In March 1963, President Kennedy issued his dire prediction that within 10 years time, as many as twenty-one additional countries would have nuclear weapons. Forty-five years later, however, there are only 9 nuclear weapons states.

As a country that has been involved in numerous wars since 1952 – first against their colonial repressors and then against their regional neighbors – Egypt was seen as a primary candidate for proliferation, especially after revelations about Israel’s nuclear program came to light in the early 1960’s. Yet, despite intermittent efforts to build a nuclear weapons capacity, Egypt has repeatedly shown nuclear restraint. Its failure to build the bomb remains a puzzle for proliferation experts and International Relations scholars. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, it seeks to place Egypt’s nuclear past within the context of Sagan’s models for why states build nuclear weapons; and second, it addresses the likely course of Egypt’s future nuclear ambitions. Ultimately, it finds that while traditional security arguments and norms hold a small degree of explanatory power, Egypt’s nuclear restraint (or future ambition) is best explained when viewed through the lens of domestic politics.

The Security Model

The 1963 assessment made by Kennedy and his advisors was based on the traditional realist logic that dominated Cold War strategic thinking, the belief that states will seek nuclear weapons to balance the threat posed by their adversaries. According to this line of thought, external threats and national security are the primary determining factors in the spread of nuclear weapons. To counter the threat, Sagan proposes that states have two options: they can choose to develop their own nuclear weapons or they can acquire a nuclear ally to achieve a “deterrence guarantee.” Since Egypt did not achieve nuclear weapons status, the security model would predict that: a) Egypt did not face a threat to its national security or b) Egypt faced a threat but achieved deterrence through an alliance with a nuclear state. A closer inspection of Egypt’s external threat environment and its subsequent nuclear decision-making reveals that the security model fails to adequately explain Egypt’s non-nuclear status. Most security analysts agree that Egypt has faced significant national security threats since the end of WWII. England, France, Libya, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia have all been perceived as threats in the past or in the current security landscape. Israel, the primary source of open hostility, temporarily faded out of Egyptian security concerns in the post-war years as tensions rose between London and Cairo. When the 1952 Free Officer’s Revolution brought Nasser to power, the immediate concern was over the thousands of British troops that were left on Egyptian soil. After the superpowers interceded to stop the 1956 Suez War, however, the colonial powers retreated and Egypt’s primary security threat once again emanated from Israel. The Suez conflict combined with the 1954 Israeli raids on the Egyptian Army Headquarters in Gaza and the 1960 disclosure of the Dimona nuclear reactor set the stage for Egypt’s nuclear weapons program. According to the security model, Egypt should have placed a high emphasis on acquiring nuclear weapons during the critical time period when Israel emerged as a hostile neighbor and was pursuing the nuclear option. The question of when Israel first began pursuing nuclear weapons is a matter of debate, but author James Walsh, a scholar who has extensively researched the Egyptian nuclear program, contends “Egypt concluded that Israel was seeking nuclear weapons in 1958 or 1959.” The timing of Egypt’s realization of Israel’s intentions does not fit with the security model because as Walsh states, “Egyptian efforts to acquire the bomb did not commence until 1961 – after the public revelations about Dimona.” If Egypt were motivated purely by security concerns, their would have been an immediate pursuit of nuclear weapons upon first learning of Israel’s nuclear program, and while Egypt did create an Atomic Energy Establishment (AEE) in 1955, its purposes were strictly limited to research and only a single 2MW reactor was built during the years preceding Dimona. Moreover, this shows that technology was not a problem that delayed Egypt’s nuclear ambitions. Following Ben-Gurion’s public acknowledgement of Israel’s nuclear reactor, the Egyptian leadership did begin actively searching for ways to acquire nuclear weapons. Therefore, despite the delay in the Egyptian response to Israel’s nuclear program, evidence suggests that there was a security element to Egyptian nuclear decision-making from 1961 to the start of the Six-Day War in 1967. A study conducted by Walsh that looked at the correlation between pro-nuclear choices made by the Egyptian government and the external threat from Israel seems to confirm this point. Between 1961 and 1967 Egypt sought weapons-related assistance from India, the USSR, and China, while also trying to purchase large reactors from the U.S. Moreover, there were numerous instances where Egyptian rhetoric took on a security-related tone. For instance, immediately following the 1960 Dimona announcement, Nasser warned that an atomic bomb would mean “the beginning of war between us and Israel” and further vowed that Egypt would “get one, too, at any price.” Despite the security threat posed by Israel and the strong language coming out of Cairo, the fact remains that Egypt did not develop or acquire nuclear weapons in the critical period leading up to the 1967 War. This has led other adherents to the security model to argue that Egypt was able to achieve deterrence through nuclear guarantees with its allies. Most frequently, they point to the Egyptian-Soviet agreements of the 1960-70’s and the Camp David Peace accords that cemented the Egyptian-U.S. relationship. While at first glance it may appear that Egypt was able to achieve deterrence from these alliances, upon closer inspection it is a flawed line of thought. After the defeat in the Six-Day War, Nasser offered to provide the USSR with military bases in Egypt. Four years later, Egypt and the Soviet Union signed a ‘Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation,’ allowing the Soviets to station thousands of advisors on Egyptian soil. In 1972, however, Sadat reversed his predecessor’s stance on Soviet assistance and asked the Soviet advisors to leave. Soon thereafter, Egypt withdrew from the treaty altogether despite the fact that they had made no progress towards the development of nuclear weapons while Israel had increased its arsenal in the preceding decade. Unless concerns about Soviet influence and control trumped security concerns about Israel, this move was illogical from a security standpoint. A stronger case can be made for the effectiveness of the Camp David Peace accords, but even these agreements have their faults. For instance, Walsh notes that the “Camp David accords do not oblige American forces to defend Egypt if attacked by Israel” and there are no U.S. armed forces stationed on Egyptian soil. It may be argued that Israel would not attack Egypt because of the U.S. stake in the peace process, but the peace between Israel and Egypt remains a “cold” one, at best, and many Egyptians have expressed the sentiment that in a war between the two countries, the U.S. would ultimately side with the Israelis. The security argument holds some credence when examining the period from 1960-67, but most analysts agree that Egypt’s nuclear restraint cannot be attributed to a lack of external threat, especially after the Six-Day War and Israel’s growing military advantage. Similarly, although a peace deal was signed between the two countries in 1979, relations have remained tenuous, and it still does not explain why Egypt shut down its nuclear program in the 70’s while simultaneously ending a nuclear guarantee with the USSR. These shortcomings have prompted analysts to search for other causes of Egypt’s failure to build the bomb.

Norms

Yet another model that attempts to explain Egypt’s nuclear restraint focuses on the role of norms and regimes in nuclear decision-making. The norms model, as Sagan notes, sees nuclear decisions as serving “important symbolic functions,” which can shape and reflect a state’s identity. Most often, proponents of this argument say that nuclear weapons serve as a symbol of modernity and prestige. While Egyptian government officials as well as Nasser and Mubarak have used this language in regards to their nuclear program, it fails to explain Egypt’s nuclear restraint. As a non-nuclear country, there should be evidence that Egypt abides by the norm that WMD’s are morally wrong. A major flaw in the norms model rests in Egypt’s willingness to reject nuclear weapons as a signatory to the NPT while simultaneously developing chemical and biological weapons. There is sufficient evidence that Nasser used chemical weapons during the Yemeni Civil War in the 1960’s. Later, it is presumed that Egypt collaborated with Syria during the ’73 War to transfer chemical weapons into the hands of its allies. While the breadth of the Egyptian chemical and biological weapons program has never been fully disclosed, they have repeatedly refused to sign conventions on chemical or biological weapons. As a signatory to the NPT, the norms model is weakened by the fact that Egypt refuses to reject other weapons of mass destruction. If the norms model were correct, Egypt should see chemical/biological weapons as equally reprehensible as their nuclear counterparts. Some analysts have argued that Egypt’s development of other WMD’s was simply an alternative way to deter Israel’s nuclear arsenal. They point to the fact that even Sadat, who did more to scale back Egypt’s nuclear program than any other president, often publicly made mention of his chemical and biological weapons capability. In 1972, for instance, at the same time that he was ejecting Soviet advisors, Sadat proclaimed that he “had the instruments of biological warfare in…refrigerators.” While this line of thought may lend more credence to the security argument, it delivers a blow to the norms model for why Egypt remains non-nuclear. Furthermore, the likelihood that Egypt’s chemical or biological arsenal could deter Israel’s superior forces is not plausible. Therefore, there must be another reason why Egypt has refrained from developing a nuclear capacity. Another argument against the norms model lies in Nasser’s Arab Unity movement. If ever there were a prestige argument for acquiring nuclear weapons it would be the attempts by Nasser and his successors to restore and maintain Egypt as the center of the Arab world. Author Fawaz Gerges writes, “Nasser’s pursuit of pan-Arab unity was designed to make Egypt a power to be reckoned with on the local and international stage.” Adding to this, Nasser himself was quoted in 1960 as saying, “We missed out in the steam age, and also in the electricity age, but we ought not allow ourselves under any circumstances to be left behind in the atomic age.” As it would happen, however, Egypt was left out of the atomic age when compared to the advances made by other countries over the same time period. If prestige were a key motivating factor, Nasser would have committed himself more fully to the nuclear cause, yet the years of Nasser’s rule are characterized by missed opportunities, indecisions, and lack of a “Manhattan Project-style” program that mobilized the entire scientific community. Surely, it can be argued that prestige does not necessarily come only with the development of nuclear weapons; it can also be achieved through peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But even in this regard, Egypt lagged behind, and many analysts have said that, contrary to what any Egyptian presidents may have insinuated about prestige, they were not fully committed to developing a nuclear program. In the case of Sadat, author Robert Einhorn suggests that assertions about Egypt’s nuclear program were not “a true indicator of his intentions, but an attempt to reassure the Egyptian public and bureaucracy.” Author Janice Gross Stein goes further and writes, “If prestige-seeking were a powerful explanation, the incidence of nuclear proliferation would be far higher than it currently is.” Egypt’s decision not to pursue the bomb, she adds, cannot be accommodated by the prestige model.

Domestic Politics

Although it is impossible to state with certainty that Egypt’s nuclear restraint can be encapsulated within one overarching theory of proliferation, the domestic politics model offers the most compelling evidence for why Egypt has not developed nuclear weapons. The domestic politics model takes a “bottom-up approach” to proliferation, meaning that rather than decisions being forced on the state by the anarchic international system or calculations of power, decisions are made by domestic actors within the state for bureaucratic reasons. Groups that have parochial or political interests in nuclear weapons development, such as the energy establishment, the military, or political elites, may work together to control the government’s decision-making process. In Egypt, there have been two pivotal periods when domestic political factors significantly impacted the nuclear weapons program: 1) the period surrounding the founding of the AEE; and 2) the period of Sadat’s consolidation of power in the 1970’s. Established in 1955, the AEE was initially focused purely on nuclear research. But after the Israeli nuclear ambitions were made public, the AEE increasingly looked into the options of developing nuclear weapons. Soon after the Dimona announcement, Nasser appointed Salah Hedayat as the new director general of the AEE as well as the minister of scientific research. Hedayat was a leading advocate for developing nuclear weapons and had ties to the Egyptian military. Under Hedayat’s leadership, the AEE received increased funding for its nuclear weapons program and examined the possibilities of extracting uranium from Egyptian soil. In 1964, however, Hedayat was surprisingly forced to step down after a feud with his chief scientist, Abdel El Guibaly. Guibaly, who was against the development of nuclear weapons, struck a major blow to proliferation proponents. Three years later, Egypt was defeated in the Six-Day War and with its economy in ruin, it had to retreat from the nuclear program. Clearly, there was a bureaucratic element to the intensity (or lack thereof) in the nuclear weapons program of the 1960’s. Had Hedayat remained as the head of the AEE, he may have secured the resources necessary to build the bomb. However, there is another domestic puzzle to this same story. For instance, it has been suggested that if Nasser truly wanted to build a bomb, he could have unilaterally made decisions to keep men like Hedayat in power as well as initiate a crash-nuclear weapons program. These steps were not taken, and in an autocratic state with a serious security threat, it is worth looking deeper for possible explanations. One possible reason for Nasser’s decision-making is the threat to his hold on power from the military and in particular, from Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer. As a close friend of the president, Amer was put in charge of overseeing Syria, which was then part of the United Arab Republic (UAE). In 1961, many Egyptians blamed Amer when Syria successfully broke away from the UAE. When Nasser was forced to rein in his field commander, those loyal to Amer in the military began plotting to overthrow him. In each case, Nasser backed down. This relationship reveals the fact that Nasser, facing questionable allegiance from his armed forces, had an incentive to deny the military the very weapons it needed to defeat or deter the Israeli threat. This tenuous relationship between the president and the military has continued to the present day and remains a hindrance to progress in the nuclear field. The second period of domestic political influence surrounds the efforts made by President Sadat to consolidate his hold on power in the 70’s. As Sagan notes, “reversals of weapons decisions occur not when external threats are diminished, but rather when there are major internal political changes.” When Sadat came to power, he was faced with a nation that was humiliated after the defeat in ‘67. Furthermore, the loss of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula wrought havoc upon the Egyptian economy. As a result, Sadat had the opportunity to pursue a drastic change of course. His primary concerns were the reclamation of lost territory and the revival of the Egyptian economy. In order to accomplish his goals, Sadat first had to purge enemies within the military through his “Corrective Revolution.” His heavy-handed policies of dismissals and imprisonments made the military increasingly (though temporarily) subordinate to the civilian leadership. With a solid hold on power and the perceived victory against the Israeli’s in 1973, Sadat set out to liberalize the stagnant Egyptian economy, in part through a renewal of the Egyptian nuclear program. Unlike Nasser, however, Sadat wanted to focus exclusively on nuclear energy. While the security threat from Israel only intensified following the ’73 war, Sadat chose to forgo nuclear weapons for domestic reasons. Walsh argues that a major component of Sadat’s decision was based on “domestic advisers who believed in a link between nuclear energy and economic development.” Sadat’s commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear energy is further corroborated by his willingness in 1974 to accept safeguards in exchange for U.S assistance. While Sadat was certainly influenced by his domestic advisers, he was also trying to do what was best for the survival of his regime. After the ’67 war, it no longer seemed plausible to challenge the Israeli’s militarily in the immediate future. Indeed, Egypt relied on the element of surprise in ’73 and probably would have been defeated if not for the intervention of the superpowers. But the main threat to his hold on power, at least after his purge of potential enemies, came not from the military, but from the lack of opportunity and jobs within Egyptian society. As a consequence of his switch in nuclear policy, however, Sadat unknowingly put Egypt down the path towards the acceptance of a constraining international regime – the NPT. In 1979, Sadat signed the peace deal with Israel that returned the Sinai to Egypt, but at the same time, he created new tension with the Egyptian military, which viewed the deal as a threat to their parochial interests. To placate the military, Sadat passed Law 32 in 1979, which “gave the military financial and institutional independence from the government’s budget.” After this law was passed, the military was free to operate as its own financial institution and subsequently engaged in the production of both civilian goods and military hardware. As author Imad Harb points out, the military was consciously aware that the absence of Egyptian-Israeli hostilities would affect its share of the national budget and so “sought to assure itself an extra independent source of income.” This unusual relationship has created a tacit understanding that the regime would protect the military’s financial interests as long as the military supports the regime. With that said, nuclear ambitions still existed within the military, as evidenced by the 1986 covert operation by Minister of Defense Abdel Abu Ghazala to procure nuclear weapons. President Mubarak discovered the plot and forced Ghazala to resign, but the event once again reflected the conflicting interests between Egypt’s political and military institutions.

Future Ambitions

The nuclear decisions made by Sadat in the 70’s have set the stage for future domestic political problems in Egypt. Currently, the military is a latent political power as a result of its economic influence. As a result, Mubarak’s most prudent course of action is to simply maintain the status quo. The development of nuclear weapons may indeed curry favor with some in the military establishment, but it would run the risk of sanctions from the international community – a result of Egypt’s 1981 ratification of the NPT. If, on the other hand, Mubarak were to press for liberalizing economic reforms, he would break the tacit understanding with the military and risk a challenge to his presidency. While Mubarak has long shied away from threatening to revive a nuclear weapons program, there have been calls for nuclear weapons by members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and a growing Islamist faction within Egyptian politics increases the likelihood that the MB will someday gain control of government. If a group such as the MB were to gain power, however, they would still have to compete with the military and those in the scientific community to garner enough support for a nuclear weapon. Furthermore, even if that support existed, Egypt would still be subject to sanctions under the NPT, which could damage the economy and erode support for the regime. In sum, the domestic political decisions that were made under Nasser and Sadat have created a situation that induces the Egyptian regime to forego the nuclear weapons option while showering the military with incentives at the expense of the civilian population.

Conclusion

This paper has tried to shed light on the puzzle surrounding Egypt’s nuclear restraint. Models concerning security, norms, and domestic politics were considered as potential explanations. While the security model may help explain why Egypt made strides towards a nuclear weapons program in the years preceding the Six-Day War, it cannot account for why Egypt ultimately chose not to build the bomb when such an immediate security threat existed. Similarly, the norms model fails to explain why there is no evidence that nuclear weapons were thought to be morally wrong or why arguments about prestige were not met with the political will to see it realized. Ultimately, the domestic politics model offers the most convincing explanation for Egypt’s nuclear past while predicting a continued non-nuclear future.

Further Reading

New York Times, March 23, 1963, p.1

Scott D. Sagan, “Why do States Build Nuclear Weapons?” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97).

James Joseph Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt: Power, Ideas, and Institutions in International Politics,” Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 2001.

New York Times, “Nasser Threatens Israel A-Bomb,” December 24, 1961.

Robert Einhorn, “Egypt: Frustrated but Still on a Non-Nuclear Course,” in Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choices, ed. Kurt Campbell (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004).

Mohammad El-Sayed Selim, “Egypt and the Middle Eastern Nuclear Issue,” Strategic Analysis, January 1996.

Barbara Gregory, “Egypt’s Nuclear Program: Assessing Supplier-Based and other Developmental Constraints,” Nonproliferation Review, (Fall 1995).

Janice Gross Stein, “Proliferation, Non-Proliferation, and Anti-Proliferation: Egypt and Israel in the Middle East,” in The Dynamics of Middle East Nuclear Proliferation, eds. Steven Spiegel, Jennifer Kilbe, and Elizabeth G. Matthews (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).

Fawaz Gerges, “Egyptian-Israeli Relations Turn Sour,” Foreign Affairs, 73:3 (May/June 1995).

Imad Harb, “The Egyptian Military in Politics: Disengagement of Accommodation?” The Middle East Journal 57:2 (Spring 2003).

“Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Presses Government for Nuclear Weapons,” WMD Insights: Issues and Viewpoints in the International Media, November 2006 (www.wmdinsights.com).