Egypt: Proxy for U.S. Oil Interests in the Middle East

After a three-year hiatus, the U.S. ruling class is pointing to resume a major military exercise with Egypt. Under the threat of growing industrial and military cooperation between Egypt and imperialist rivals Russia and China, the U.S. bosses are seeking a stronger alliance with the regional power to prop up their increasingly tenuous stronghold in the Middle East.
Bridging the Middle East and Africa, linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, Egypt is central to geopolitics in the region. Its Suez Canal and Sumed pipeline are strategic routes for the Persian Gulf and for natural gas shipments to Europe and North America. In 2013, 3.2 million barrels of oil a day passed through the Canal (Business Insider, 4/1/2015). “With its strategic situation, its cultural influence and a population double that of any other Arab country, Egypt has for three decades now been the linchpin of a precarious but enduring regional Pax Americana” (The Economist, 12/15/10).
Egypt is currently the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel (NPR 2/22). But like many junior partners in today’s sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, the local ruling class seems to be up for grabs. Egypt and Russia have a “burgeoning military relationship” (Washington Times, 12/1/16), and the two nations recently signed off on a package of 17 intergovernmental agreements (Sputnik International, 3/5/17). Meanwhile, a Chinese company is investing $20 billion to fund the development of a new Egyptian capital 28 miles east of Cairo (CNN.com, 10/10/16).
Egypt’s Sisi: Criminal Thug, U.S. Ruling Class Role Model
The U.S. bosses are still trying to recover from their failed attempt to orchestrate the Arab Spring rebellions into a reliable pro-U.S. government in Egypt. In 2011, Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, helped oust president Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, disrupting a three-decade alliance and paving the way for the 2012 election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. The Brotherhood was born in Egypt in the 1920s as a conservative transnational movement against the British occupation. It gained popularity by using religion to numb the starving workers of Egypt to the reality of their super-exploitation by capitalism.
In 2013, after the subsequent military coup and crackdown led by mass-murderer Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, the U.S. voiced support for the new regime even as it temporarily suspended arms sales to Egypt:  
A month after the military’s intervention—and in the lead-up to its massacre of Morsi supporters near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque—Secretary of State John Kerry even appeared to endorse the coup, saying that the army was “in effect … restoring democracy” and averting civil war (Atlantic, 8/9/15).
In 2015, Obama resumed the transfer of major weapons systems to Egypt, including F-16 fighter planes. “[G]rowing concern over the threat of militants in Sinai, many of whom have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, as well as Egypt’s decision to buy weapons from Russia and France, led the Obama administration to reverse course” (New York Times, 2/26).
Sisi, whom Trump has called “a fantastic guy,” is best known for his ruthless anti-working-class campaign of repression, censorship, militarized arrests, and mass disappearances—a strategy that inspires Trump, the new assassin-in-chief. “For Trump as well as other senior Republican politicians, Sisi has become an exemplar of a solid ally, a soldier who is tough on terrorism and vehemently opposed to political Islam” (Washington Post, 9/20/16).
The Trump administration, facing widespread pushback against its racist, anti-Muslim immigration ban, may double down and curry favor with Sisi by designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Trump’s targeting of the Brotherhood is aimed to safeguard U.S. imperialism and its primary source of cheaply extracted oil, Saudi Arabia, where the parasitic royal family fears an Islamist challenge to its absolute authority.