America's continuing tango with right-wing dictators

EVER since the 1920s, American presidents have often preferred constructing alliances with Right Wing Dictatorships (RWDs) run by military strongmen in order to achieve three US goals:

US partnership with RWDs - defined as any anti-democratic and anti-communist regime, usually military-run - is a continuing story. For example, in June, the US revealed that it had released US$575 million in military aid to the new Egyptian regime of General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi that had been frozen since the ousting of President Mohammed Morsi last year. The surprising news came as US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo just two weeks after former army chief al-Sisi was sworn in as president that month.

The Washington Post urged the Obama administration to hold Egypt to the standards of democracy. On April 10, the newspaper argued that not only did the US support the brutal Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt for 30 years, it was now undermining the aspirations of Egyptian people by backing yet another Egyptian strongman, General al-Sisi, whose regime killed more than 2,000 Egyptians and passed death sentences for hundreds in trials that made a travesty of the justice system.