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World News See other World News Articles Title: Far From Benign: The US Aid Industrial Complex The US aid program began in earnest in the early stages of the Cold War, with an intention to beat off the contenders from the Soviet bloc in the postcolonial world. President Harry S. Truman proposed, in his 1949 inaugural address, “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.” In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, enabling him to issue the executive order that created the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 1962, the American scholar of international relations, Henry Morgenthau, suggested that foreign aid could fall into six categories: the sort that promoted humanitarian objects, the aid that offers subsistence goals and military aims, the sort that acted as a bribe, the attainment of prestige and economic development. To provide aid suggests a benevolent undertaking delivered selflessly. It arises from the charitable mission, an attempt to alleviate, or at least soften the blows of hardship arising from various impairments (poverty, famine, disease). But the provision of aid is rarely benign, almost always political, and, in its realisation, often self-defeating. The very transaction acknowledges the inherent victimhood of the sufferer, the intractable nature of the condition, the seemingly insoluble nature of a social problem. Morgenthau also conceded that humanitarian aid, despite being, on the surface, non-political in nature, could still “perform political function when it operates within political context.” And the very provision of aid suggests an accepted state of inequality between giver and recipient, with the former having the means to influence outcomes. With such views frothing the mix, it is worth considering why the attack by President Donald J. Trump on USAID as part of his axing crusade against bureaucratic waste is not, for all its structural and constitutional limitations, without harsh merit. Over the years, insistent critics have been lurking in the bushes regarding that particular body, but they have been dismissed as isolationist and unwilling to accept messianic US internationalism. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, has been wondering if the whole idea of US foreign aid should be called off. In January 1995, the body produced a report urging the termination of USAID. “Despite billions of dollars spent on economic assistance, most of the countries receiving US development aid remained mired in poverty, repressions, and dependence.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Horse (#0)
Death to the Great Satan
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