Wars and conflicts in the Middle East will not be resolved by military strikes, and efforts to settle them peacefully will not quickly yield positive and stable results.
From Palestine to Yemen, through the situations in Lebanon and Syria, in the immediate neighbourhood of Sudan and Libya, and in the Nile Basin, of existential importance to Egypt, the wars, civil conflicts, and political tensions that these countries are witnessing is confronting Egypt with major challenges. These affect its national security and thus require decision-makers to deal with all of them at the same time.
As a pivotal state in its regional environment, Egypt links its national security policies with its major goals in the Middle East – which include resolving the Palestinian issue based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, restoring stability in areas of war and conflict, ridding the region of the aggressive use of military force and clearing it of weapons of mass destruction, and agreeing on security arrangements and peaceful settlements that unleash the energies of human development and cooperation between all the countries of the region without discrimination.
With regard to the policies and practices of other pivotal countries in the Middle East, Egypt can, on the one hand, develop its strategic partnership with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in defence of the Palestinian cause, protection of Arab security, and support for military, economic, and trade cooperation.
On the other hand, it can open up to the Turkish and Iranian governments in a calculated manner without ignoring contradictions in visions and interests. As for Israel, Egypt’s priorities are to preserve the coherence of the Peace Treaty, prevent any infringement of its national sovereignty or threat to national security, prevent Gaza from being lost to Palestine, whether by the crime of displacement or by other means, and resist the liquidation of the Palestinian cause that is desired by the present extreme-right government in Tel Aviv.
The legitimate Egyptian rejection of US President Donald Trump’s proposal regarding Gaza, and Cairo’s explicit objection to Washington’s justification of the crimes of settlement and annexation in the West Bank, do not mean that the friendly and cooperative relations between Egypt and the United States are on the verge of collapse or are inevitably set to decline.
Cairo must reject Washington’s policies that are biased towards the Israeli extreme-right, and it can respond effectively to the unacceptable threat to freeze US military and economic aid by demonstrating its ability to find alternative sources domestically, regionally, and internationally (the Chinese fourth-generation fighters are clear evidence of this). It can rely on popular support and Arab and international solidarity in doing so.
However, Cairo’s political and diplomatic capabilities give it ample space to address Washington with a different proposal regarding Gaza – the Egyptian Reconstruction Plan – on the Palestinian issue, developing the ceasefire arrangements into a long-term truce and returning to peace negotiations, and on the inevitability of limiting Israeli aggression by renewing talks about clearing the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction and binding collective security arrangements.
Without submitting to US dictates or remaining silent on policies and practices that are biased towards Israel and undermine Arab and Egyptian security, Cairo must maintain its good relations with Washington and continuously search for opportunities to employ them positively based on the wisdom of Egyptian political and diplomatic action.
The issue here is not related to the military or economic aid that Egypt receives from the US in return for significant facilities, but rather to the influential US role in regional security issues in the Middle East, such as the tripartite mediation of Egypt, Qatar, and the US in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the Horn of Africa, where US mediation is needed to reach a fair agreement with Ethiopia regarding the Nile water, and in international financing issues, including the ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Egypt has no strategic interest in abandoning friendly and cooperative relations with the US or in stopping the ongoing dialogue with it, unless Washington’s policies come close to threatening national sovereignty and security and completely contradict Cairo’s visions and interests. However, Egypt also has no strategic interest in limiting friendly and cooperative relations with other great powers besides the United States.
Over the past few years, Egypt’s military, economic, and trade relations with China, Russia, India and other BRICS group countries have developed positively. In the light of the unstable situation in the Middle East and the challenges to Egyptian national security in Sudan, Libya, and the Horn of Africa, Cairo would do well to continue working to build real partnerships with Beijing, Moscow, and New Delhi and to view them as a complement to its special relations with Washington and not an alternative to them.
In the light of the present global situation and its successive fluctuations, diversifying Egypt’s foreign relations, areas of economic and trade cooperation, and sources of obtaining weapons and military technology are a strategic priority that is not open to compromise, regardless of hidden or public tensions with the United States. These fluctuations include the change from the deep-rooted hostility between the US and Russia during the last years of the Biden administration to the openness, negotiation, and most likely agreements in the near future, the change from an alliance between the United States and Europe to the Trump administration’s new attitude towards its European allies and the end of military support for Ukraine, leaving this to the Europeans, should they wish to pursue it, to the calm in relations between Washington and Beijing, as well as repeated hidden and public tensions.
Regarding Europe, decision-makers in Egypt should intensify their approach to the Old Continent on economic, trade, technological, military and security cooperation and on various regional issues that require solidarity from the European capitals with the positions of Cairo and the Arab capitals.
It is very important for Egypt to continue to develop its relations with Europe and to develop the vital policy programmes that are currently being implemented in the fields of alternative energy, sustainable development, debt exchange, and controlling illegal immigration and supporting refugees, as well as in developing military and security cooperation with some European countries. It is also important to secure European diplomatic support for the Palestinian right to reject displacement and annexation, the Egyptian and Jordanian right to reject threats to their national sovereignty, and the Arab right to link normalisation with Israel with the establishment of a Palestinian state, especially when the threats come from the United States.
However, at the same time Cairo must realise that the strategic weight of the Europeans in international political issues is inevitably heading towards further decline, whether due to accumulated internal crises or changes in the policies of the current US administration from its predecessor and what appears to be Washington’s readiness to withdraw from defending Europe and protecting its security, something that it has undertaken since the end of World War II. There is also the economic rise of China, which is taking over what used to be European trade, and Russian military threats.
This means, on the one hand, that Egypt must give priority to formulating and implementing its foreign policy with regard to its relations in the Middle East and with its Arab brothers and its relations globally with the United States, China, Russia and India, while on the other hand also dealing with Europe as a global power facing the risk of decline and the withdrawal of influence, even if the European countries individually may still have some important cards to play.
The writer is a political scientist and former MP. He is currently director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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