Word: damming
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When Egypt thumbed its nose at the United States late last month by openly arranging with Russia to purchase Czechoslovak arms, the State Department protested. But when the Soviet Ambassador to Egypt offered to finance the proposed Nile dam as Aswan and to expand the existing American technical assistance program in Egypt, he jolted the U.S. into action. Last Thursday the State Department hastily announced that the U.S. was itself offering to finance this dam...
...offer, it is t best a stopgap measure--a piece of undeserved candy with which to coax a precocious Egypt back into the Western fold. Russia has won a diplomatic victory by forcing the U.S., as the saying goes, either to "put up or shut up" over the Egyptian dam project...
...States. The Administration grants technical assistance to underdeveloped countries as a "mutual defense support" against Communist infiltration. When such infiltration is not imminent, however, these countries receive aid only when they press for it. Russia does not even wait for them to ask. As is shown by the Soviets' dam offer, they fill in any holes in Western aid programs with a vengeance...
This warmth in Washington's attitude toward aid naturally made the Egyptians play "hard to get." They began to listen to Soviet offers, both of arms and, equally importantly, of technical aid with the Aswan dam project. Yet stiff provision in their agreements with the U.S. also confused the Egyptians. As much as anything else it was their confusion over American technical aid intentions which made the Egyptians receptive to Soviet promises...
This conclusion should not suggest that if the United States had financed the Aswan dam in the first place, Russia would not have made its offers and there would be no Middle East tensions. Such dams cost over $1 billion, and the U.S. obviously can't go building them wherever underdeveloped countries need them. Nor does it mean that the U.S. should give technical aid without regard to the overall aims of its foreign policy. It only suggests that instead of an unholy alliance between its military and technical and programs, the U.S. should let the two stand separately...