This book is the autobiography of one of
the most skilled politicians in the Arab world. Nabil Fahmy is an Egyptian
career diplomat who spent nearly four decades in public service, working in the
offices of former President Anwar Sadat and his Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, as
well as at Egypt’s permanent missions to the United Nations (both in New York
and Geneva), and serving as Egypt’s ambassador to Tokyo and Washington. He was Egypt’s
foreign minister from July 2013 to June 2014. After leaving office, he
established the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American
University in Cairo.
Having
served for nine years as ambassador to Washington, Fahmy sheds great light in
the book on both American-Egyptian relations and US mediation efforts in the
Middle East peace process. As a senior diplomat, he was a first-hand witness to
a number of momentous events in the recent history of US involvement in the
Middle East, including Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the 1991 Arab-Israeli
peace conference in Madrid, the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Peace Accords and
the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Throughout the book, Fahmy does not shy
away from exhibiting his frustration at failed US endeavors in the Middle East,
oscillating between pinning the blame on the incompetence of its leaders and
accusing them of political opportunism. For instance, he describes the 2000
Camp David peace summit as “fully a failure of American diplomacy” (94), considers
Barack Obama’s response to Egypt’s revolution in 2011 as “an exercise of amateurish
diplomacy,” (188) and, overall, determines that the US was not “an honest
broker” between the Israelis and the Palestinians (102).
Nothing
throws more light on the complex ties between a superpower seeking absolute
hegemony and a regional power that strives to maintain some foreign policy independence
than the title Fahmy picked for his chapter on US-Egypt relations: An
Indispensable but Uncomfortable Relationship. Indeed, the book demonstrates
that, short of being a classical patron-and-client relationship, the
four-decade US-Egypt strategic alliance involved a great deal of push-and-pull
and frequent quarrels, controversies and differences of opinion. Fahmy opines
that the US “was uncomfortable to find Egypt frequently taking independent
positions, particularly on matters related to the Arab-Israeli peace process”
(163), and that it was “determined to put a price tag on [Egypt’s] independent
streak” (164). Regrettably, he says, American politicians, over the
generations, “only viewed Egypt’s regional role through the prism of peace with
Israel” (164).
The
book primarily focuses on the workings of Egypt’s diplomacy over the past five
decades. As such, it helps readers better understand the diverse features,
strategies, negotiating tactics and key figures of Egypt’s foreign policy, the
intricate dynamics of its decision-making process, as well as the personality
and policy preferences of the man who stayed at Egypt’s helm for three decades
(1981- 2011): Hosni Mubarak. Throughout its ten chapters, the book also delves
into discussing several major issues in Egypt’s recent history, such as its
problematic relations with a former foe, Israel, in the time of peace; Cairo’s
efforts to free the Middle East region from weapons of mass destruction; the
question of succession to the presidency in Mubarak’s last years in office; and
the tumultuous events that engulfed the country in 2013-2014. The section on Egypt’s
thorny relations with riparian Nile states in Chapter 6 acquires its timeliness
from the current heated dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter’s
construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.
The book, moreover,
examines the rough terrain of Arab politics and US engagement in the Middle
East, highlighting the author’s behind-the-scenes encounters and conversations
with a large number of world leaders, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George
W. Bush, Barack Obama, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, King Hussein of Jordan, and
Muammar Gaddafi. Still, readers might infer that the author knows more than he
says, and that, probably influenced by his long career in the diplomatic
service, he tends to be reserved and reticent in his writing. Indeed, the book frequently
veers from discussing the author’s rich personal experience to becoming a rather
tedious textbook about the recent history of the Middle East.
In sum, the book’s
insights, perspectives, information and anecdotes make it of use to anyone
interested in Middle East politics, international diplomacy and Egyptian
history. Its primary value stems from its provision of a great many useful
insights into the internal and external dynamics of Egyptian and Middle East
politics, especially considering the overall scarcity of memoirs written by
Arab politicians in recent years.
Nael Shama
* This book review appeared first in the
November 2020 issue of the journal International Affairs.
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