The Politics of Foreign Aid

The politics of foreign aid just to put a really broad term on it are difficult under the best of circumstances but you know I think what you've seen in some of the packages that have been negotiated for example with Indonesia they do involve aspects of technology transfer but it's coerced right. The US is making concessions to the extent that they are because they are seeking the geopolitical alignment of a certain well positioned or strategically positioned states and we're likely to see as we saw in the Cold War some of them even in the 1930s right. We should all be fearful of the dynamic whereby there's a competitive sort of tip for tat aspect of that which is which is all about buying sheo strategic alignment