Rejections' Symbolism

"Today’s developments in Syria and Iraq stem, among other things, from a heavy-handed and irresponsible interference from the outside into the affairs of the region and unilateral use of force, 'double standards', and differentiating between 'good' and 'bad' terrorists."
Russian President Vladimir Putin

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (l.) looks on as Russian President Vladimir Putin (c.) presents him with a Kalishnikov assault rifle on Monday during Putin's two-day visit to Cairo.

The Egyptian Presidency/Courtesy of Reuters

"Putin is being careful. He isn't saying Russia can push out the US, or even wants to. Putin's just making these points, which seem self-evident to a lot of people in the Middle East these days. He's saying that the US doesn't know what it's doing and can't be trusted to be consistent about anything. That's what Russia has learned from its experience, and if others are having the same experience, well, Putin is saying, let's get together and work out alternatives."
"There are new conditions in the world, so there is a new Russian foreign policy strategy. If the West will not work with Russia, we will find new partners and do whatever it takes to ensure that Russian national interests are taken care of."
Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the independent Institute of Middle East Studies in Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin is nothing if not cunningly persuasive when it suits his interests. And on his trip to Cairo, it most certainly suited his interests to offer a gift to Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi that positively reeked with symbolism. His very own super-terrific Kalashnikov rifle. Not that Egypt's president cannot lay his hands on a Kalashnikov any time he likes since they're the weapon of choice worldwide, but this special gift comes with the assurance that Moscow is prepared to supply much, much more.

Egypt was American President Barack Obama's to lose. Long an ally of the U.S. in the Middle East quagmire of competing, intersecting and opposing interests, it suited Barack Obama's vision of the future to withdraw his support from Hosni Mubarak in favour of giving the Muslim Brotherhood the opportunity to administer the largest and most populous country in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood, over its 80-year span has excelled in currying favour internationally; it has sent its tentacles all over the world.

And in the United States it has succeeded brilliantly in interposing itself, in persuading that it is a moderate alternative to the traditional totalitarian regimes of the Middle East. Its representatives have successfully lobbied the Obama administration, and they have succeeded in facetime with the president to sell their vision of the 'moderate' face of Islam that they claim to represent. Mr. Obama envisioned the Brotherhood as taking the helm in Egypt and when it did for a brief but ruinous year, Egyptians revolted, rejecting the rule of Mohammad Morsi.

The Brotherhood had no intention of going quietly into that bleak atmosphere of rejection and loss of power it had finally attained. It spurred its faithful to object and to launch protests, peaceful and violent. And in the Sinai Peninsula, its association with the Salafist Bedouin, with Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in league with the Brotherhood, including Hamas, led to violence and attacks against the Egyptian police and military until President al-Sisi's administration declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group.

The U.S. administration's ongoing support of the Brotherhood, and its withdrawal of the full support it had always given Egypt under its former administration has certainly not been lost on Egypt. Saudi Arabia, also seeing itself abandoned by its former U.S. ally, has supplied Egypt with funding. And so it makes sense that Cairo is now looking elsewhere, and where else than the country that formerly it had such close ties with? Moscow is delighted, prepared to supply arms, and to help Egypt build a nuclear installation. Both pledging to join in their shared battle with extremist Islamists.

It hasn't helped that the United States has covertly but clearly thrown its support from the Sunni majority toward the Shiite minority, in a region where sectarian conflict has turned deadly. Iran, the avowed enemy of the former allies of the U.S. has now become a partner in attempts to destroy the Islamic State. And there is the toxic picture; the U.S. fighting alongside Lebanon's Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, and Iraq can be thrown in for good measure; Yemen as well now; all themselves terrorists but arrayed in concert against Sunni Islamist jihadis.

So, logically, in steps Russia, widening its support in parts of the world where its brutal intervention in Ukraine is a non-issue. So the U.S. can have the Muslim Brotherhood to champion, whose global headquarters now stretch from Istanbul to London, to Washington, with its penetration at the federal, state and local levels throughout the United States. The State Department's recent conference hosting Brotherhood allies at Foggy Bottom did not go unrecognized by Egypt.