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| Daily News Brief October 10, 2013 |
Top of the Agenda: U.S. to Partially Cut Aid to Egypt
The Obama administration decided to suspend cash and military hardware transfers to Egypt while maintaining assistance for security and counterterrorism operations (LAT)
after a three-month-long review of U.S. policy. Cairo condemned the
move, which signaled Washington's discontent with the Egyptian
military's violent crackdown on supporters of the ousted, democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi (BBC). The U.S. State Department stressed that the decision wasn't permanent and could be reversed if progress was made toward establishing an inclusive government (AP).
Analysis
"Obama appears set to still not use the word 'coup'
so as to retain his freedom of maneuver to resume the military aid
should Egypt's behavior improve. But in ramping down the assistance now,
he is acknowledging the obvious: the military seizure of power this
summer from a democratically elected, albeit anti-democratic, government
has not gone very well," writes CFR Senior Fellow Robert Danin.
"The
danger in suspending aid to Egypt, above all other dangers, is that
Obama, by signaling that he will act aggressively against Arab
autocrats, might provide Islamists with a glimmer of hope
at a time when they're generally back on their heels. Certainly, the
opponents of such American friends as the king of Jordan would be
pleased by this latest act of an administration that many already
believe is naive about the nature of Islamic terrorism," writes Jeffrey
Goldberg for Bloomberg.
"A smart policy would be to try to use whatever influence the U.S. has left to broker disputes, but the Obama Administration hasn't done this since Mubarak's ouster.
Now it seems to be giving up the little leverage it has in Cairo. The
good, fuzzy feeling in Washington may prove fleeting," writes in the Wall Street Journal in an editorial.
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