Karim Abdoun

Abstract

For the past few decades, Egyptian-American relations had been established on the cornerstone that is the Camp David Accords. It codified a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the first Arab country to recognize Israel’s existence officially. This Egyptian-American relationship had started a long time after Nasser had broken ties with the Americans and backed the Soviet Union. Since then, all Egyptian Presidents since Sadat’s peace negotiations with Israel had maintained a steady relationship with the United States. Even when comparing two American Presidents from different political factions of the United States political arena, Republican George Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, the resulting foreign policy always seem to carry the same core aim of stabilizing and securing US interests vis-à-vis Egypt. The question here is why the US would support such regimes that were clearly against what the US would regard as human rights, or American values, or dignified democratic ideals that the world should abide by? The argument of the thesis is based on 2 levels of analysis: the international and the individual.The hypothesis of this thesis is that the decisions that were made were done in order to maintain and sustain US-Egyptian relations under any circumstances without regards to the type of rulers of Egypt who all have been labeled by numerous human rights organizations as authoritarian, not completely democratic and not in line with what the US values represents as it will be elaborated upon over the next coming chapters. Corruption, police brutality, oppression and aggressive treatment of demonstrations have been what Egypt is characterized of the past few years. Employing defensive realists techniques to solve Egyptian problem while trying to counter the challenge of a China and Russia rising in power and influence with the US being the great power that needs to address this challenge meant that the United States was interested in decreasing aggression in the Middle East to address the international structure pressure to deal with China and Russia.

Department

Political Science Department

Degree Name

MA in Political Science

Graduation Date

6-1-2015

Submission Date

January 2015

First Advisor

Bahi, Riham

Committee Member 1

Sunday, James

Committee Member 2

Kazziha, Walid

Extent

103 p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Rights

The author retains all rights with regard to copyright. The author certifies that written permission from the owner(s) of third-party copyrighted matter included in the thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study has been obtained. The author further certifies that IRB approval has been obtained for this thesis, or that IRB approval is not necessary for this thesis. Insofar as this thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study is an educational record as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 USC 1232g), the author has granted consent to disclosure of it to anyone who requests a copy.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Approval has been obtained for this item

Download

Share

COinS