I started this blog mostly so that I could do some research into US foreign aid and report the results, which I have been doing. But I haven't written an article lately, and I realized that the reason was that I had really come to the conclusion that the Program Our Government Calls "Foreign Aid" (POGCFA for short) has very little to do with what you would think from its name: helping foreign countries. Instead, the POGCFA is mostly just a US corporate welfare program. So, analyzing what it is and isn't doing well in the area of foreign aid seems to be rather pointless, and I am going to give up doing further analysis of the POGCFA and concentrate on other subjects. But before I do, here is a summary of why I think the POGCFA is not a real foreign aid program, based on my previous articles and the information sources cited by them:
- A real foreign aid program would analyze humanitarian need and send aid to the countries where the need is greatest, designated for humanitarian purposes (food, water, health care, education). But as I've reported in previous articles, the POGCFA does not give the most aid to the countries generally recognized to have the greatest level of humanitarian need. Also, the POGCFA spends a lot of the money it calls foreign aid on the military, drug enforcement, and economic "development" aimed at preparing foreign countries to trade beneficially with US companies, rather than for humanitarian purposes.
- A real foreign aid program would be providing aid either directly to foreign governments or better yet to humanitarian non-governmental organizations based in the countries, because they would presumably be in the best position to know what their country needs. It would also use local labor, local management, and local methods to complete projects in foreign countries, in order to provide much-needed employment, make sure most of the aid money stays in the foreign country, spend money efficiently (salaries are lower), draw upon local knowledge, and respect local cultures. However, the POGCFA is currently giving most of its aid money to for-profit companies based in the US, who conduct the projects with US personnel, so much of the money comes back into the US economy.
- A real foreign aid proram would give grants of money, and if interested in loans, concentrate on micro-credit going directly to small entrepreneurs. Instead, the POGCFA promotes large loans to foreign governments, which are terrible for the countries in the long run and provide little benefit to the average person there in the short term (see this article on loans for more information).
- A real foreign aid program would avoid getting involved in foreign politics and the governing of foreign countries. But the POGCFA demands that foreign governments accept its economic policies, supports foreign political and military groups that are willing to work for its agenda, distributes propaganda, assasinates political leaders, and in some cases simply goes into a foreign country and openly and directly takes over.
So I guess that rather than campaigning to change the current US foreign aid program, we ought to campaign to eliminate the POGCFA, and start over with a real foreign aid program based on needs, and aimed at actually helping foreign countries. What a concept!