I often wrote that the Egyptian economy was sturdy; I even
hinted at the reason why this was the case when I mentioned that the economy
was diversified, but I never said why it came to be constructed that way. Well,
the time has come to discuss this aspect of the Egyptian economy.
I choose to do so at this time because there is talk about
organizing sanctions against Egypt, having done the rain dance around it, and
calling on the gods of doom and gloom to have that economy, collapse or melt
down or implode or whatever adjective the sick minds came up with to describe a
burning desire to see horror of biblical dimensions descend on Egypt.
The good news for those sickos is that economic sanctions
will hurt however minimal the pain will be. The bad news for them is that in
return for the small pain, the economy will make big gains. In fact, this is
what happened to Egypt in
the years between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1970s when the Europeans –
led by Britain and France , then joined at a later date by the United States – organized economic sanctions
against Egypt .
The British were mad because the Egyptians had nationalized the Suez Canal, the
French were mad because Egypt was backing the independence of Algeria, and the Americans
were mad because the Jews told them to get mad even if no one could think up a
reason why America should be mad at Egypt.
And when those sanctions began to bite, the trend that was
followed by the Egyptian economy could not be sustained, and had to change. As
it turned out, this was a change for the better; a move that can be duplicated
at this time should new sanctions be organized against Egypt . To see
what happened here, it must be understood that when the colonial powers could
no longer maintain colonies by military occupation, they embarked on a
different kind of colonial domination – one that later came to be called
economic colonialism.
The principles employed were simple. Rather than gather or
extract the natural resources of the underdeveloped countries to send for
processing in the advanced economies of the colonial powers, they will from now
on be processed on site by local, unskilled and cheap labor using machines made
in the advanced economies. The semi-processed or fully-processed goods will
then be sold cheaply to the former colonies, and paid for with expensive
machines, spare parts and training for the unskilled labor. Where necessary,
the former colonial powers will also provide supervisory, maintenance and
managerial personnel – at a price, of course.
In time, that principle was infused into the philosophical
approaches that were adopted by such financial institutions as the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund. The result has been that the countries of
Latin America and those of Asia that were not pampered by Britain or America
for political reasons, found themselves heavily dependent on export to keep
their economies going. In return, they had the illusion of scoring a high
standard of living when in reality the poor – who could at least eat in the old
days – could no longer buy enough food to sustain them, while the wealthy who
worked for and traded with foreigners were accumulating grotesque amounts of
money they sent abroad.
And this is the fate that Egypt has escaped when the economic
sanctions were imposed on it. Instead of relying on export and the illusion of
a high standard of living that “creative” accounting and dishonest financing
will paint for you, the country looked inward, took stock of its human talent and
natural resources, and forged a policy of self-sufficiency where possible. The
result has been that the economy was forced to mimic the organic natural
development and growth it was starting to have when it became the second nation
after Britain
to have a railway, thus participating early on in the Industrial Revolution.
But what happened after that were events that thwarted Egypt 's
progress, and kept it from continuing on the path of industrialization. It now
lags behind its European counterparts but its economy is as sturdy as those
that took advantage of the early years of the Industrial Revolution by the fact
that it was forced by sanctions to relive the early moments of organic growth
rather than adopt the illusion of a high standard of living by fake entries
into dishonest financial ledgers.
By all means, America ,
go ahead and make Egypt