The Slavery of American Aid

Perhaps the time has come for Egypt to finally liberate itself from the shackles of what is known as “American aid.” This is the polite name for a sort of modern-day slavery imposed by the United States upon the nations it succeeds in ensnaring in its trap. First, these nations grow accustomed to the aid, then rely on it, as their situation morphs rapidly into a cancer that spreads and erodes all elements of pride, honor and resistance, transforming them into mere dhimmi states, subjected to the will and whim of the American administration.

All of this aid — which always arrives in a package with political, economic, and possibly even social and cultural conditions — is an operation to thoroughly and systematically subjugate satellite states by gradually cultivating a full dependence upon aid. Once the first signs of dependence appear, the American demands begin to arrive, one after the other, after the subjugated state has lost its ability or inclination to stand up for itself. And so the demands continue and continue, and each time the state acquiesces it loses more and more elements of resistance or resilience, until it has become a flaccid entity devoid of any real power, controlled by of a growing army of corrupt pro-American loyalists.

This dependency, which is a modern form of colonialism, begins with foreign aid, insofar as this aid seeks to create a new social class within the subject countries. This class forms gradually as the bulk of the aid is diverted into certain willing hands, creating dependable agents of the donor states who plunder the companies and organizations of the private sector whose sale is imposed according to the terms of the aid offer.

And hereby two operations are performed at once, by way of selling off the private sector of the aid-receiving nation. The first is the surgical removal of the nation’s economic backbone, depriving the nation of its main source of military and political strength and resistance. The second is the falling of the profit from the sale of the private sector and its constituent companies into the hands this new class of businessmen. Those who owe their wealth to the donor country then rush, under the instructions of their benefactors, to acquire the media tools to attain the capacity to influence public opinion and pervert the national consciousness by robbing the nation of its ability or desire to defy the cultural and political foreign penetration. From the media, they transition to electoral battles to enter parliament and control the legislative process, paving the way for the deviation of the political and economic system toward meeting the conditions of dependency. Finally, from the parliament this class reaches the full power of government, and here is where the mating occurs between the monopoly of wealth and the monopoly of power, hence asserting dominant control over the national decision-making process.

During the 1960s, Egypt had its first taste of the present dependence upon American aid after being exposed to the temptations of U.S. Public Law 480, which specified surpluses of American agricultural harvests to be used as political weapons to subjugate the countries who received these surpluses. Egypt was among the countries that grew dependent upon American wheat to the degree that its dependence led to a dilemma and then a crisis, after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a law on Jan. 26, 1965, to interrupt wheat sales to Egypt until the Egyptian government changed certain policies to better correspond with American interests.

This crisis revealed the problematic state of Egypt’s relationships, just as it was revealed by Phillips Talbot, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs, in his meeting with Gamal Abdel Nasser on April 18, 1965. Talbot saw seven crises hanging between Egypt and the United States and he wanted Egypt to take steps to repair the breach between Washington and Cairo. For example, Egypt was to halt the development of a unified Arab military command, dismantle the Egyptian nuclear program, put a stop to military manufacturing activity, and reduce Egypt’s regional leadership role by revoking its support for the local revolutions toward independence from colonialism. Egypt refused to comply and stood its ground, and the cost was the aggression of June 1967 and the resulting severance of relations between the two countries.

The actual headline to that aggression was a battle of national independence and the rejection of subjugation. However, the subjugation Egypt rejected was one of its own choosing, self-inflected through repeated succumbing to the lures of American aid, when it traded prosperity for peace in accordance with the formula of Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State. Egypt became addicted to American aid, and then came the consolidation of that abominable class of corrupt businessmen. The members of this class are the beneficiaries of the sale of the public sector; they are also the ones who profit from the American aid for which the people of Egypt have paid the heavy price of sovereignty and status.

And now Egypt is once again encroached upon by aid and funds offered by American nongovernmental organizations. The majority of these organizations are connected to the American intelligence apparatus, particularly the United States Agency for International Development,* which offers us military and economic aid under the following conditions. First, we must succumb to the threats of American officials in the management of post-revolution Egypt in bringing the new Egyptian administration in line with American and Israeli desires, and we must halt the trial against American citizens accused of unauthorized foreign funding of political activities. I believe the time has come to open the black file of American aid and liberate ourselves from its constraints to realize the objectives of the revolution — namely, national sovereignty and dignity, and justice and freedom for the nation and its citizens. For it is unfit for a revolution promising freedom for its children to skimp in its drive toward freedom, sovereignty, dignity and pride.

*Translator’s note: The article appears to identify USAID as a non-governmental organization, but it is a federal agency.