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Realpolitik is not the only argument for foreign aid though. There is also the progressive view that those who own a lot should use their possessions to help those who have less. Since the US is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, she has a duty to help poorer nations prosper. If that is the motivation for program, it seems natural that the charities used would mostly share a similar world view.
I think this kind of altruism is a way more common justification among leftist voters than realpolitik. The latter is really just a way to clown on Trump. They want to donate because they believe it is the right thing to do, and would do so even if the benefit to their home country is basically null. Unfortunately, this is easily weaponized by activists. "One dollar is nothing to you, but give it to a family in Africa, and it buys all of them enough water for the entire day". You also see this to a fairly extreme extent in immigration discourse in Europe, where many on the left are more concerned about doing the "right thing" by admitting refugees and immigrants, than they are about the effect this has on their culture and economy.
Why not both? Gaining a good reputation for doing good things is the system working as intended. There's also downstream effects. The benefit of disease control activities in Africa is lower risk of eventually spreading to Americans. Alleviating poverty helps prevent anti-American terrorists from gaining power.
Has a nation-state ever started a war or funded terrorism against another nation-state simply because the richer state was richer and refused to provide charity to the poorer state?
Perhaps client states or vassal-like relationships could work this way, but they involve political subservience in exchange for material resources.
Alleviating poverty does not prevent anti-Americanism, it just alleviates poverty and creates a culture of dependency.
Simply because? No, unless you're counting warlords who want more stuff. But gangs and terrorists find poor places fertile breeding ground. If you have nothing, what are you supposed to do about them? And it's easier for the cartel to recruit a poor kid from the street than a middle class child. Life is all about contributing factors.
It does though? Are you going to tell me you aren't nicer to someone who gives you stuff? It's no magic bullet, but it helps. That what soft power is - influence.
And again I will point out the value of preventing disease outbreaks.
My point is that anger over lack of material comforts is usually directed at the internal government, not a distant foreign government. Do the people in Brazil's favelas blame China for their poverty? No, they blame the government of Brazil. Do the untouchables in India blame the US for their situation? No, if anything they blame the caste system in India. No terrorists or gangs blame obvious outsiders unless those outsiders are clearly meddling in the internal politics of their country - like the US does with NGOs and various aid programs. Poor people, including poor radicalised extremists, do not necessarily lay blame to wealthy foreigners who are minding their own business in their own country. Normal trade relations are not meddling but "free" aid always comes with strings attached and so people are rightfully suspicious.
And I don't know how to explain it, but soft power isn't gained by just giving things away for free. Maybe someone smarter than me can explain soft power better, but I think it's a form of respect that you can't just buy with resources or money.
Blame has nothing to do with it. The cartels don't sell drugs out of some blame for America. They want money and selling drugs gets them money. If your other options are shit jobs for shit pay, the less scrupulous choose the path they see to success. Maybe we can stop some percentage of them from contributing to the drug trade in America by making Mexico not a shithole. Is it "unfair" to bail them out for failing? If you want to look at it that way I suppose. But criminals have a way of making their problems everyone else's problems, and butterfly effect still reaches America.
Soft power isn't a straightforward conversion of money to influence, but it always ends with money. Another country has a natural disaster and you show up to offer help? That's respect. But you know what disaster support is? It's money. Treating diseases in other countries? Money. Trade? Money.
Even if Mexico was not a shithole, drugs would still flow to the US because it's a lucrative business. No amount of US taxpayer funded pampering and charity will stop the flow of recruits to the drug trade. This is because when there is money laying on the ground, eventually someone will stoop to pick it up, even if they already have all their needs met. Nobody in the cartel grew up so lacking in material comforts that they decided to leave a half dozen severed heads on public roads to intimidate their enemies. It's a predisposition to human dismemberment that no amount of charity will fix.
Stop the drug trade? I have no illusions of doing that. A hypothetical successful scenario is not one that stops all crime, it's one that turns the drug trade from a $10 billion/year industry to a $2 billion/year industry (numbers pulled out of my ass because it doesn't matter here). Instead of 10 people signing up to join the cartel in a given time, 2 do because the other 8 had middle class parents and lead middle class lives. Instead of the cartels being able to tell the Mexican government what to do, the Mexican government has the resources to push the cartels into the shadows.
Is this all pie in the sky? Absolutely. I'm embellishing things to make a point.
"Prosperity" isn't a switch that gets flipped and once it gets flipped everything gets fixed forever. It's a slider. The more the prosperity slider moves to the right, poverty reduces a little (and poverty itself becomes less severe), crime reduces a little, infectious diseases get treated better and spread less, and happiness increases a little. The more it slides to the left the more those bad things go up. In line with that, the idea of international aid isn't to end all the bad things. The aid is because without it, things can always get worse. Improving society is a matter of bringing the poverty rate from 10% to 9%, not the idea that you're going to get it to 0%.
That's the humanitarian angle. The government angle is that by doing humanitarian things they establish positive ties to another country, and positive ties mean influence. Influence isn't a direct quid-pro-quo, it's adding one more reason to choose X instead of Y where X is the option that benefits the U.S.
To me, it's clear you have a strong belief that poverty causes crime, and that if poverty is reduced enough then crime will also decrease to tolerable levels. I used to have that belief too, but from my personal lived experience I have evolved away from that core belief.
In my view, people usually turn to crime not because they are destitute (stealing bread) but because it has the potential to allow someone to leapfrog to high social status. The cartels offer the promise of high social status, even for the most raw recruits. They look down upon foreign aid unless they are stealing it, because stealing successfully is a demonstration of intelligence and boldness. They look down upon middle class jobs because civilians are like peasants to them, to be taxed for protection and exploited as if they were feudal lords.
Your 8 of 10 men who try to lead middle class lives live in fear of the remaining 2 of 10 men who embrace the cartel life. They try to keep their head down and avoid entanglements, they pay whatever shakedowns are necessary to avoid violence. Maybe 1 in 10 men try to take a principled stand against the cartels, but when the cartels find out they decapitate him and leave his body parts in public so that his friends and family are chastened for his act of insubordination.
You are hoping that the 1 in 10 men eventually becomes 9 in 10 men opposing cartels, so that the cartels crumble naturally from lack of recruits and civilian tolerance. I'm saying the cartels are aware of this risk and the beheadings will continue to prevent this from ever happening.
And on disease prevention like Ebola, I'm all for aid to minimize pandemic outbreak risk. Even if the people getting medical help are too stupid to understand it. I'm even for strict quarantines. But this kind of aid is fundamentally different from attempting to use aid to reduce terrorism and cartel violence.
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