Introduction

The United States has maintained a close relationship and fostered trust with the Egyptian ruling entourage, and the military establishment in particular, for over thirty years. However, this elite-level relationship has fed a well-documented spiral of distrust towards the United States in Egyptian society. Tying the post-Arab Spring US–Egypt relationship to debates on trust within International Relations, this chapter argues trust should not be reduced to personal relations or posited to exist between black-boxed anthropomorphised states. It focuses on the levels of trust and constructivist insights clarifies that American complicity with Egypt's authoritarian regime has created a trust-distrust nexus. One way to understand the long-term development of America's relationship with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is as a fall from grace. In the early twentieth century, before it started pursuing activist policies in the region, the United States was actually regarded as morally superior to the European colonisers.