Washington reacted "coolly" to Al-Burhan's decisions... Has Sudan's importance to America declined?

WASHINGTON -

US President Joe Biden, his Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and his National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not speak on the air, and the president did not address the American nation or the Sudanese people, as was the case 8 years ago when then-Egyptian Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi launched a coup against the government and an elected civilian president.

At that time, US President Barack Obama appeared hours later, speaking live, as well as the senior staff of his administration.

The Biden administration's handling of developments in Sudan indicates the decline and limited importance of Sudan in the priorities of US interests in the region.

For more than 20 hours, Foreign Minister Blinken remained silent about the developments in the Sudanese situation before expressing his condemnation of what Khartoum witnessed on Monday.

Blinken tweeted, condemning what the Sudanese army had done by saying, "The United States rejects the dissolution of the transitional government in Sudan by the army forces, and calls for its immediate restoration without preconditions."

Hours before that, a statement was issued by Minister Blinken's office saying, "The arrest of Sudanese Prime Minister Hamdok and other civilian leaders is unacceptable, and we call on the security forces to ensure their safety and release them immediately."

Can Washington repel the coup?

And Cameron Hudson - the former official in charge of the Sudan file in the administration of President Barack Obama and currently an expert in the Atlantic Council - warns in a blog published by the Council, against expecting that America and the West are able to prevent the coup.

Indeed, he says, "just hours before the coup, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told the US special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, that he would remain committed to civilian rule."

"The military made this decision knowing full well the potential consequences of its actions," Hudson explains. "So, while international and US condemnation will be swift and unanimous, it is unlikely to be sufficient to reverse this setback in Sudan's democratic path."

The countries of the region and Washington's accounts

Will Wechsler, a former official and director of the Atlantic Council's Middle East program, says in the council's blog that the military takeover would resonate far beyond Sudan.

He pointed out that most of the regional powers "that have interests in Sudan have never fully shared Washington's commitment to the democratic transition."

"Some of the neighbors will undoubtedly quietly welcome the coup and its supposed promise of greater stability," he adds, backed by the record of Sudan, which has so far suffered about 16 coup attempts since 1956.

David Shen, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs and a researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington, believes that Egypt has strengthened its military relationship with Sudan, at a time when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are allied with the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group based in Darfur and also competing power in Khartoum.

Shen notes - in a report published by the institute's website - that "all this is happening with the expansion of the conflict in neighboring Ethiopia, the unresolved Sudanese border dispute with Ethiopia, and the conflict between Egypt and Sudan with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile near the Sudanese border."

Wechsler adds that he also casts doubt on Sudan's normalization with Israel, which is the path that Sudan has been slowing down a lot.

The spokesman considers that the official normalization ceremony - which the Biden administration negotiated in exchange for a large US aid package for Sudan - has been postponed due to timing and scheduling problems.

Wechsler believes that this will not happen "anytime soon", especially since US law prevents most types of foreign aid in the wake of the coups, and indeed the State Department announced on Monday that it would stop aid worth $750 million to Sudan.

In a post on the council's website, Michelle Gavin, an Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former ambassador, calls on the Biden administration to use a firm policy to ensure as much multilateral solidarity as possible in opposing the seizure of military power.

Gavin says Washington should make clear to Egypt and the Gulf powers that supporting the coup plotters will have tangible costs.

External forces cannot control events on the ground in Sudan.

But they can restrict the choices of those who would hijack the Sudanese revolution to protect their status and wealth.

America's rivalry with Russia and China

Zack Ferton, an expert at the Brookings Institution and a former State Department official, stated - in a study published by the institute - that the United States has interests in Sudan that go beyond humanitarian considerations, and while "Sudan is far from the geostrategic priority of Washington, but it does not The repercussions of the failure of the democratic transition there should be underestimated."

"Free and open societies around the world are targeted by China and Russia, who are America's rivals, and would welcome any similar authoritarian emergence of their regimes," Verten wrote.

Verten points out what is worse than that, which is the collapse of the democratic transition experience in Sudan, which could lead to chaos and instability that negatively affect the situation in Libya, Egypt and Ethiopia, an already fragile region that includes nearly a quarter of a billion people.

What to do.. boycott or deal?

Regarding the future dealing with the emerging situation in Sudan, Zach Verten said that Washington has been hostile to the government of Omar al-Bashir for more than 3 decades. It designated Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993, imposed many trade and economic sanctions twice in 1997 and 2006, reduced the level of diplomatic relations, and refused American officials have met with Bashir for more than a decade, and Washington has effectively isolated Sudan from the Western world.

However, Verten adds, "While the actions of the Bashir regime certainly warrant a strong response, the American campaign against it failed to achieve the desired results. It did not significantly change the behavior of his government and did not impose a change in the nature of the government."