Foreign Aid: Euthanasia or Reform?

Abstract

AbstractNo aspect of our foreign relations produces more yawns on Main Street or occasional discomfort along Pennsylvania Avenue than our programs of economic assistance to developing countries. If we rather arbitrarily date the beginnings of that effort to coincide with President Truman's Point Four Inaugural, we are now in the thirty-first year of an enterprise that has already cost us more than $150 billion, with no end in sight. As to results, the general feeling is one of frustration, of being overwhelmed and undercompensated. It does not help to have other international and domestic problems clamoring for attention while one developing country after another denounces either our indifference or our interference. Instead of success and gratitude we seem to be reaping continuous foreign policy debacles amongst erstwhile or current Third World aid recipients—from Nicaragua and Mexico to Afghanistan and Iran.