Will spike of violence in Egypt push US to act more forcefully?

The Muslim Brotherhood, while perhaps Egypt’s single most potent political force, is not the country’s most extreme Islamist movement. The US is hoping to encourage the more moderate tendencies in an upsurge in religious political forces.

And even as it works to encourage a prompt political transition in Egypt, the administration is also mindful that any perception on the part of the public that the US was employing its heavy hand to steer events could backfire.

But some American experts on Egypt are beginning to criticize the Obama administration for what to them looks like accommodation of the military’s hold on power in the interest of Egypt’s stability and friendliness towards the US. And they are calling on Congress to use its leverage over US foreign policy – its control of the purse strings – to send a clear message to Egypt’s military rulers.

In a Nov. 17 statement the Working Group on Egypt called on Congress to set conditions for continuing some $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt, saying that in many ways the country’s military rulers have continued the repressive measures of the Mubarak era.

The Working Group, a collection of Middle East experts who have been advising US policy makers on Egypt since before the Arab Spring, said Congress should require the secretary of State to certify that the government of Egypt has held “free and fair elections” and is implementing policies protecting basic human and political rights.

The statement said Congress should act in light of the Obama administration’s “stated reluctance to touch the $1.3 billion in military aid it gives to Egypt every year.”

During his first visit to Egypt since moving from the helm of the CIA to the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in early October that he had encouraged the military rulers to move forward on a true political transition – including the lifting of a much-hated state-of-emergency law that dates for before Mubarak’s departure.

But Secretary Panetta also offered an over-all positive report on what he saw and heard from the military leaders. “I really do have full confidence in the process that the Egyptian military is overseeing,” he said, “I think they’re making good progress.”

Clinton offered a slightly different take on the administration’s perspective in her Nov. 7 speech.

“If, over time, the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials,” she said, “they will have planted the seeds for future unrest, and Egyptians will have missed a historic opportunity.”

That warning appears now to have been prescient, given the resurgence of unrest in Egypt. One question now will be whether the renewed turmoil prompts the US to favor stability or to come out more forcefully for the forces of political transition in Egypt.

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