reasons for giving foreing aid, basic problems with giving foreign aid, who gets the most U.S. aid and why? and some examples
208776
When the U.S. solicited help from France to win the Revolutionary War.
389663
Although I didn't know the exact figures, I did know that Australia had been vastly the most generous country in terms of total donations per capita or as a percentage of their economic size.\n\nThe USA did give the most money in total, but as a proportion of population or GDP, the contribution was much smaller than countries like Australia, Norway, the Netherlands or Canada.
94865
A better question would be to ask why the government of the United States sends the US military into other countries in peacekeeping roles (Bosnia, for example) while the countries in the area - who's own best interests would be served by not having their neighbor self-destruct - do nothing.
21894
How many reasons do you want?\n  - O I L\n  - Morality.  We're the richest/strongest. shouldn't we help others as well as ourselves?\n  - We want some of what they have (resources such as titanium, diamonds, etc. that are not found in the USA)\n  - To support friendly countries in areas where there are many UN-friendly countires\n  - etc, etc, etc.\nFact is that we are part of a world that technology keeps making smaller and smaller, and while isolationist policies may have helped us in the past, those policies have not worked since WWI and the beginning of the idustrial revolution.
662540
A good question! I have seen other countries in the same situation and it would seem that the best practical way to render assistance is to start up a business and convert the profits to food for distribution. Failing this, start a charity and call for donations through the Internet on an international basis.There are plenty of big consortium's overseas who have surplus production from time to time.
133897
There are lots of factors and many different types of aid. Here is a link.
248443
There are a lot of factors, war, overpopulation, genocide, mismangement, corroption, I'll tell you a story but i'll change the name and the country, it's one example of what causes world hunger. I had a friend who worked with an agency who went to this country to hand disperse food, when they arrived they had to bribe the soldiers and then bribe the local govenment head,  they then had to turn over the food to these people to a "storage" area in which they couldn't get to it for a month when they finally paid another bribe they found that it wasn't they same amount of food that they put in, so they had to take what little food and water to feed 5,000 people,  This political told them that these were not his people and that they should starve.  This is one story of many that she/he told me. Some times these governments are so corrupt and unstable they rather feed thier soldiers and themselves to keep what little they have.
61578
Hi - you may have heard of the ONE campaign?  (go to www.one.org)  They have information & links to the following where you can find the figures you're looking for.\n\nTHE DEBT CRISIS\nwww.data.org\n\nFor decades, Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region of the world, was spending billions of dollars each year repaying debts to the world’s rich countries and international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. \n\nMany countries in Africa were spending more each year on debt than on health care and education combined. Why? Decades worth of loans had been given without much thought to how countries could pay them back. \n\nSome of the loans went to prop up bad governments or military regimes that are now long gone. Some of the loans were wasted by the governments that received them. Some were given by rich countries in ways that served their own self-interest. Skyrocketing interest rates and bad economic policies have multiplied these old debts over and over again. \n\nBetween 1970 and 2002 Africa received $540 billion in loans. Despite the fact that over that same period, African countries paid back $550 billion—$10 billion more than the original loans—at the end of 2002 they\nstill owed another $293 billion. Over the past few years, thanks to the efforts of those who contributed to the international Jubilee 2000 movement for debt relief, politicians have begun to respond to the debt crisis. \n\nIn 1999, the world’s richest countries came\ntogether to write off billions of dollars of poor countries’ debts through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program. The HIPC program provides debt relief to countries with good governments committed to fighting corruption and poverty and investing in the health and education of their people. \n\nThere are 38 countries currently enrolled in the HIPC initiative (32 of them in Africa) and so far 18 of them have completed the program have benefited from debt relief and have been able to channel that money into vertyreduction\nprograms; another 10 have begun the process and are receiving interim relief.\n\nThe problem is, though, that HIPC did not completely cancel countries’ debts and even after reaching their completion points, many countries were still spending too much money on debt, often taking on new loans to repay\nold loans. \n\nIn an effort to end this unending cycle of debt, the Finance Ministers of the world’s wealthiest countries agreed in June of 2005 to free the HIPC countries from 100% of their debts by canceling the debts owed to the\nWorld Bank, The IMF and the African Development Bank. \n\nIt also calls for a move from loans to grants for the poorest countries in the world in an effort to end to vicious cycle of debt in which they have been entrapped. It will\nimmediately cancel $40 billion of debt for the 18 countries that have already reached their completion point and will eventually result in $56 billion of debt cancellation once all 38 HIPC countries reach completion point. \n\nThe Finance Ministers also agreed to consider a debt deal for Nigeria even though it is not a HIPC country. Donors shortly thereafter announced a plan to use both donor resources and Nigeria’s own resources to cancel Nigeria’s outstanding debt; this is an important commitment because Nigeria has about $35b worth of debt and 95 million people living on less than $1 per day. \n\nThis debt deal is an important step in the fight against global poverty, but there are still other poor countries in need of debt cancellation so that they can better fight HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty.\n\nWhile debt cancellation alone will not generate all the resources needed by poor countries, the money freed up from\ndebt relief has consistently been put to good use; World Bank estimates show that poverty reducing expenditures will rise from previous levels of less than twice that of debt service to more than four tim
226502
Simple propaganda is my opinion along with jealousy.  WE are a generous nation and the world is so very Lucky that the USA has been the Superpower for so many years.  Sometimes I think the world wants us to stop evil but not to many other nations want to help so we look like were are med ling.  If we don't help, we're "ignoring the pain and suffering of others".  It's a catch 22 really.  I simply wish other countries would not just "back us" (a lot of our allies) but actually, physically HELP out!!
284176
There are a few good answers here, but in general many are not well-thought at all. Even Dan Rather had said it was inexcusable that the world media was focused on Bill Clinton's fling while 3 million people died in central Africa over a two year period alone. Africa's problems are immense, and perhaps that is the biggest problem: no one knows where to begin that will have any affect at all.\n\nTo be fair, President Bush has taken an initiative to begin helping those African nations that have taken steps to help themselves. This might seem harsh, sending aid to those that need it supposedly least, but in a way it is not. The countries that are in the worst shape are bad primarily because their leadership and their governing institutions are so rotten to the core that any money or aid sent to them will just be wasted or stolen or worse, and while that might make us feel less guilty it will not really help anyone (just like Live Aid, which gave most of the money raised to a genocidal and corrupt Communist government that was mass murdering its enemies under cover of a manufactured famine).\n\nIt is difficult to mobilize public support for Africa for a number of generally embarassing reasons. The continent has very few 'sexy' resources to trade so we Americans are not directly affected in our daily lives by turmoil (except for a few nations in central Africa, there is very little oil to make us pay more at the pump, we as a rule don't eat the food that they grow so we don't miss anything at the dinner table, we only buy diamonds at very rare occasions, all of the minerals are available from other sources, and for the last hundred years the migration from Africa has largely been to Europe so there is no indigenous ethnic lobby in the United States). The entire continent seems to be so mired in catastrophes of such monumental size that it looks absolutely hopeless, and even thinking of beginning any sort of radical help is completely daunting. Every time foreign armies have tried to intervene (France and England, Soviet Union and Cuba, USA in Somalia) the outcome is nothing but horror stories that would make Freddy Krueger throw up all over himself - prisoners hacked to pieces, infants have arms and legs cut off by rebels simply because they think it is fun, soldiers dragged through the streets to the cheers of little children, etc. Every time a major aid project begins, the material elements are immediately stolen and therefor nothing gets done.\n\nIf the United States is going to intervene, it will have to be with massive amounts of force and social reconstruction on every level, and it will look like colonialism. I can tell you that, from the way we are responding to the relatively benign American behavior in Iraq and the relatively weak opposition we are reacting to, WE DO NOT HAVE THE STOMACH FOR THIS!!!!!!!\n\nSometimes doing something poorly can be worse than doing nothing at all.
154249
Currently the US is borrowing from China and Japan.  Saudi Arabia has a fair share as well.  But I think most of the debt is privately held in bonds.\n\nIf you want to dig up a complete list, you might try to look at the federal reserve's website.\n\nhttp://www.federalreserve.gov/\n\nI cant guarantee you will find anything, but there is a very large amount of information there that most people choose to ignore.
258954
The American government isn't doing anything to help Africa at all. There are American Christian organizations that send aid to Africa like the Red Cross from the Catholics. The Bible belt doesn't give them anything they are just cheating the public, and lining there pocket's for themselves. TV Evangelists are scam artists, that money never gets to the poor people of Africa,(They are thieves). That is why the problem never gets any better.
180340
This object is not the cause - it's merely an attempt at justification.\nDifferent foreign wars have different real causes, but economics is usually present.  These days it's the over-powerful lobbies of Israel, the CIA and the US Military.
301360
Your right the ones who suffered most in the conflict was the third world.  South America and Africa were riddled with ineffective puppet governments put there by the US to keep the "radical" communists out.  However they tend not to teach that in High School history classes so you will find most Americans are oblivious to the effect that the Cold War had on the third world.  Good Luck trying to teach them.\n\nTo:adonrummd\n\nI don't just blame the US I also blame the a**hole "leaders" who would sell out their people for money.  If it was the USSR encouraging ineffective governments then yes I would blame them, but it wasn't.  With great power comes great responsibility.  If you mess up, you have to take responsibility.  America was looking out for its own best interest, I would agree with that.  To think that in doing that they did not have a big part in the underdevelopment of the third world, is naive.
504656
The United States and Britain!\nAnd here is the reason for it since the first World War!\n\nhttp://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/1330/default.aspx
273501
ask bill clinton...when he wasnt dittling around with monica, he made China the "Most favored nation"...title which was an honor in trade terms...it meant give them anything they want...we want their business....\n\nheres another ism for you mind...guess who was the most favored visitor to the white house during the clinton years...over 131 visits....\n\nanswer.....Yasser Arafat...\n\nwho we have also given about 4 million dollars a year for  25 years...\n\nthe founder of the Hamas palistianians...that money didnt do us a lot of good....we financed his operation...\n\npolitics makes strange bed fellows.....Mark Twain...1863
591150
Your question makes no sense what so ever. We don't help underpriviledged nations? Wasnt it the US who donated approximately 7.3 billion dollars to asia after the tsunami hit in 04. this includes money, food, goods and serices. wasnt it the US who donated over 500 million to pakistan after the earthquake last year? this seems like alot of money to me I mean hell I dont see myself ever getting to see the kind of money that we donated to these two natural disasters but I guee Bill Gates might. as it stands the united states is one of the first countries people turn to in time of need. So i relly am not sure where you are getting your facts from.