Michael L. Buckler, the author of From Microsoft to Malawi: Learning on the Front Lines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, argues that the foreign assistance that the U.S. provides to poor countries benefits the U.S. more than the designated country. His Op-Ed titled "The Secret of Foreign Aid" is published on The Baltimore Sun. Here is an excerpt from it:
Overseas assistance in the federal budget is actually American assistance in disguise. Poor countries receive money from our government under the condition that some of the money (about 50 percent) be used to acquire goods and services from American companies. By doing this, Congress ensures that aid money stimulates the American economy, not fragile ones in need of help. Other self-serving tactics include showering aid on strategically important countries like Egypt, while geopolitical twerps like Malawi — where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer — get squeezed; and conditioning aid upon the adoption of Western ideals like multiparty democracy and free-market capitalism. In short, we finance them to enrich our companies and import our culture.
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Overseas assistance in the federal budget is actually American assistance in disguise. Poor countries receive money from our government under the condition that some of the money (about 50 percent) be used to acquire goods and services from American companies. By doing this, Congress ensures that aid money stimulates the American economy, not fragile ones in need of help. Other self-serving tactics include showering aid on strategically important countries like Egypt, while geopolitical twerps like Malawi — where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer — get squeezed; and conditioning aid upon the adoption of Western ideals like multiparty democracy and free-market capitalism. In short, we finance them to enrich our companies and import our culture.
Continue to read here
Typical Corporate American thinking, there are always hidden agendas in everything they do. In the process of giving these Foreign Aid they are probably looking to see where they can get cheap labor to exploit as well. Who knows ... If they have thought of strengthening their economy by exploiting the poor and weak and by putting on a false facade I might as well assume they are looking for something bigger than promoting democracy and capitalism.
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