Foreign Assistance For Foreign Aid

Foreign aid is something that is provided by donating governments to countries in need, mostly third-world countries. Foreign aid is allocated for two extremely broad categories, economic development and military aid. Under these categories there are specific uses for foreign aid like, health, humanitarian assistance, democratic elections and even protection for forests. There is debate about foreign aid being a waste because of corrupt governments, which gives the United States speculation whether it should continue to provide foreign aid and how much. This was a popular topic in the 2012 election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It would be most beneficial to the United States to maintain foreign aid levels while having conditions

Ever had that one friend? The one who tries to help, but no matter how hard he tries, he just aggravates the situation. This friend, Steve, insists he is helping, and those around, too, would support that he is indeed helping. But Steve is actually worsening the circumstances. He is like countries who provide foreign aid to less developed countries. Foreign aid, defined as “the international transfer of capital, goods, or services from a country or international organization for the benefit of the recipient country or its population,” can be military, economic, or humanitarian (“Foreign”). It is often granted to less developed countries in order to evoke government reforms or to stimulate economic growth. However, foreign aid neither elicits government reform, nor does it consistently and reliably stimulate economic growth; therefore, the United States should discontinue providing foreign economic aid.

Foreign aid is a term referring to resources and money lent out or given to a ‘recipient nation’ who is in need by a wealthier ‘donor country’. This can be given either in long term ‘humanitarian aid’, aimed at improving the welfare and development of the human population, or short term ‘emergency aid’ focused on providing the daily necessities to a population after a war, or natural disaster. Despite common belief, the purpose of foreign aid is not only to help countries which are in need, but also to achieve a range of social, economic, cultural and geopolitical goals that will benefit our national interest. Australia is currently the largest foreign aid donor of its nearest neighbour,

Riddell, Roger C. 2007. Does Foreign Aid Really Work? 1st ed. OXFORD: Oxford University Press, USA.

Another factor of foreign aid that hurts the aided country is over-population. The biggest cause of over population is sending foreign countries supplies of food. The land can only support so many people and their technology does not allow for surplus. Naturally when you run out of food the population will cease to grow. Adding food to a country increases the amount of people that can live in the country. Because there is more available food the population will grow thereby crowding the country causing a scarcity of resources such as clean water, growing room for food, and jobs. When the availability of food increases people become less dependent on their private farms. This can allow them the opportunity to move into the cities causing over-crowding and increasing the size of slums. If the United States continues to give food to these

Aid has never been an altruistic process; countries have always given aid to areas that best further their own national interests. Countries give aid for a number of reasons; they range from securing political connections to creating more favourable trade routes. Pure altruism is never the number one reason a country gives aid, and Australia is no exception. National interest lies at the core of all of Australia’s foreign aid policies, (DFAT 2015). As a nation Australia would most benefit from concentrating her aid on the Indo-Pacific region. Providing the nations within Australia’s regional neighbourhood with aid results in economic growth for both Australia and her aid recipients. Aid also stabilises trade and security within the region,

According the US Census Bureau, the United States spent $44.957 billion on foreign aid in 2009, in terms of total foreign assistance. Of that, just over $11 billion was military assistance. The nations that received the most foreign aid were Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Pakistan. Some aid went to financial institutions and to aid agencies, and therefore is difficult to classify by country. By regions, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East were the biggest recipients of foreign aid. The recipients and types of foreign aid are indicative of priorities that the US government has with respect to foreign relations. As many people applaud high levels of foreign aid from the US to poor countries around the world, foreign aid also has its critics. From a domestic perspective, criticisms include the argument that this money would be better used in the United States, and the libertarian argument against all forms of foreign aid in general. It is worth noting that many critics of foreign aid still support aid to support military objectives, which includes the four largest recipient of aid (Traub, 2011). External critics of foreign aid argue that such aid has generally failed to achieve its objectives, for a variety of reasons ranging from rapidly increasing populations to corruption to the promotion of dependency relationships (Bovard, 1986). This paper will analyze US foreign aid in the context of its success and failures and make the case that the United States

The arguments on aid have been seen largely from two perspectives: idealistic and realistic points of view. The idealist arguments are normative, with no real possibilities of assessing their validity. In contrast, evidence can be gathered to test the economic consequences of aid although different interpretations of the evidence are always possible and disagreements over the conclusiveness of the test are

Foreign Aid can be described many ways, from a governments point of view, foreign aid is a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another country. Foreign aid can be delivered in many different ways, a major part of foreign aid is providing medical assistance to a country when they cannot afford it themselves. Different countries view Aid in different ways, and the standards of what exactly constitutes aid varies depending on the country, for example until around 1960 most countries considered military assistance a form of foreign aid but this has since been changed. Aid, however is not restricted to governments and can be provided by individuals or private organizations as well.

Foreign aid is money, food, or other resources given or lent by one country to

Given that less than one percent of the U.S. budget is spent on foreign aid, and we are at an almost all-time low in spending on foreign aid in a politically unstable world

After giving it some thought, I believe that there is not a way that aid can be given without disturbing the local economies, institutions, and natural resources of receiving countries. I think the purpose of aid is to disturb the status quo and push for it to be better than it currently is. Some of the ways that aid can be given without making too large of a disturbance would be through microfinancing. Microfinancing is where a small loan ($25 - $100), which is repaid at a later date, is made available to individuals who are attempting to provide for themselves. Organizations such as Kiva provide microfinancing options for individuals to buy something as simple as a cow so that the products from the cow are then a source of income for that individual. Another way to provide aid is through agriculture development, where volunteers teach individuals farming techniques to receive a better yield.

Prior to doing the readings for this week, I did not know very much at all about foreign developmental aid. I only ever figured that foreign developmental aid was money that we provided to developing nations to help soothe poverty. After reading these articles, however, I now know that the intended goal of developmental aid is to alleviate poverty in the long-term, rather than as a short-term response. I also saw developmental aid as purely humanitarian, and never paused to consider that consequences of such aid, nor the possibility of the aid failing.

The actual definition of Foreign Aid is money, food, or other resources given or lent by one country to another, but it is a broad topic that looks different for every country that receives it. While it is a great thing in concept, it often runs into problems when it is put into practice. The country that gives the aid (the benefactor), usually doesn’t realize or try to fix the problems that these problems cause the other country (the beneficiary). Like everything in this world, it has benefits and drawbacks and although it does impact the country that provides aid, ultimately, the bigger concern is the country who receives it.Is it actually helpful, or is it a waste of time? What is the difference between helping and harming? Foreign Aid often walks a fine line, and there are many factors like corruption, poor planning, greed, and ulterior motives can do more harm to a country than good.

When I chose Brazil as the subject country for examining its foreign aid received, I ran into a bit of a dilemma. Brazil has evolved from being a foreign aid recipient and less developed nation of the past, to become a major foreign aid provider in recent years. This fact places this emerging country in a unique and interesting position as both a donor and recipient as of 2010 records reveal and Brazil’s donor status is on the increase since this new “middle-of-the-road” development status for this intriguing country emerged.