Egyptian Foreign Policy: Power and Decline After the Arab Uprisings

An account of Egypt’s foreign policy decline following the Arab Uprisings, explaining the causes, consequences, and dynamics of this decline.

Egypt, traditionally an important regional power in the Middle East, has experienced a considerable decline in its national capabilities and regional influence since 2011, which has had significant implications for Egypt’s relations with other regional powers.

Here Nael Shama identifies the causes of this decline, which include Egypt’s economic downturn, deficiencies of its decision-making structures, and shifting regional power balances. The study draws on a number of regional case studies - such as the erosion of Egypt’s interests in the Nile Basin and the Middle East - to illustrate Egypt’s declining diplomatic power along its own borders, and in the wider region. Shama offers a crucial lens into enhancing our understanding of the multiple levels of engagement Egypt has in the Middle East, and the widespread consequences of its decline in influence, while also offering a valuable case study of how declining powers think and act on the international stage.

Nael Shama is a political scholar and writer who focuses on the international relations and comparative politics of the Middle East. Shama is the author of Egyptian Foreign Policy from Mubarak to Morsi (2013 and 2019), Egypt before Tahrir: Reflections on Politics, Culture and Society (2014), The Stagnant River: The State, Society and Ikhwan in Egypt (In Arabic, 2016), and Dismantling the Arab Mind: In Search of Political Meaning (in progress).