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Suspending Aid to Egypt Should Be An Easy Decision

Ross Douthat also makes the case for suspending military aid to Egypt: Now, though, the calculus has to change. Egypt is rolling back into authoritarianism along a track that’s soaked in blood. The cycle of crackdown-radicalization, crackdown-radicalization is likely to get worse, the cost of being intimately tied to the military regime is getting higher, […]

Ross Douthat also makes the case for suspending military aid to Egypt:

Now, though, the calculus has to change. Egypt is rolling back into authoritarianism along a track that’s soaked in blood. The cycle of crackdown-radicalization, crackdown-radicalization is likely to get worse, the cost of being intimately tied to the military regime is getting higher, and the window for demonstrating that America’s favor really is conditional is closing fast.

The most credible objection to the call for suspending Egypt aid that I have seen is that it wouldn’t change conditions in Egypt for the better. That’s fair enough, but it misses the point. There is probably nothing that the U.S. can do at this point that would make the military less intent on its crackdown, so it’s time for Washington to cease backing a client that completely ignores its preferences. Cutting off aid to a coup government in accordance with our own law shouldn’t have to be the tortured, difficult decision that some people are making it out to be, and it should be even easier when that client government massacres protesters in the streets. U.S. influence in Egypt is already very limited and becoming more so every day, so the U.S. should be willing to risk losing it without so much hand-wringing and indecision.

Failing to suspend aid to Egypt implicates the U.S. in whatever the Egyptian military does in the weeks and months to come. It will also be widely assumed that the U.S. desires and welcomes the coup and the subsequent crackdown in spite of its public rhetoric. Unless the U.S. wants that perception to take hold and become a cause for future attacks on Americans and U.S. facilities, it should do what the law already requires that it do.

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