The Failure of Militarized Diplomacy: Egypt’s Coup and the Decline of Continental Hegemony
Mural from the Egyptian Revolution depicts popular sentiments on army rule. Credit: Ho Hossam el-Hamalawy
In the run-up to the July 2013 coup, supporters of the Egyptian military regularly circulated poorly photoshopped posters depicting then-defence minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as a lion, looked upon by the late president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Meanwhile, the elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, was accused of weakness that led to the degrading of Egypt’s stature in the continent. In contrast, the army propagandists declared it was only el-Sisi and his officers that could regain Cairo’s glory as a hegemon in the Middle East and Africa, secure the country’s borders and protect its perceived rightful share of the Nile water resources threatened by an ambitious ruler in Addis Ababa.
This has hardly been a success story.
Militarization of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry
The relationship between Egypt’s Foreign Ministry and the General Intelligence Service (GIS) has always been close and characterised by overlapping mandates. From its early days, the GIS managed to carve out a more substantial sphere of influence in the diplomatic service, dominating foreign policy vis-à-vis Egypt’s neighbours and elsewhere. Such a trend would only be enforced under the tenure of Major General Omar Suleiman, sometimes to the diplomats’ dismay, which was expressed clearly in the memoir of former Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Ghayt.
After the 2013 coup, however, the repressive apparatus institutions (GIS, military, and police) scrambled to extend their grip on all state organs, including the Foreign Ministry, as part of el-Sisi’s vision to militarize the civil service and society. The overtaking of the ministry was not only via staffing its ranks with security officials but also through sending junior diplomats, starting in 2017, to a six-month ideological indoctrination boot camp at the Military Academy. The diplomats are treated as conscripts, humiliated, broken, and receive seminars in the pseudoscience of Fourth Generation Warfare conspiracy theories.
From the river to the sea, failures are all we can see
The drive for militarisation and change in the ministry’s administrative dynamics have not led to an elevation of the regime’s status in Africa, let alone in Cairo’s traditional spheres of influence. On the contrary, one can argue that the most populous Arab nation is currently at its lowest point regarding regional power projection and has failed to prevail diplomatically in every challenge it faced.
Despite frantic attempts over the past decade by Egypt to obstruct Ethiopia from building the Grand Renaissance Dam, which Cairo perceives as a strategic threat to its Nile water resources, it could not prevail. After many rounds of extended negotiations, the Egyptian government announced in December 2023 that talks over the dam had failed. The dam is now in operation.
Despite consistent attempts by Cairo to bring South Sudan into its sphere of influence, the latter’s legislatures ratified the Ethiopia-backed Entebbe Agreement this month, making it the sixth Nile River state to do so, in opposition to Egypt and Sudan.
Moreover, landlocked Ethiopia surprised Egypt and the rest of the world at the beginning of this year by signing an agreement with the breakaway statelet of Somaliland to gain access to the Red Sea. Egypt vehemently opposed the agreement, but its response did not exceed some empty verbal threats and denunciations.
This month, the Somali central government signed a joint defence pact with Egypt, yet “it’s a hallow symbolic move,” says Abdurahman Warsame, a Somali journalist. “This is about Sisi trying to show he’s relevant and the isolated [Somali president] Hassan Sheikh Mohamud – who doesn’t control much of his country, including parts of the capital itself – trying to show he has friends. But practically on the ground, nothing changes. And it’s difficult to see Egypt militarily attacking Ethiopia and Somaliland, both of whom enjoy close relations with the UAE, Sisi’s main sponsor.”
Securing the vital Suez Canal has always meant Egypt strived to build its strategic domination of the Red Sea. In the 1973 war, the Egyptian navy, for instance, imposed a blockade on Israel by closing the Bab el-Mandab strait. In the ensuing decades, Egypt worked diplomatically and militarily to ensure smooth maritime navigation through this critical sea route.
The Yemen Houthis’ campaign, following the outbreak of the latest Gaza war, triggered a crisis in global trade and depleted the hard currency revenues of the Suez Canal, which are much needed amid Egypt’s ongoing economic crisis. Despite the massive expansion in foreign arms purchases (including submarines and frigates from Germany), the Egyptian navy has zero role in containing the threat and unclogging the maritime traffic flow.
A lost backyard
In Sudan, historically dominated by its northern neighbour – whose fingerprints were always seen in coups, military interventions, domestic political feuds, and GIS operations – Cairo stood by, watching Omar Bashir’s fall in 2019. Egypt was unable to influence the political outcome of the revolt, which saw Addis Ababa, Cairo’s archrival, instead intervening to broker a settlement between the Sudanese opposition and the military.
Two years later, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) staged a coup against the civilian government, reportedly with an Egyptian greenlight, only to fail miserably at pacifying the country.
In April 2023, Sudan was embroiled in a civil war between the army and the RSF. The SAF, backed by Cairo, suffered devastating losses. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict are taking place in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Djibouti rather than Egypt, which has little influence on the process. Cairo’s only attempt to host Sudanese talks this month resulted in nothing.
At the start of the civil war, RSF soldiers captured Egyptian jets and abused Egyptian soldiers at Merowe airbase. Egypt had aimed to establish an advanced strategic position in Sudan to threaten Ethiopia, only to lose such military presence in a humiliating manner that was recorded on video and circulated online, adding insult to injury.
Cairo, again, has been exposed as a declawed old lion.
Military dictatorship and eclipse of regional hegemony
The only place where the Egyptian army flexed its muscles was in neighbouring war-torn Libya, with an air campaign. And even those air raids hardly tilted the balance on the ground in favour of el-Sisi’s allies.
Contrary to the simplistic assumption that a hyper-militarised regime is bound to have an aggressive foreign policy, Egypt’s case is a stark example of how lack of domestic political legitimacy impacts the state’s ability to project regional power. After squandering billions of dollars on white elephant projects and being deprived of local support, el-Sisi’s regime became dependent on foreign economic and political aid. This eventually limited its capacity to pursue an assertive foreign policy lest it angers its backers.
The Egyptian army, no matter the volume of its arms purchases, which are financed mainly by loans from Europe, or the size of its troops, is essentially geared towards domestic policing and entrenching the dictatorial regime that serves the officers’ class privileges. Any quixotic diplomatic or military adventures outside the country’s borders will likely result in an embarrassing catastrophe, which in turn will further erode the military’s stature inside Egypt and threaten the foundations of the regime.
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