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| >> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 6 >> Objectives, Outcomes and amounts of foreign aid | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Jump to Chapter 6 Sections:
Foreign aid has also been used for security assistance in countries where the United States has
had strategic interests in combating communism, promoting peacekeeping, maintaining military
bases, and controlling nuclear weapons and narcotics. During initial peace talks and in sudden
crises-such as the Gulf War and the U.S. war on terrorism-this assistance has contributed to
stronger alliances and agreements.
AmountsU.S. foreign aid goes far beyond official development assistance (ODA)-the "donor performance" measure developed by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD is made up of industrial countries that provide the bulk of development aid to developing countries, and every year the DAC publishes a report comparing the generosity of donors based on their ODA as a percentage of their GNP.At $9.9 billion, ODA accounts for just 18 percent of total U.S. assistance-public and private-to developing countries (table 6.1). Private international assistance, by contrast, is $33.6 billion-60 percent of the U.S. contribution, and projected to grow to 65 percent by 2010. Every year the publication of the DAC report results in press reports and statements by academics and opinion leaders disparaging America’s "stinginess," asserting that U.S. foreign policy will be ineffective without more ODA, and claiming that U.S. foreign aid programs collapsed after the Cold War. But ODA is a limited and outdated way of measuring a country’s giving. Given the enormous growth in the private sector around the world, donors should reevaluate the measure.
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