Lloyd Gardner on Egypt and America

The historian reflects on the past 60 years of American involvement in Egypt and tells us, after the Arab Spring, what may make the coming years different

What first got you interested in the Middle East, and in particular Egypt?

I have been studying American foreign policy for my entire career, particularly, in recent years, the Vietnam era, but also the two World Wars and the Cold War. So as the crisis arose in the Middle East after [the US-led invasion of Iraq in] 2003 there were so many things happening that had happened before in Vietnam. Despite obvious differences, it made me want to get into it deeper.

As far as Egypt is concerned, I came to the realisation after I had finished two other books on the Middle East, that really I had not spent enough time talking about Egypt, because in many ways Egypt was crucial to American policy from World War II on. Even so, the trigger for writing my latest book was the Egyptian revolution that began in Tahrir Square on 25 January 2011.

And how crucial do you think America’s role has been in shaping Egypt’s history?

A very great deal. The Americans really came into this situation at the end of World War II. As the war came to an end it became clearer and clearer that the British were in trouble in terms of maintaining their old position in Egypt, and, while we didn’t necessarily want them to maintain the same privileged position, we didn’t want to hustle them out of Egypt either, without making sure the barn door was locked. By that I mean our whole objective at the end of World War II was to find some sort of safe landing spot for the old empires that would transition into a different international order led by the US – one free from the colonial past but also a bulwark against radical nationalism and communism.

So the Americans wanted countries like Egypt to continue to be friendly towards them and the old Empire, even if they were free from them.

Yes, they wanted Egypt to be friendly towards the West and policymakers believed both the British and the French were making big mistakes in that regard because of their reluctance to accommodate nationalist demands. The United States did not want to see a military vacuum either, so it was a very tricky situation. Perhaps it could be solved, Washington policymakers thought, by stimulating the creation of a regional military pact somewhat on the order of NATO. America had to provide the Egyptians and other colonial protectorate areas with some sort of look into the future that would be better than they had in the past, though tailored to Western interests. The end of World War II meant the end of colonialism. That was one of the most important things about World War II. That is well understood now, but it wasn’t so well understood back then.

Therefore Egypt was crucial from a military point of view in terms of the Suez Canal with its huge military base for the ability to exercise influence across the region. But even more important, in some ways, was the assumption that Egypt could be a leader of Arab opinion. It had such a historic intellectual and cultural position in the Middle East that it was believed absolutely essential to try to work with local Egyptian nationalists.

American Orientalism

By Douglas Little

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Let’s have a look at some of your books, which explore that theme. Your first choice is Douglas Little’s American Orientalism, which looks at the long view of America’s attitude to the Middle East.

We should say it right out: Americans, including academics, are behind in terms of the Middle East. And that is because when Americans studied the rest of the world before all the trouble began in the Middle East, basically we studied Europe. We studied Asia and Latin America as a deep second to Europe, but the Middle East was almost completely ignored. The only interest that the United States had in the Middle East was oil and protecting the new state of Israel. So very little time was spent in history courses or political science courses in the United States on the Middle East as an area. Hence when Doug Little’s book came along it was a real pioneering effort in many ways to talk about America’s attitude to the Middle East. There is something else to say on this point – even when Americans write books about the Middle East and Egypt, they are less aware of the internal history of those countries than they are of the history of any of the European powers, and that leads to oversimplification.

Now there are other books around, but it seems to me that the worth of this book has already been illustrated by the fact that it is in its third edition now. And it keeps expanding and covers the area all the way back to Mark Twain and up to the present, so I think it is a wonderful survey.

And what did he see as America’s attitude towards Egypt?

He doesn’t single out Egypt as much as I do in terms of seeing it as the key area for American influence. But he fits it into the problems of dealing with nationalism from Nasser on, and trying to satisfy both the Egyptian desire for self-determination and American desire to keep a strong hegemonic influence in the area.