Stardate 20030521.1644

(Captain's log): Richard writes:

According to the June 2003 issue of Reader's Digest, our good old USA doles out to Middle East Countries the following:

Bahrain	$29 Million (military)
Egypt	$659 million (economic), $1.3 billion (military)
Iran	none
Iraq	none before the war
Israel	$748 million (economic), $2 billion (military)
Jordan	$253 million (economic), $1.3 billion (military)
Kuwait	none
Lebanon	$37 million (economic), $568 million (military)
Libya	none
Oman	$515K (economic), $25 million (military)
Qatar	none
Saudi Arabia	$30,000 (economic), $24,000 (military)
Sudan	$71 million (economic)
Syria	none
UAE	$350,000 (economic)
Yemen	$9 million (economic), $20 million (military)

Many questions come up just looking over the list, (the biggest being "Why"), but I would certainly like to read an article by you on the subject.

I have a feeling that Richard was hoping for a rant by me about how this is a waste and how we shouldn't be doing it. But it's not that straightforward.

For one thing, this isn't quite what it looks like. It isn't us delivering checks to all of these governments for thus-and-so millions of dollars. A lot of that economic aid, for example, is administered by the Agency for International Development, and USAID doesn't generally work through local governments. It bypasses them and directly administers the aid for the benefit of the people in those nations (to the extent that it can). That's done in part to avoid graft and local mismanagement, and in part to avoid letting the local rulers take political advantage of the aid by routing it to favorites. For instance, in 2002 USAID spent $150 million in Jordan on water management, health care (including reproductive health), and general economic development, which is 60% of the total economic aid to Jordan on that list.

USAID's spending is mainly humanitarian; it doesn't have much to do with politically rewarding the local government. It has significant operations in many of the nations in that region. In 2002 it spent $650 million in Egypt (the total economic aid to Egypt on that list), and most of that went towards job training, encouragement of business formation and providing health care.

Like any government program, it's highly likely that some of the money USAID administers is wasted or diverted, but it generally is trying to improve the lot of the people in these nations, not to support the government there as such.

USAID does not operate in Israel. The money listed above as economic aid for Israel is actually given to the Israeli government.

Some of that military aid is an accounting fiction. For example, in some cases we send our military people to other countries to help train their militaries, or we schedule joint military exercises there. The cost for us of doing that is part of the nominal "military aid" listed above. But the extent to which they actually gain anything beyond symbolic benefit for that kind of aid is open to doubt.

In overall terms, there are a number of reasons why this kind of spending goes on. Some of it is left over from the Cold War. During that period, there was a world-wide struggle between the USSR and a coalition of western nations led by the US for political influence, and part of that involved what a