Rajshekhar Basu Sarkar
eSomethin Staff
Foreign aid is the transfer of money to foreign countries. Depending on who you ask, foreign aid helps countries in need or wastes hard-earned taxpayer money.
According to freshman Mikey Duvall, foreign aid is “money that we earned being sent to our allies.”
Another student, Bryn Rajner, said that foreign aid is given to “countries in need of aid”.
Government teacher at Perrysburg High School, Erin Gallagher, said that “foreign aid may be military, political or financial aid.”
Foreign aid isn’t just money. It can take the form of political intervention, supplies of weapons, and media influence.
Rajner, Duvall, and Gallagher all agree foreign aid can be exploited. Gallagher told eSomethin that “once the transaction happens, we do not have control of the money”.
Duvall and Rajner both agree that countries could lie about their ambitions in order to get more money from richer countries.
Duvall said “if we go to war with China, we need our allies to support us.”
Another student, Nolan Graham, said that countries who receive foreign aid “might feel like they owe us something”.
Rajner said that “allies feel like they have to help the countries.”
Giving foreign countries our money is a bad idea because we do not have any control over the money after we make the transaction. Countries that are not very fond of America’s democratic values may use foreign aid for other purposes that we as Americans do not want to see. Therefore, I conclude that we should not intervene abroad.\ While I am sympathetic to those fighting for their freedoms, we cannot risk putting ideology over our national interest when it comes to foreign policy.
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