"Far from the pious injunction of Utopian dreamers, the imperative to love one's neighbor is essential for our very survival." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

How could pouring aid into Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq count as national security, while funding for AIDS does not?

If the U.S. saves someone's life, they and their family become ambassadors for the United States of America. That's national security. Period, end of story. PEPFAR can prevent one death for about an eighth of the price of a new armored Humvee. GAVI can prevent eight deaths for about the price of a used Buick.

Aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, on the other hand, is notoriously leaky and dangerous (see mujahideen, Afghan, or ISI, Pakistani).

"Given the globalization of travel and transport, increasing vaccination coverage overseas can reduce vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in the U.S. and—in the case of polio eradication—potentially reduce the costs of U.S. vaccination programs in the future." - Amanda Glassman, Center for Global Development

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globalhealth/2011/02/will-the-u-s-lead-on-global-health-start-with-vaccination.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+cgdev/globalhealth+(Global+Health+Policy)

As China increases its economic engagement with the developing world (lending over $100Bn – more than the World bank in 2010), the USA (the worlds richest economy by far), decides to withdraw, and reduce assistance to poorer countries.

The two arguments against US international aid are problematic, not becoming of a world ‘leader’, and are counter-hegemonic..i.e. they work against the US retaining its status as global leader.

1. The view favoured by the Right that the rich have no moral obligation to help the poor…in fact that keeping poorer countries poor and excluded from development is in the US national interest since it serves to maintain US pre-eminence
2. The view favoured by all colours that the main reason to help the poor and excluded is that it is in the national interest of the USA

These arguments reflect “American Values” of selfishness and the acceptability of extreme inequality that the rest of the world does not want.

The focus on coercian/domination as the singular foreign policy tool (through actual or perceived military threat), and the withdrawal from co-operation/collaboration/leadership represents a decline of ‘soft-power” and will drive a decline in US global influence…and create a space for the likes of China (and maybe even Europe) to rise in influence.

The Right in the US seem to be working ignorantly in a 1990s world where the unchallenged domination of the US means it doesn’t need to build connections with other countries. In the modern world however other powers are rising and are becoming better than the US at this. China desperately needs to build economic ties with countries that provide it with commodities and food for its growing consumer purchaisng power….and in time no doubt will come to regard threats to these as national security threats and is quietly building its military in the knowledge that it will need to protect its trade into the future.

The American Right in its selfish determination to maintain dominance through military means alone is making the US, the IMF and World bank less relevant in the world and contributing to the rise of other powers. Perhaps the best thing for the world would be for the Right to win the 2012 election to cement this path of declining influence. At least then we could be sure that the American Value of selfishness and the acceptability of extreme inequality are not forced upon an unwilling world. The US zero-sum-game doctrine will surely be replaced by the win-win approaches of the more enlightened China and Europe.

It will surely be difficult to make a convincing case that international aid payments by the United States are bolstering its national security.

Recent events aren't helping. The administration itself must be questioning the value of spending taxes on discretionary foreign aid - the returns on big payments to Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, don't look favourable. Moreover it must be worrying that countries in receipt of US largesse refused to honour the Chinese Nobel winner that Beijing had jailed. And then there is the assistance to Israel, who Washington has criticised for building settlements - but gave it one more chance this week with a veto at the United Nations against the criticism of the rest of the world.

Now if France could put global public goods on the G20 agenda for this year . . .

How about we temporarily do away with the tax-exempt status of religious houses ? (I'll grudgingly concede that a permanent abolition is not in the cards at this time, but temporary, common sense measures seem to be all the rage for even conservatives.)

I don't know how the numbers shake out, but I imagine that resulting figure of the unrealized tax revenue to be more than "a rounding error" as mentioned by Traub. Not to mention respecting that pesky separation of church and state idea simultaneously - and that an argument could be made for more benevolent merits of one source of revenue vs. the other... (ahem)

Wait, I forgot. Different looking people in a faraway country that live without basics we take for granted don't factor in as a voting bloc, even though they may have much to contribute to diversity and security. That would require long-term thinking and take away talking points from the Far Right.

The article has a tone that assumes that the various players involved have differing idealogies about what America should be doing internationally, and they do.

But really, what drives this is politicians trying to get their piece of the pie to satisfy the special interests that finance their campaigns.

Thus Gates wants to protect the Pentagon budget, and the GOPers want to be tea party heros. With Obama, as usual, it is hard to tell whose side he is really on, although I think that, given his background, he probably is interested in keeping a big diplomatic corps, and maintaining a large foriegn intelligence contingent.

But the fight is not really over what's good for America, the fight is over who gets their piece of the budget pie, as usual.

And, as usual, what's good for America takes a back seat to that.

Once a "National Security" argument is attached to Foreign Aid, it is no longer Aid, it is a Bribe.

And that's obsolete Empire talk...

Global Public Goods? 'It will surely be difficult to make a convincing case that international aid payments by the United States are bolstering *its* national security.'

Moreover, what about the security of the NATO alliance? See comment at US Spied On NATO's Top Official