EU Policies towards Egypt: The Civil Security Paradox
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Ahmed Abd Rabou |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12428 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
EU Policies towards Egypt: The Civil Security
Paradox
Ahmed Abd Rabou
Cairo University / University of Denver
Abstract
Can Egypt achieve economic and security-related stability without first achieving some sort of political and civil control? While
many regional and international actors seem convinced that it can be done, this essay argues that stability in post-revolution
Egypt is only possible by empowering civilian and political actors in cooperation with military and security establishments.
Based on an analysis of Egyptian civil security relations, it shall be shown that the prioritising of economic and security sector
solutions over political reforms has led to a dysfunctional system and a vicious cycle of political violence, economic hardships
and security failures. In consideration of ways forward, the essays end with policy recommendations for the EU and other
international actors in their approach towards Egypt.
Policy Implications
•Keep open dialogue and negotiations with Egypt’s senior politicians.
•Provide more oversight to the Egyptian scene with less political conditionality and no direct interventions.
•Strengthen the role of Egyptian civil society –with particular attention focused on civil security relations.
•Cooperate with the Egyptian military while prioritising security sector reforms.
Introduction
The main purpose of this paper is to challenge the cur-
rent belief widely held by donors, state institutions, and
many elites in Europe and other Western countries that
Egypt’s only route to economic stability and social pros-
perity is through major economic reforms –even at the
expense of human security and human rights. This paper
shall show, instead, that Egypt must first solve the puzzle
of relations among civilians and security actors in order to
sustain its upward economic and technological develop-
ment.
Since its establishment as a republic in 1953, Egypt has
taken the ‘economy first’approach. Nationalisation policies
extended the government’s control over the public
sphere, including the political and civil dimensions, to
ensure the supremacy of the military and other coercive
parts of the state apparatus. This paradigm still prevails in
post-revolutionary Egypt. During the successive rules of
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) (2001–
12) and the Muslim Brotherhood (2012–13), promises of
an economic boom through reforms and mega project
investments remained prominent in government prosperity
plans. Most recently, in the first two years of rule, the al-
Sisi administration has adopted this approach so aggres-
sively in its move to develop Egypt economically and
politically that it even undertook measures at the expense
of civil rights.
Civil security approach
Maintaining internal order was the main goal of most mili-
taries in the newly independent countries of the 1950s and
60s. Their domestic policies led to a surge of military inter-
ventions in Asia, Africa and Latin America that sacrificed
democratic values and institutions. As a result, scholars of
this period sought answers to explain why and how the mil-
itary coups occurred (May et al., 2004). Most scholarship on
civil-military relations (CMR) focused on leaders’motives and
military structures and highlighted the beneficial socioeco-
nomic and political conditions both in Egypt and in terms of
its geopolitical situation in the region. While some scholars
attributed the interventions to the military’s own corporate
interests (e.g., Janowitz, 1964; First, 1970; Nordlinger, 1970;
Horowitz, 1980), others described the military’s actions as
motivated by the larger civil society community, subject to
internal splits and inclined to support coercive political fac-
tions to push through specificfinancial dynamics or over-
come the cleavages of class and ethnicity etc.; a third
explanation saw the cause for the interventions in the coup
leaders’individual aspirations (Abd Rabou, 2016a).
Another trend in the military-in-politics literature differen-
tiated among the several forms of military and civil-military
systems. Scholars analysed and categorised the political and
economic reforms implemented by the army after a success-
ful military coup and eventually agreed that the ultimate
cause lay in a failure to demarcate clear boundaries
©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12428
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 4 . June 2017
94
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