Foreign Policy interviews Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, and he's none too pleased about charges that Pakistan ought to better account for the aid money we give them:
This all illustrates a general problem with aid as a tool of influence. If you see a country that just seems awesome and worth supporting, you can give them a bunch of money and there it is. But if you see a regime that's not especially awesome, and think your aid money can rope them into a web of influence, you find that trying to actually use the aid to manipulate the other country prompts more than a little of the old nationalist backlash. Doesn't mean it's not worth doing in some circumstances, but there are real limits to what can be achieved this way.
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Heads in the Sand
This also misses the point that most old AID people remember. You can't rope another country into doing what you want unless they are persuaded about the value of it themselves. Lots of cases in my personal experience. They say they will do it, but they don't. Then what do you do? Cut off the aid?
Posted by john bennett | November 19, 2007 5:31 PM