Foreign Aid, Non-democratic Allies, And The United States

Foreign aid is an extremely flexible diplomatic instrument for the donor countries as it can serve as both a big stick and a carrot. Accordingly, foreign aid becomes one of the most important instruments in U.S.diplomacy. After World WarⅡ, the majority of U.S.aid has been given to U.S. allies and friends. At the same time, the non-democratic allies(NDAs) such as Egypt and Pakistan become top U.S.aid recipients which were U.S.democratic allies such as Western European countries and Japan at the very beginning of the cold war. NDAs are a kind of countries with dual identities:U.S.allies and non-democratic countries. The dual identities of NDAs, in addition to the flexibility of foreign aid confer upon foreign aid a special role in the relations between U.S.and NDAs.There appear fresh features on U.S. aid to NDAs at the latter part of the cold war and after the cold war, for instance, NDAs earn an higher percentage of U.S.aid; more rigorous conditions are placed on U.S. aid to NDAs. What come together with the new features are more problems produced in this process. Both U.S. and NDAs are found dual identities:U.S. are both a realist and an idealist, both the world police and preacher; NDAs are U.S. allies on one hand and non-democratic countries on the other hand. This paper believes that those new features and problems are the results of the dual identitys of both U.S. and NDAs, and that the effectiveness of U.S. aid to its NDAs has a lot to do with the identity interaction. How does U.S. foreign aid policy emerge? Has it met the decision-makers'goals and objectives? If not, what are the conditions under which this kind of policy could achieve its objectives to the maximum? These questions will be discussed and analysed in this paper, which will strengthen our understanding of U.S. politics and dipolmacy.