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Violence in Cairo was met with silence from Washington on Friday, as the Obama administration appeared to weigh its response to the evolving Egyptian crisis.
Egypt's new military regime clashed with pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters during a series of demonstrations, leaving at least three people dead according to reports. The violence came as the army declared a state of emergency in Suez and southern Sinai and dissolved the upper house of the Egyptian parliament.
But criticism from Washington over the violence was, pointedly, muted. President Barack Obama did not issue a statement on Friday. Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon held briefings and Congress was out of session following the Fourth of July holiday.
Behind the scenes, Obama administration officials worked the phones to temper the volatile Egyptian situation. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, on Friday, after speaking the day before to the Egyptian chief of staff, Lieutenant General Sedki Sobhi. Administration officials spoke on Thursday to representatives from Egypt, Israel and Turkey as well.
But the lack of any public statement in Washington stood in contrast to denunciations by regional leaders. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said "those who rely on the guns in their hands, those who rely on the power of the media cannot build democracy" and blasted the west for "double standards". The African Union suspended Egypt's membership.
The Obama administration's reluctance to wade deeper into the Egyptian crisis is partially explained by the extent of US interests in the crucial Arab country. The Egyptian military is a bulwark against violence and weapons shipments spreading northeast into Gaza and south into Sudan and eastern Africa. Egypt is the recipient of nearly $1.5bn in annual US aid, eclipsed only by Israel as a financial client of Washington.
That money is not supposed to flow in the event of a coup. But those interests, more than any semantic distinction the White House or the State Department draws to describe the military overthrow of Mohammed Morsi's elected government, appear to create hesitation in Washington to cutting off aid to the new military regime in Cairo.
"I wouldn't cut it off," a former chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, Howard Berman, told the New York Times. The Republican senator Ted Cruz wrote a Wednesday op-ed for the magazine Foreign Policy in which he blasted Obama for not demanding Morsi's ouster himself.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal urged the White House to continue funding Cairo, suggesting that Egyptians would be "lucky" if their new ruling generals turned out to be like the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet, a man reviled by human-rights advocates, "took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers", the newspaper explained.
The White House and the State Department declined to warn the Egyptian military publicly against it seizing power, having delivered a public ultimatum to Morsi on Monday. Obama's most expansive comments came after the military ousted Morsi, in which he said the "best foundation for lasting stability is a democratic political order" that included "secular and religious, civilian and military".
The comments were notable in that Obama did not criticize the military for taking power, instead urging it to hand it over to a "democratically elected civilian government". He did not pledge an aid cut-off, instead saying his administration would "review" its aid disbursements, a statement that was interpreted as a warning to the Egyptian military.
John Bellinger, a State Department legal adviser in the Bush administration, said there are steps the department can take to avoid the awkward designation of a coup in Egypt.
"The legal adviser's office may examine whether there is an argument that a military coup has not taken place because of the popular opposition to Morsi and because a new civilian president has been sworn in," said Bellinger, now a partner at Arnold & Porter, a law firm with influence in Washington.
"A more straightforward approach would be for Secretary Kerry to conclude that a military coup had taken place but to ask Congress to pass legislation to allow the president to waive the sanctions, as Congress did after the 9/11 attacks to allow President Bush to waive the sanctions against Pakistan."
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