POLS 230 - Introduction to Policy Analysis

Student ID 800289612 - Laura Ruiz Oltra

Discussion paper 10 – Friday 11/02

Review the data on foreign economic and military assistance provided in the
chapter. Is the United States providing the right kind of foreign assistance to
developing nations, and doing enough to address the problems that they face?
Should the nation do more? What do you think is the best way to determine an
appropriate level of foreign aid?

Depending on how we measure it, you could think that the US either doesn’t spend

enough on foreign aid, that it spends the perfect amount of money, or maybe that it spends

too much. The US spends about 1% of the federal budget on foreign aid. In other words,

it yearly spends more than 30 billion dollars on the matter. The nation is still among the

leading contributors to developing countries.

According to the Congressional Research Service, about 28 percent of foreign aid money

has gone for military purposes, about 16% for humanitarian ends, about 6% for

multilateral aid though international organizations, another 18% for other political,

economic, or security purposes, such as advancing U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East,

and the remaining to some other goals. So that would make just a 22% of the 1% of the

GDP being destined to humanitarian goals. Given this distribution, maybe you could

argue that a bigger effort could be made by the nation specifically on this matter. So while

I think that every percentage around the 1% of the national budget is a reasonable and

affordable amount of money for every country to spend on foreign aid; it should be more

geared to humanitarian aid, or put more money into it so more money could effectively

be used for humanitarian purposes.

After all, I do not think the problem with the foreign aid provided by the US is the amount

of it, but the “use” of it.

Decisions matter. Does foreign aid to a country count if we also sell arms to that same

country? Do 30 billion dollars matter when we are denying that a genocide is happening

right before our eyes?

With this I do not mean to say that the US or either other country don’t care about foreign

aid and do nothing, of course I don’t. And I completely understand they do as much as

the political feasibility of foreign aid permits. But sometimes, little actions or decisions

can ruin a lot of our already done job. I just mean to ask every country to be responsible

for their actions towards other countries, specially the less developed ones. We are

creating the world of tomorrow with today’s actions.