Say no to Sisi

The message that should be blaring like a flashing red light with horn blaring to the Sisi military regime in Egypt is: “It’s the economy, Stupid.”  Unfortunately the economic paternalism practiced by the military since Nasser is an institution. There is no chance that  subsidy and crony capitalist based precepts will change and so Egypt’s economy is doomed to stagnate to where Egypt’s young educated population will suffer perpetual disappointment from lack of opportunity.  Meanwhile the authoritarian powers looking for the appearance of order drive political discourse underground.  President Obama should consider The Carnegie Endowment for Peace Working Group on Egypt letter urging him not to “certify the democratic transition needed to release suspended military assistance” because its a bad bet.

Without a free market in Egypt’s economy the country is directed by self serving cronies driving the victims of its poor decision making process to the opposition. The Sisi government’s low election turnout reflects a delusional closed end loop of decisions by those who actually believe the made up conditions they propagandize.  It reflects a lack of intelligence. It will prove as fatal as it was to the Shah’s corrupt regime in Iran despite the oil wealth that supported it.  Economic intelligence comes from free markets that promotes many acting in their own self interest to develop in a manner that is best for the greater good.  This greater good manifests in a way that no central planner could conceive because it lacks crowd sourcing intelligence.  Central planning is always a corrupting hub of insider self dealing.  Free markets remove a great amount of pressure from authoritarian regimes by dispersing resentment to the market instead of the self serving insiders considered to to be part of the government.

General Sisi is appropriately named.   Nothing in his career that can be discerned as other than a successful apparatchik of Egypt’s military working within its confines.  No courageous decision for change can be expected from this leadership.

Obama is weighing Egypt’s duty to maintain the peace accord with Israel as a requiring our continued military assistance.  With a shaky government that may appease it’s Muslim opposition by throwing Israel under the bus, additional arms are contrary to Israel’s defense. If Egypt needs more arms to keep the peace, then let them ask Russia, their newly re-acquainted friend from the Nasser era and whose weapons Israel may find easier to counter rather than our good stuff falling into the wrong hands.

U.S. Food and Saudi Petro aid delays the reckoning that paternalism doesn’t work.  Egypt’s command and control bureaucracy needs dismantling and until it reaches rock bottom it won’t happen.  A Muslim theocracy may come after the deluge but without high tech weapons it need not be feared.