Foreign Aid is in the Interest of the United States Too

Foreign aid can be a very good thing if administered intelligently. Usually the U.S. Government hasn’t a surfeit of intelligence operating that is dedicated to public service so much as self-service. Funding the U.N. millennium program for example would have benefited much of the poorest regions of Africa, and the U.S. wouldn’t. So China’s financial loans for economic development to Africa have a larger effect, one that might not be much in African or U.S. interests.

Nature abhors a political vacuum. If the United States is so obsessive that it simply builds its own advantage or trades with poor foreign nations and their most powerful and sometimes corrupt political economic members, the development of those nations may not be sympathetic toward democracy and the United States. Good neighbors and friends are actually helpful in hard times. Some operations require community work although the issue is at a distance or over the border.

The Obama administration funded a host of rebel war movements across North Africa and the Middle East that continue to cause harm. That sort of foreign aid may please arms sellers but it can be counterproductive to long-range costs for American interests that need to spend more on defense and defrappe terrorist actions toward the United States. Building stable, peaceful societies rather than allowing nations to fall into non-democratic chaos of repression and or war is cost effective for taxpayers. That requires intelligent foreign aid- and that is the challenge isn’t it?

Another value for aid to foreign nations is in building infrastructure across the globe for ecologically sustainable economic infrastructures and methods of existence, Benefiting human health everywhere can be moved forward through construction of a reformed economic system that has as low of entropy and destruction of the environment as possible and that even recovers damaged planetary ecosystems. The value to Americans is that it will help sustain all life on Earth including people of the U.S.A. That requires substantial intelligence and leadership to accomplish. Foreign aid is a very small portion of the U.S. budget that can bring far more benefits in return than the initial cost.

If good sense and spirit is lacking in leadership, they should at the least consider the parable of the crooked steward from Luke 16;

“1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. 2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. 3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. 4 I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. 5 So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? 6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. 7 Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. 8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. 11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”