Comments on: Minus Colombia and Mexico, a much different picture

By: comÃºn

comÃºn — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:51:23 +0000

It seems as though with foreign aid as with trade, the devil is always in the details: the recipient government’s institutions, and governance, as well as the intentions of the aid provider. What is clear to me, as a layman, is that foreign aid to Latin America has not worked…certainly not as intended.

By: Adam Isacson

Adam Isacson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:41:47 +0000

Humanitarian aid to the displaced, programs for small farmers, support for judicial units and NGOs working on human rights cases, and child disease-prevention programs are a “Beltway” thing now?

We don’t support the USAID program to “create employment” by aiding agribusiness, criticized in Teo BallvÃ©’s piece. And our last report lays out a lot of concerns about the USAID-supported “Integrated Action” programs.

But we’re on the side of fixing what’s not working, not on the side of slashing assistance down to zero.

The first choice is for people who believe that engaging with other countries and improving how government works are worthy goals. The second choice is for isolationists and ideologues.

By: lfm

lfm — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:04:14 +0000

Well, we don’t get to talk about foreign aid that often in this blog so why not? Yes, there’s a growing current of opinion against foreign aid based on the fact that many Third World countries that receive lots of aid still remain real basket cases. Sure enough, the Easterlys of the world can always point to some horror story about aid. That’s fine by me. If you tell me that aid is often wrapped in First World arrogance, misconceived priorities etc, I’m not going to be surprised. But I think it’s not helpful to just call for scrapping aid without putting anything else in place. It is just callous and rather unnecessary to simply stop the flow of aid, supposedly to wean countries from it, in the hope that they’ll simply “sink or swim” (most likely the former).

Of course, in the long run, you want to reach a point where countries don’t need any more aid. But how to get from here to there? I know the answer many will give: FREE TRADE NOW!!! Sure, trade is part of the answer but we know that there are lots of complications with it. And, as we all know, ahem, ahem, there are people in this forum that ignore basic facts so badly that they make it impossible to have a moderately enlightening discussion about FTAs so, as far as that discussion is concerned, “let’s not and say we did.”

By: marie

marie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:36:22 +0000

USAID seems to have accomplished the economic compliment of the military component of Plan Colombia:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/ballve

Why would Adam Isaacson and beltway human rights organizations call for and rejoice at more of this?

By: Jaime Bustos

Jaime Bustos — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:03:13 +0000

Comun you don’t seem to be aware of the so-called nation building pratice in which the US is deeply involved. That’s the catch, regardless of the fate those countries endure, they will follow a patern and behaviour mandated by the Global Powers, for their own benefit. Recently embassador in Colombia James Brownsfield mentioned Colombia and Afghanistan as the two most successful nation building outcomes of that policy.

Here is a link for starters.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1753/

By: comÃºn

comÃºn — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:08:10 +0000

OK, I’ve some naive and admittedly leading questions about U.S. foreign aid:

1. Has US foreign aid to Latin America produced any success stories?
2. Can the emergence of Chile and Brazil be attributed to U.S. foreign aid?
3. How much foreign aid has gone to Central American countries and what have they got to show for it? In his column, Andres Oppenheimer says Guatemala is on the verge of collapse, Nicaragua and Honduras do not appear to be too far behind.
4. Would Latin America be better off without any U.S. foreign aid?