Egypt announces $35B deal with UAE to buy premium Mediterranean area

Sovereignty doesn’t mean that much when it isn’t enforced. It’s a popular approach in the Middle East these days - countries agree to build company towns where residents can essentially pretend they’re living in the West, sometimes with a parallel justice system, no expectation of modest dress, etc. Look at KAUST and Neom (if that ever happens) in Saudi Arabia, Abdali in Amman, the Green Zone in Baghdad. It keeps the rich expats living in your country happy without making you actually improve living conditions for everyone, including the native-born population. I fully expect that the Gulf expats who move to this development will be made to feel like they’re still living in the Gulf, the security/police will be private, and it’ll be designated a “free trade zone.”

It's kind strange they used buy rather than develop. I do also wonder how access will be controlled to this area, because it doesn't have the look of something that has a lot of low cost housing.

Because selling off your land is probably the worst thing you could do. It’s about as short term as short term thinking gets. I’m not well versed in this area but I’m sure Russia regrets its sale of Alaska.

It is very dangerous, even licensing it.

Argentina has given strategic land to China where Argentina cannot control: Espacio Lejano Station [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espacio_Lejano_Station?wprov=s...

Haha, are you talking about Sakhalin? Russia would never sell it, it has imperial/geopolitical significance.

Not a good point.

A lot of that land is inhabited, or at least owned by citizens or companies. Pretty sure they would be against changing citizenship or losing their land.

And for government owned, uninhabited land: land is worth a lot more than its surface area. You can have natural resource of all kinds underneath – maybe some that are technically or financially not feasible to mine, yet, but may be in a few decades. (Just think of the massive oil fields in the arctic that'll soon be accessible to Canada and Russia) If it's a coastal area it massively extends your country's EEZ – that's why there are a lot of border conflicts around tiny rocks in the ocean. That's also the prime reason why Russia will forever hang onto Sakhalin island. (Plus Japan already is not doing much with Hokkaido, I doubt they'd do anything worthwhile on Sakhalin except forestery and military areas).

I mean the whole point of a country is people having emotional attachment to random areas defined in a map.

If you can buy and sell land that easy, the whole concept of country goes away.

LMG(M)TFY: Ra's al Ḩikmah https://maps.app.goo.gl/MroKuinLGRRr9ybF9?g_st=ic

this appears to just be UAE investing in a real estate developent, they're not claiming territory or mining rights.

If you can’t defend it, getting some gold now vs losing it for nothing later is not that tough a sell. There was no way for France to defend the westward lands so it was either take the deal, or have them grab it.

This doesn’t look like a straight purchase either. They’re selling the development rights and it would still be Egypt jurisdiction.

> I don't know why any country would ever sell land under any circumstances

Me neither, but that's not what happened here. They're "selling" the development of the area, not the land itself. At least as far as I understand the article.

The Louisiana purchase was extremely savvy of France! They scarcely controlled it in the first place and couldn't afford the money or manpower to defend their claim to it. Instead of losing it in a war and getting some people killed in the process, they instead got paid for something they hardly even owned in practice. Extremely smart move.

Sometimes countries need cash, and maintaining the land is not worth it, and someone is willing to buy. Should Denmark have sold the Virgin Islands in 1917? It was put to a referendum, and the people said yes. Napoleon also needed cash, so he sold a lot of useless land in North America to a willing buyer.

The territory sizes of the countries haven’t changed. It’s a 65/35% development partnership.

1. Egypt isn't actually 'selling' the land like Louisiana was bought. It's selling it the same way someone's house was sold to them, or how McDonald's buys the land their restaurants sit on.

2. Taking Alaska as an example, there was a real risk Russia would be in a war with the UK again. If that happened, Alaska was completely indefensible. SO better get money for it now than lose it later.

The article goes into Egypt's motivations. Also: this is a lot less land than either of those deals.

Why not? You can be a very successful country on very little land. And if you get money, you can invest it.

Dude, bad news but Bytedance owns an office in San Jose. Can't believe the US would sell land like that. All land should be owned by the community and developed under Sixth People's Congress Local 718 according to the Four Year Plan laid out.