A few days ago, Turkish newspapers sympathetic to the ruling Justice and Development Party described the reaction of Martin Dempsey, the US chief of staff, to a request by Necdet Ozel, his Turkish counterpart. When Ozel asked the US to provide round-the-clock surveillance of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the US official asked for two things in return: Turkey to engage in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda in Syria. Dempsey also wanted the Turks to help set up a post-Assad regime in Syria, one in which former Baath officials and Christians will be integrated. The Turkish chief of staff had to turn down both requests. The moral of this story is that, when it comes to US aid, it's always a question of favours for favours. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank, defines foreign assistance as a tool for promoting US national interests. In other words, the US provides assistance to its allies abroad not out of humanitarian or altruistic concerns, but to maintain its position of dominance on the international scene. When President Barack Obama was asked if he intended to review US assistance to Libya and Egypt following the recent embassy attacks, Obama said that America doesn't have the luxury of withdrawing from the world. Still, reports that the US is appraising its assistance to Egypt illustrate the fact that all forms of US assistance -- be they military or economic -- are conditional. Often, the conditions can compromise the independence of recipient countries. And the threat to withdraw the assistance can come at the worst moment. One should view US assistance as a kind of drug, the regular use of which can lead to addiction, and the termination of its use can lead to withdrawal symptoms. Egypt is no stranger to the sinister ways of foreign assistance. In the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt was not ready to pay the price of assistance, and was penalised accordingly, first, when the US withdrew earlier promises to finance the High Dam, and later on when it was defeated in the 1967 war. Egypt's appetite for assistance started soon after the 1973 War, and since then it has fallen into a trap of concessions. Under Anwar Al-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, assistance was tied to peace with Israel. As a result, Egyptian foreign policy was geared not towards promoting our national security, but promoting US interests. After the ouster of the Mubarak regime, the Americans and Israelis predicted that the new regime would pursue the same old foreign policy, simply because the country has grown addicted to foreign aid. Unfortunately, the prediction turned out to be true. The current government of Hisham Kandil is still maintaining more or less the same policies towards Israel. The security addendum to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which restricts the presence of the Egyptian army in Sinai, remains in place. The recent events in Rafah and the confrontations between the army and terrorist groups in Sinai highlight the pitfalls of the current security arrangements with Israel. In Sinai, the government still allows foreigners to start businesses in partnership with Egyptians, a practice that may compromise the country's national security. Sinai is slowly turning into a disputed territory. Or at least this is the impression Israel seems to have. Why else does it want to have a discussion about the peninsula at the UN Security Council? Everyone is now waiting to see which way Egyptian-US relations will go. So perhaps this is a good time to start thinking of a new context for these relations, a context that is more based on our -- rather than US -- needs. We cannot keep our foreign policy hostage to foreign assistance, for the price in terms of national dignity and sovereignty is too much to bear.
