Obama Administration’s Foreign Assistance Under The Key Point Of Foreign Strategy

As the world’s largest assistance superpower, American foreign assistance started with the political strategy of preventing communism from spreading toward the Western Europe since the implementation of Marshall Plan in1947. Later, the emerging security threats represented by cold war had been the largest stimulus for America to systematically implement foreign assistance. For example, America expanded alliance in cold war through fighting for "Grey Zone" and mitigated conflicts of hot spots during cold war. All the assistances facilitated the implementation of American strategic point of corresponding time in terms of development dimension, which finally contributed to the success of cold war. In post-cold war era, American foreign assistances still played the same role, which cooperated with American democratic expansion strategy in1990s and global anti-terrorist strategy during the Bush Administration. It can be concluded that during the six decades after Second World War, America gradually explored and formed a mature and thorough operation mode of foreign assistance. Under the support of special system, America guarantees that the assistances of each historical period can cooperate with America to effectively implement the key point of foreign strategy, which realizes the goal of integration of safety, diplomacy and development.Since Obama was elected as president in2009, the complementary relationship between assistance and foreign strategy still continued. Obama Administration realized that Bush Administration paid too much attention to anti-terrorist in Middle East Area and ignored the importance of Asia-Pacific Region and Sub-Saharan Africa. However the above two regions have developed rapidly in the past few years; besides, China gained their political supports through increasingly frequent trade, investment and assistance in the regions. Such urgent reality forced America to delimit global strategy of the future several years, improve the strategic position of Asia-Pacific Region and Sub-Saharan Africa, and intensify America’s participation in the two regions. Under such condition, America intended to rebalance Asia-Pacific Region and invest more in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Obama Administration always promoted to move the center of American strategy to the two regions in the past5years. Correspondingly, American foreign assistance also changed during the stage:in Asia-Pacific Region, America intensified assistance exchange and cooperation with countries in Southeast Asia, and the total assistance scale increased significantly compared with that of Bush Administration. At the same time, America re-engaged in the affairs of pacific island countries and expanded the assistance projects and budgets for island countries; in Sub-Saharan Africa, America changed previous traditional assistance mode, transforming from direct assistance to public-private partnership.The paper mainly analyzes the integration of American assistance and foreign strategy of Obama Administration after2009, so as to prove the complementary relationship. Firstly, the paper introduces the system support for the cooperation of American assistance and foreign strategy; secondly, the paper focuses on the analysis of "Rebalancing" of America Priorities toward the Asia-Pacific as well as the change of assistance amount in Southeast Asia and pacific island countries; thirdly, the paper explores the change of America’s participation form in Sub-Saharan Africa and analyzes America’s new assistance method for Africa.