["Deep current":  Money passing through the powerful's hands helps the powerful, whether those powerful people be in the West or in the Third World.  Whatever our intentions be for aid, its straight path is bent with each successive stage of handling until its direction is changed altogether.]

MYTH:  We need to increase & improve our foreign aid.

First, we have to say that the U.S. doesn't provide much aid:  only 0.15% of the U.S. GDP, not the 0.70% that was set as the standard back in 1970.  The KRMH text (citing German & Randal 2002) says that among all the developed (OECD) countries, the average level of aid has fallen from 0.36% in the early 1980s to 0.22% in (I assume) 2000.

Aid was & remains a tool of foreign policy — it serves our interests.  For a few countries, particularly in Scandanavia, these interests are more directly humanitarian.  (This surely relates somehow to their more socialist political cultures.)  For the United States (and, to be fair, most other countries) the interests are much more directly commercial and political.

• Support undemocratic regimes when they support our economic & foreign policy goals
• Aid enemies of our non-allies (e.g., the Nicaraguan contras)

From 1972 until the end of the Cold War, there was some attention to basic needs.  (At the initiative of Robert MacNamara, amazingly enough, while he was President of the World Bank.)  After the Cold War, however, in the current period of U.S. hegemony, poverty is no longer the major focus of aid.  So what is the focus?  LCRE lists seven aspects of aid to consider, each of them (argued to be) evidence that U.S. aid is not oriented to reducing hunger.:

1. Aid is highly concentrated on a few (generally not-poor) countries.  In absolute terms, the recipients of the most aid are Israel, Egypt, Russia, and Ukraine, none of which is among the poorest countries in the world.  In terms of per capita aid, the largest recipients are Israel ($190/person), Bosnia-Herzegovina and the West Bank/Gaza Strip (both at $20), Haiti ($14), Bolivia (a bit less than $14), and Egypt ($11).  The rest of the countries in the table on p.132 have a median of about $2/capita.
2. Aid is used as a lever for implementing the so-called neo-liberal "Washington Consensus":  opening up Third World countries as markets and imposing SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs), which work against the hungry, as detailed in Chapter 8 on Free Trade.  The KRMH chapter talks about three problems with such aid:  lack of implementation;  lack of consequent change;  and negative side-effects in the form of increased poverty.
3. Aid doesn't target the hungry.  Most aid programs have different purposes:
   1. To sell U.S. products through making loans to countries to enable them to buy U.S. products.  [Title I]
   2. To sell U.S. products through making loans to countries to enable them to buy U.S. products — without really expecting the loans to be paid off.  [Title III]
   3. To expand free enterprise in the countries.  [Food for Progress program]
   4. Actual food aid.  [Title II]  Unfortunately, this aid...
4. ...reinforces dependencies on U.S. goods, drives small farmers out of business, and consequently works against self-sufficiency.  Thus it forestalls agricultural development.
5. Military aid contributes to war (which leads to hunger).  However, such aid provides a market for U.S. manufacturers.
6. What "good" aid there is serves as a fig leaf covering all the other, negative forms of aid.  Emergency aid provides good public relations, but it does little to address the problem of chronic hunger and vulnerability. 
7. Even "development assistance" doesn't help the hungry.  Top-down design.  Not targeted at the landless.  Risky ventures.  No long-term commitment.

But OGA (Official Government Aid) is only the tip of the iceberg.  Most "development" in the Third World comes as a result of private money (corporate investments) controlled by Western owners.  What's the result for citizens of the Third World?  Cheaper goods (maybe), but also displacement of workers, disruption of the existing social support system, control by distant & impersonal interests, expatriation of profits.

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