When analyzing massive amount of data, I have found on www.foreignassistance.gov an old joke came to my mind:
- Mrs. Johnes, do you have a family?
- Oh, yes, I have three wonderful sons and a husband.
- What do they do?
- Well, my older son is in Iraq, my second son is in Afghanistan and younger one – in Libya. And my husband travels the world giving lectures on how to stop Russian invasion into sovereign countries.
And one more: “Russia is interfering with internal affairs of the US all over the world”.
Of course, one may say, that this is foreign help and the US is simply helping other countries to develop, but we all know that nothing in this world is for free, especially if we look at the regions which received the most of the aid.
When analyzing the data, I have taken only that amounts, that were assigned to certain countries. Assignation that had only region name was excluded from charts.
I have also kept division by regions as it was in source data file. Funding amounts taken into account are current amounts and there is no division into what kind of expenses these are - civil or military.
As we can see from the Chart 2, most of the funding in years 2013-2023 were received by countries which, as if, have nothing to do with US security directly. East Asia and Oceania and Western Hemisphere received 10% in total, and these two regions have common border with the US. Most of the funds went to Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, even 9% assigned to Europe and Eurasia (mostly, former USSR countries) is significantly lower and has shown rapid growth only in 2022, due to events in the Ukraine:
Now, let us see the countries which received the most of funds, starting from year 1946:
First countries (from top-10) to receive US funding were Egypt, Ethiopia and Columbia, the assistance began immediately in 1946. In 1947 Iraq followed. Israel started receiving support from 1951, as well as Jordan and Pakistan. In year 1952 Nigeria started to receive aid and in 1954 - Kenya. Ukraine joined the club in 1990, that is quite surprising, as the USSR collapsed in 1991, as we all know and Ukraine became independent in 1991, not in 1990.
In general, US started aid program in 1946, first it was assigned to 55 countries, including former USSR:
Here I must add that according to www.foreignassistance.gov data, the USSR received assistance two more times in 1947 and 1990.
Afghanistan was constantly receiving the aid till year 1980, then assistance was paused and resumed in 1985. Even now the funds are still flowing to Afghanistan, but the amount has significantly reduced:
In general, if we look at the trend, expenses started growing in the beginning of 2000. Unfortunately, the description to data table doesn’t include details on inflation, that is why for further analysis I have taken last decade (2013-2023), to be more accurate. But here is final chart (for this post) on how the aid volume was increasing:
Chart 5 made me remember the words of my university professor. Before invasion of Iraq, which began in March 20, 2003, she asked if any of us thinks it will take place. Majority of my groupmates were sure, that there would be no invasion, as there were protests opposing this war. She smiled and said that this is only the beginning and there would be much more conflicts soon.
Twenty one year has passed. According to Forbes, analysts have reported record amount of conflicts in 30 years time - in 2023 One hundred eighty three (183) armed conflicts took place.
… to be continued