The U.S. sends Egypt far more military aid than it needs

The United States gives Egypt about $1.3 billion in military aid each year. And, so far this year, the Obama administration has been unwilling to cut off those funds — even in the midst of a violent military crackdown that has left more than 525 dead.

Egyptian Army soldiers in Cairo. (Hassan Ammar/AP)

So here’s one question worth exploring: Just how important is all that aid to Egypt, anyway? NPR’s Julia Simon recently did some reporting on that exact question. It seems that in many cases, Egypt receives far more weaponry than it could possibly use:
The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late ’80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.

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