Sending money overseas isn't the only way to repair America's reputation overseas. And comparing lending money (NOT bailing out) the automakers to monetary foreign aid (and asserting that foreign aid is more important) is pretty pathetic. Sounds like you need a little "Country First," Mike.

MichLib, "Country First" is a much less meaningful term in a globalized world. Let's face it -- American policymakers don't given foreign aid just to make them feel warm and fuzzy, they give aid because it is in America's interest (if done properly). The Marshall Plan, for instance, was conditional on making democratic reforms. Of course money isn't the only soft power out there, but it's a critical tool. It's especially sad that we spend so little on foreign aid in terms relative both to our budget and to other OECD countries.

I don't know what aides Time talked to, but they sound a bit clueless. Obama has pledged to double the United States' annual investment in foreign aid to $50 billion by the end of his first term. Four years is not "anytime soon," and an increase of 25-30 billion would seem eminently reasonable in that time frame.

Foreign aid that (a) costs more money to administer than is available for disbursement, (b) is tied to punitive requirements to only use it to buy U.S. goods or services, or (c) goes into the pockets of corrupt foreign elites is less than no use at all.  A friend of mine who has done a bit of work in East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda) told me a story of seeing a guy breaking stones with his hands while brand-new shiny tools from Sweden sat untouched in their delivery boxes.  Eventually he realized that the tools were worth more to people as prestige objects than as actual working tools, and that no matter what they got from Europe the guy breaking stones was chaeaper anyhow.

Intelligently deployed foreign aid, targeted to help people with basic services and supplies such as water, education, health, law enforcement, and energy can be useful and can make the United States a welcome partner in many places.  Assisting people to secure their own lives is more important than giving them stuff.

Although foreign aid does have a national security component, it's also important that civilian aid programs not be seen as a branch of the U.S. military -- to protect the autonomy of both.  This has become a bit of a problem in Afghanistan, quite apart from the Taliban's willingness to attack civilian reconstruction workers anyhow.

Foreign aid is a diversion from the real issue, which ensures continued third world poverty. Namely the economic reforms or "modernization" that the IMF and World Bank demand of the weak and vulnerable. Debtor countries are forced to slash spending on health, education and economic development while debt replayment is prioritized and their resources and markets are thrown open to the wonders of Corporate capitalism.  In effect, the IMF and World Bank have demanded that poor nations lower the standard of living of their people.

irony and rozenson couldn't have made the points any better.  I'll second their comments...

(I'll add that I just heard a working class citizen acquaintance already complaining about how foreign aid doesn't buy enough allegiance the other day.)

That is definitely true of the IMF, Iggy, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.  I don't think it's true of the World Bank at least now (although other charges could be levelled there), however, and there's something a little thin and unconvincing about your fighting-the-power, third-world-victim, globalization-sucks, cool-band-playing-at-the-student-center-tonight theory of the universe.  There are many "debtor" countries that would have way enough money to deal with health, education, and economic development if they stopped spending so much on their military establishments, and finding a suitable outside target for abuse -- "the evil IMF made us do it" -- is a good way of distracting attention from native-grown inequalities and closed hierarchies that have jack to do with the IMF and the WB (although I agree they can exacerbate the effects of same).

Ah come Irony leave me my fighting-the-power, third-world-victim, globalization-sucks, cool-band-playing-at-the-student-center-tonight theory of the universe. I need something to get me out of political bed in the morning.

I know what you're saying, but those points seem absent from these boards, so I'm throwing them out there hoping that the heavyweights like yourself or Ick or Roi will take the bait and have a proper discussion on it.

Speaking of bed, I'm off to it.

Excellent analysis, ironyroad. All too much foreign aid is tied aid.

Every time someone mentions the US "foreign aid" budget I think of what it is out there in the world the money could be used for. And what it could be used to change.

Things like this:

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture

The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy

Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.

Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.

Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death

About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age

To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.

The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.

Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger

It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

George:

Meanwhile a report from Arizona University noted that 40 percent of food that is still edible is thrown away. That is about $40 billion worth.

I remember reading once that if you collected all the food that is thrown into dumpsters each day by restaurants in America you could feed all the hungry and starving people in the world five times over.

It is not about a lack of food. It is not about a lack of people willing to take it where it is needed. Instead, it is about a lack of political will on the part of the world's leaders. It is one of the darkest stains on the human race you are ever likely to find.

george walton

I think a-long makes a good point.  We are only one month into the transition (not even the administration), so Obama's four years haven't even started yet.  Also, if Crowley's concern is fixing the United States' "shattered reputation around the world," I think he must recognize that the election of Obama itself was worth at least $20 Billion.

Meeting with Joe Biden, Bill Gates seconds my* motion about foreign aid levels. (OK, I don't think