large Islamic population was an obvious soft power initiative President Obama presented to the world in Cairo in 2009:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not to be in competition.60

The President’s appeal for attention for mutual interests is identifiable in the nudge towards soft power. Ellen Hallams agrees with this observation in her article: “From Crusader to Examplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigoration of America’s Soft Power.” In this article, Hallams links soft power to the Obama administration’s goal to lead by example.61

Hallams writes extensively about Nye’s definition of soft power and the terms he links to it such as multilateralism and globalization.62_{These are all terms which fit the declaratory} 56 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

57 Phil Vernon, “Can aid be an instrument of soft power?”, Website International Alert (4-11-2016). https://www.international-alert.org/blog/can-aid-be-instrument-soft-power

59 James Traub, “The Hillary Clinton Doctrine” Foreign Policy (11-6-2015).

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/06/hillary-clinton-doctrine-obama-interventionist-tough-minded-president/ 60 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

61 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigorating of America’s Soft Power”, 3. 62 Ibidem, 3.

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strategy identified by President Obama during his major foreign policy speeches. However, it is the following sentence that, in my opinion at least resonates almost precisely with the plan the Obama administration put forward: “the more the US worked with its partners and allies and through international institutions, the more support, and legitimacy it would garner.”63

President Obama’s attention to multilateralism and globalization corresponds with the critical role the Obama administration saw for public diplomacy in their declaratory strategy for the Middle East. As mentioned, the foreign policy plans of the Obama administration were not a perfect match with Nye’s idea of soft power, although inspired by soft power, the Obama administration’s plans were smart power initiatives. President Obama pushed for diplomatic solutions in his speeches in Cairo, Berlin and at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.64

Ryan Lizza who wrote the often quoted article “The Consequentialist” also mentions the vital role the Obama administration gives to diplomatic solutions and the promises President Obama made to approach instead of threatening the countries with which it had had a hostile relationship.65

Lizza also recognized the foreign policy of the Obama administration as one where soft power plays a significant role when he talks about the State Department under the leadership of Secretary Hillary Clinton in his article.66_{Lizza links Secretary Clinton’s}

gravitation towards soft power to her husband’s administration in the 1990s and saw the apparent influence of Nye’s soft power ideas in the State Department’s smart power ideas. Even though soft power did not end up becoming the predominant force within the Clinton administration’s actions, the influence of Nye’s ideas was undoubtedly recognizable according to Hallams and Lizza. The fact that Nye’s ideas were prominently present in the Clinton administration was not very surprising when we consider that Joseph Nye Jr. was Assistant Secretary at the Department of Defense during the first Clinton administration. Furthermore, Clinton’s role in the Obama administration very relevant to remember when we will take a look at how the Obama administration handled the problems that came with the Arabic Revolutions in 2011, a subject I will get to in chapters two and three.

All in all, we can see the influence of Nye’s ideas in the declaratory strategy of the Obama administration, especially in the way President Obama presented his strategy to the world in the foreign policy speeches of 2009. The Obama administration showed the world

63 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigorating of America’s Soft Power”, 3. 64 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”. Barack Obama, "A World That Stands as One". Barack Obama, “Nobel Lecture”, Nobelprize Website (10-12-2009).

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html 65 Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist”, 4.

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that it intended to step away from using hard power if soft power could bring a solution as well. The amount of attention paid to the Middle East region may have been represented to the world as self-defense at times, as it was by President Bush when it started the war in Afghanistan.67_{For the Obama administration, soft power was also a means to protect}

American interests in the region.68_{These interests would play a role during the Arab}

revolutions, which I will talk about further in the second and third chapters.

1.3 President Obama’s Goals in the Middle East

This thesis already identified the efforts of the Obama administration toward pushing away from the foreign policy of President Bush and the significant role of soft power in the declaratory strategy of the Obama administration. There was another critical difference between the Bush and Obama administrations, but this was much less a push away from a predecessor than it was a change in style and maybe in persona. This change was a revision in rhetoric and the manner in which they told the public about their plans on the matter of foreign policy. President Bush was often very direct on these matters; he even started speeches with sentences like: “The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror.”69_{President Obama was less}

transparent on his goals for the Middle East, as was his staff, which makes it a lot harder to identify these goals clearly and leaves some room for discussion amongst academics.

To determine the Obama administration’s main goals in the Middle East, I have taken another close look at the Obama administration’s 2009 Cairo speech. In this speech, President Obama covers six major topics: violent extremism, the Israeli conflict, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom and economic development.70_{Even though President Obama}

did not present an apparent policy goal for all of these subjects, it says a lot about his overall goals for the Arab region. There was one goal President Obama was very clear on; he did not want another Iraq. A situation like Iraq had been devastating for the United States’ reputation, and President Obama did not wish to get involved in another major Middle Eastern conflict causing American lives.71_{Another one of these goals had to do with the conflict in Israel,} 67 David A. Sanger, “Bush’s Doctrine for War”, The New York Times (18-03-2003).

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/international/middleeast/bushs-doctrine-for-war.html 68 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigorating of America’s Soft Power”, 11.

69 George W. Bush, “Full Transcript Of Bush's Iraq Speech”, CBS News (10-01-2007). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-of-bushs-iraq-speech/

70 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”. 71 Barack Obama, “A New Beginning”.

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which I have already briefly touched upon in the subchapter about Presidents Bush and Obama. A solution to the conflict in Israel was one of the primary goals of the administration. From his speech in Cairo, we can conclude that creating or even promoting democracy was not a goal in itself. President Obama did, however, address democracy extensively in his Cairo speech. He dictated that governments should reflect the will of the people, and that: “Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people.”72_{President Obama made sure it was clear he did not want to make the world safe for}

democracy but instead make the world a better place by improving human rights.73_{One of the}

most obvious reasons not to make it an explicit goal to promote democratization in the Middle East was to stay away from President Bush’s freedom agenda. Another reason was that the administration did not want to disturb the little stability there was in the region, by imposing democracy on Islamic leaders.

Something that was a prominent goal of the Obama administration was denuclearization. President Obama briefly mentioned the dangers of nuclear weapons several times in his Cairo speech, and he did so even before starting his enumeration of six noteworthy topics about American foreign policy in the Middle East, one of which was nuclear weapons. A month before President Obama would give his major speech in Cairo, the President gave a speech in Prague of which nuclear disarmament was the leading topic.74_In

what The Guardian named his first big foreign policy speech Obama vowed "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" during his presidency.75_{In regards to the specific goals of the Obama administration in the Middle East,}

nuclear weapons play a prominent role in the relationship between the United States and Iran. President Obama said that he wanted to improve the relationship with Iran and create a relationship that is “based on mutual interests and mutual respect.”76

Improving the reputation of the United States in the Middle East is another reasonably apparent policy goal when we look at the previous subchapters, and the foreign policy speeches President Obama gave in 2009. Ellen Hallams identified this goal as well in her article and called it a desire of the Obama administration to “rebuild America’s credibility.”77

This goal has a recognizable link to the Obama administration’s soft power plans and the push

72 Ibidem. 73 Ibidem.

74 Barack Obama, “Remarks By President Barack Obama In Prague”, Obama White House Archives (05-04-2009). https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered

75 Ian Traynor, “Barack Obama launches doctrine for nuclear-free world”, The Guardian (09-05-2009). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/05/nuclear-weapons-barack-obama

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away from the Bush presidency, but can also be connected to the improvement of the US-Iran relationship and peace in Israel. In the eyes of the Obama administration, a better relationship with the Islamic nations in the Middle East would improve the administration’s chances to get these nations to the negotiation table and eventually forge a lasting peace in what has been an unstable region ever since the Second World War.

Improvement of the United States’ reputation in the Middle East and improving the relationships between the United States and the Islamic nations of the Middle East were at the center of the foreign policy goals the Obama administration presented to the world in its declaratory strategy. In essence all of President Obama’s plans for the Middle East, circle around the plan to create stability. Martin Indyk and his Brookings Institute colleagues Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael O’Hanlon called this strategy for stability a balancing act in their article “Scoring Obama’s Foreign Policy.”78_{The term balancing act would become a}

common name to describe President Obama’s foreign policy strategy later in his presidency. In the second chapter, I will explain the influence these foreign policy goals had on the United States’ relationship with its allies in the Middle East. In this second chapter, I will focus on the relationship between the United States and Egypt.

1.4 Conclusion

In this chapter I have analyzed the declaratory strategy President Obama and his administration presented the world in the foreign policy speeches Obama gave as president in 2009 and as a candidate in 2008. The chapter showed that a large part of the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy built on the idea that the world was sick and tired of the way President Bush acted in the Middle East. This push away from the Bush presidency played a vital role in the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy and formed the backbone of the administration’s rhetoric. Obama’s administration concluded that the war in Iraq was highly unpopular and American popularity was at a low point. The administration used this analysis in creating its strategy. Although Obama’s foreign policy strategy for the Middle East was not completely obvious in all aspects, it was clear in its rhetorical push away from his predecessor. In reality, however, this push away from Bush was less visible. Many American policies in the Middle East stayed the same. I, therefore, conclude that the Obama

77 Ellen Hallams, “From Crusader to Exemplar: Bush, Obama and the Reinvigorating of America’s Soft Power”, 10.

78 Indyk, Lieberthal and O’Hanlon, “Scoring Obama’s Foreign Policy, A Progressive Pragmatist Tries to Bend History”, Foreign Affairs (May/June-2012) 35.

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administration’s push away from Bush was only visible in theory and not brought into practice.

The Obama administration wanted to improve the relationships between the United States and the Islamic nations in the Middle East. President Obama’s administration wanted to repair the damage that they believed was done to the United States’ reputation by the Bush administration and it saw a vital role for Joseph Nye’s soft power to reach this goal. Even though not every element of the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy fitted into Nye’s idea of soft power, Nye’s influence was obvious. The State Department under Secretary Clinton used parts of it and combined it with hard power into something they called smart power. The Obama administration’s soft power ideas were most apparent in the president’s speeches he gave in 2009, most notably his speech in Cairo. However, also President Obama’s speeches in Prague, Oslo, and Berlin had evident soft power tendencies; in the way that they all focused on multilateral solutions.

In the last subchapter, I briefly analyzed the goals of the Obama administration. The Obama administration tended to be less evident in outlining these goals than the Bush administration had been. From President Obama’s speech in Cairo, it became evident that peace in Israel would be one of the biggest goals for his administration in the Middle East and that the administration felt that peace in Israel could be the key to stabilizing the whole Middle East region. Democracy promotion was another subject that President Obama named in Cairo. However, pushing governments in the Middle East towards democracy would not be a goal in itself for the Obama administration, unlike it had been for his predecessor. Instead of democracy, President Obama spoke of human rights and freedom, which are not necessarily linked to democracy.

Nuclear disarmament and improving the reputation of the United States in the Islamic states of the Middle East were the last significant goals President Obama presented in his speeches. Obama focused explicitly on Iran when mentioning the topic of disarmament, while the topics of reputation building and strengthening relationships was aimed at Iran as well as at other anti-American nations in the region. We can also link the goal to rebuild the United States’ reputation in the Middle East to the administration’s goal not to get involved in another situation like the Iraq War. This last goal, no more Iraq, also influenced Obama’s decisionmaking later in his presidency. The next chapter will focus on the actions of the Obama administration surrounding the Egyptian Revolution and explain the importance of the relationship between Egypt and the United States.

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Chapter 2 President Obama’s Foreign Policy in Action:

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011

The Egyptian-American relations actually have been very important, and this importance has been getting more important. And this importance addressed the interests of both the people and also the region's interests in the Middle East.79

President Hosni Mubarak, 2008

Hosni Mubarak had been the President of Egypt since 1981, but it was on the 25th_{of January}

2011 that his rule started to destabilize. This 25th_{of January was announced as the Day of}

Revolt by online activists. Only 11 days after the Tunisian protests led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, it became clear that Egypt would be the second wave of what we now call the Arab Spring or Arab Revolutions.80_{Tahrir Square, a major square in the}

center of Cairo, was the center of this Day of Revolt and was filled with 50.000 protesters, all demanding that Mubarak would resign as President of Egypt. It seemed that after thirty years of Egypt under the rule of Mubarak, the results of the Tunisian Revolution gave many Egyptians hope that things could change in Egypt as well. "This is the first day of the Egyptian revolution," was a quote The Guardian got from one of the protesters in Cairo.81

Later that evening the Egyptian security forces emptied the squares by using tear gas. A little over two weeks later, on the 11th_{of February, the Egyptian state television announced}

President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down.82

This chapter will focus on the emergent strategy that came after the Obama administration’s declaratory strategy when the Arab uprisings and particularly the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 started. As briefly mentioned, a declaratory strategy is a strategy that an administration uses as its starting point, but when something unplanned happens the strategy has to be revised and brought into practice. In this chapter, I will compare and analyze what changed in the Obama administration’s foreign policy when the situation in the Arab world started to heat up and what specific actions the administration took regarding the situation in Egypt. I will focus on the decision-making process of the Obama administration and the academic discussions that followed these decisions. This chapter is divided into several

79 “President Bush Meets with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt”, George W. Bush White House Archives (16-1-2008). https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080116-2.html

80 Elizabeth Day, “The slap that sparked a revolution”, The Guardian (15-05-2011).

81 Jack Schenker, “Cairo protesters in violent clashes with police”, The Guardian (26-1-2011). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/25/egypt-protests-mubarak

82 Yolande Knell, “Egypt's revolution: 18 days in Tahrir Square”, Website BBC News (25-1-2011). http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-16716089

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chronological subchapters. The first subchapter offers an introduction into the U.S.-Egypt relationship after the peace accords of 1979. These accords brought the United States and Egypt closer together and put Egypt at the center of American peace efforts in the Middle East and especially the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In this subchapter, it will become clear that these peace accords have formed the core of the U.S.-Egypt relationship since the late 1970s, an argument many academics such as Robert Satloff have made.83_{Satloff is specialized in American foreign policy in the Middle East and has written}

articles about the U.S.-Egypt relationship. The second subchapter focuses on the start of the Arab Revolutions, which started in Tunis but became a region-wide issue when Mubarak stepped down in Egypt.

The third subchapter, the core of this second chapter, will focus on the actions of the Obama administration during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and its aftermath. This subchapter is divided into four different parts. The first part clarifies the way President Obama’s administration acted around the ousting of Mubarak. The second part is about President Obama and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF), which was in charge after the ousting of Mubarak.84_{The third part concerns the relationship between the}

Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. The last and fourth subchapter talks about the U.S.-Egypt relationship after the military coup. This division is not just based on what happened in Egypt but outlines how the Obama administration had to rethink its strategy with every government change.

When President Mubarak was still in charge, President Obama had to make a decision, either to listen to the protesters or side with Mubarak. President Obama chose the protesters and had to handle the consequences. The period of a SCAF-led Egyptian government was mainly a preamble towards Egyptian democratic elections, during which the Obama administration had time to discover which outcome they desired. The third period showed how the Obama administration dealt with an Egyptian government, which was led by a traditionally anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration decided on fully backing the Brotherhood. The last period is based on the complicated relationship between the Obama administration and Al-Sisi’s administration in Egypt, from the coup in 2013 until the release of military equipment in 2015.

83 Robert Satlof and Patrick Clawson, “U.S. Economic Aid to Egypt”, The Washington Institute (07-07-1998). http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/u.s.-economic-aid-to-egypt-designing-a-new-pro-growth-package

84 Zeinab Abul-Magd, “Understanding SCAF”, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (2012). https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/understanding-scaf/