foreign aid

—foreign-aid, adj.

economic, technical, or military aid given by one nation to another for purposes of relief and rehabilitation, for economic stabilization, or for mutual defense. Also called aid.

[1955-60]

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Transfer of capital, goods, or services from one country to another.

Foreign aid may be given in the form of capital transfers or technical assistance and training for either civilian or military purposes. Its use in the modern era began in the 18th century, when Prussia subsidized some of its allies. After World War II, foreign aid developed into a more sophisticated instrument of foreign policy. International organizations, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, were created to provide aid to war-ravaged countries and newly freed colonies. Foreign aid is often given with conditions attached, such as the requirement that all or part of it be used to buy goods from the donor country. See also International Monetary Fund; Marshall Plan; World Bank.

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Introduction

      the international transfer of capital (capital and interest), goods, or services from a country or international organization for the benefit of the recipient country or its population. Aid can be economic, military, or emergency humanitarian (e.g., aid given following natural disasters).

Types and purposes

      Foreign aid can involve a transfer of financial resources or commodities (e.g., food or military equipment) or technical advice and training. The resources can take the form of grants or concessional credits (credit) (e.g., export credits). The most common type of foreign aid is official development assistance (ODA), which is assistance given to promote development (economic development) and to combat poverty. The primary source of ODA—which for some countries represents only a small portion of their assistance—is bilateral grants from one country to another, though some of the aid is in the form of loans, and sometimes the aid is channeled through international organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) (UNICEF) have provided significant amounts of aid to countries and to NGOs involved in assistance activities.

      Countries often provide foreign aid to enhance their own security. Thus, economic assistance may be used to prevent friendly governments from falling under the influence of unfriendly ones or as payment for the right to establish or use military bases on foreign soil. Foreign aid also may be used to achieve a country's diplomatic goals, enabling it to gain diplomatic recognition, to garner support for its positions in international organizations, or to increase its diplomats' access to foreign officials. Other purposes of foreign aid include promoting a country's exports (e.g., through programs that require the recipient country to use the aid to purchase the donor country's agricultural products or manufactured goods) and spreading its language, culture, or religion. Countries also provide aid to relieve suffering caused by natural or man-made disasters such as famine, disease, and war, to promote economic development, to help establish or strengthen political institutions, and to address a variety of transnational problems including disease, terrorism and other crimes, and destruction of the environment. Because most foreign aid programs are designed to serve several of these purposes simultaneously, it is difficult to identify any one of them as most important.

History

      The earliest form of foreign aid was military assistance designed to help warring parties that were in some way considered strategically important. Its use in the modern era began in the 18th century, when Prussia subsidized some of its allies. European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries provided large amounts of money to their colonies, typically to improve infrastructure with the ultimate goal of increasing the colony's economic output. The structure and scope of foreign aid today can be traced to two major developments following World War II: (1) the implementation of the Marshall Plan, a U.S. (United States)-sponsored package to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries, and (2) the founding of significant international organizations, including the United Nations, IMF, and World Bank. These international organizations have played a major role in allocating international funds, determining the qualifications for the receipt of aid, and assessing the impact of foreign aid. Contemporary foreign aid is distinguished not only because it is sometimes humanitarian (with little or no self-interest by the donor country) but also by its size, amounting to trillions of dollars since the end of World War II, by the large number of governments providing it, and by the transparent nature of the transfers.

      The level of foreign aid expenditures following World War II dwarfed prewar assistance. The postwar programs of the United Kingdom, France, and other European former colonial powers grew out of the assistance they had provided to their colonial possessions. More importantly, however, the United States and Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and their allies during the Cold War used foreign aid as a diplomatic tool to foster political alliances and strategic advantages; it was withheld to punish states that seemed too close to the other side. In addition to the Marshall Plan, in 1947 the United States provided assistance to Greece and Turkey to help those countries resist the spread of communism, and, following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (Stalin, Joseph) in 1953, communist-bloc countries donated increasing amounts of foreign aid to less-developed countries and to close allies as a means of gaining influence as well as promoting economic development.

      Several non-European governments also implemented their own aid programs after World War II. For example, Japan developed an extensive foreign aid program—an outgrowth of its reparations payments made following the war—that provided assistance primarily to Asian countries. Much of Japan's aid came through procurement from Japanese companies, which helped fuel economic development in Japan. By the late 20th century, Japan had become one of the world's two leading donor countries, and its aid programs had extended to non-Asian countries, though much of the country's assistance was still directed toward Asia.

      The vast majority of ODA comes from the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Economic Co-operation and Development, Organisation for) (OECD), specifically the nearly two dozen countries that make up the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The DAC includes western European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Other providers of significant assistance include Brazil, China, Iceland, India, Kuwait, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1970s the international community, through the United Nations, set 0.7 percent of a country's gross national income (GNI) as the benchmark for foreign aid. However, only a small number of countries (Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) reached that mark. Although the United States and Japan have been the world's two largest donors, their levels of foreign aid have fallen significantly short of the UN's goal.

      Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has furnished foreign aid as part of peacemaking or peacekeeping initiatives in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and parts of Africa. Foreign aid also has been used to promote smooth transitions to democracy and capitalism in former communist countries, most notably Russia.

      Foreign assistance is still used to promote economic development. Although significant development occurred in much of Asia and Latin America during the second half of the 20th century, many countries in Africa remained severely underdeveloped despite receiving relatively large amounts of foreign aid for long periods. Beginning in the late 20th century, humanitarian assistance to African countries was provided in increasing amounts to alleviate suffering from natural disasters, the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, and destructive civil wars. Major initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS focused on the hardest-hit countries, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.

      Foreign aid has been used, particularly in poorer countries, to fund or to monitor elections, to facilitate judicial reforms, and to assist the activities of human rights organizations and labour groups. In the post-Cold War era, when funding anticommunist governments became a less important criteria for the United States and its allies, promoting democracy was elevated as a criterion in foreign aid programs. Aid was provided to some countries as an incentive for initiating democratic reforms and was withheld from others as a punishment for resisting such reforms.

      Foreign aid is also used to address transnational problems such as the production and export of illegal drugs and the battle against HIV/AIDS. For example, the International Narcotics Control program allocates U.S. funds to countries to battle drug production, and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 make foreign aid and access to U.S. markets conditional upon recipient countries' actively combatting drug production and trafficking.

      Since the 1990s many foreign aid sources, notably the IMF, have made aid conditional on market-oriented economic reforms, such as lowering trade barriers and privatization. Thus, foreign aid has been used as a tool by some institutions and countries to encourage the spread of capitalism.

      In the last decade of the 20th century, private capital flows and remittances from migrant workers became the two largest sources of “aid” from wealthy countries to poor ones, surpassing the amount of ODA provided by those countries. However, this form of aid is heavily stratified; most direct foreign investment has gone to developing countries pursuing policies of trade and economic liberalization and those with large markets (e.g., Brazil, China, and India).

Criticism

      Significant criticisms have been leveled at both the donors and the recipients of foreign aid. Some groups in recipient countries have viewed foreign aid suspiciously as nothing more than a tool of influence of donor countries. For example, critics of the IMF allege that the required structural adjustments are too politically difficult and too rigorous and that the debts incurred through IMF loans help to create poverty, as capital that could have been invested instead was channeled into debt repayment. The World Bank, which critics claimed in the 1970s and '80s was insensitive to local needs and often approved projects that did more harm than good, altered many of its policies and has generally endured less criticism. In general, opponents of the way that foreign aid programs have operated charge that foreign aid has been dominated by corporate interests, has created an unreasonable debt burden on developing countries, and has forced countries to avoid using strategies that might protect their economies from the open market. In addition, many critics of U.S. aid illustrate the continued importance of political considerations over developmental ones, citing for example the increase in aid to countries allied with the United States in the fight against terrorism following the September 11 attacks in 2001, regardless of their commitment to democracy and human rights.

      Meanwhile, some groups in donor countries have criticized foreign aid as ineffective and wasteful. In the United States, for example, public opinion polls consistently show that most Americans believe that foreign aid consumes 20 percent of the country's budget—the actual figure is less than 1 percent—and that most recipients of foreign aid do not deserve it or do not use it wisely. Such criticisms have been bolstered by the generally disappointing results of foreign aid programs in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries remain mired in poverty, corruption, and civil war despite the disbursement of significant foreign aid. With efforts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, curtail drug production and trafficking, and battle HIV/AIDS, ODA—which had declined throughout the 1990s—increased in the early 21st century.

Victoria Williams

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