Should We Give Money To American Countries

The U.S. is the world’s largest donor in financial aid, while people in our country need support as well. Some of the countries that receive the most aid consider us their enemy. The most money we give is to countries in the middle east because we are trying to make them our friend, not enemy. As we are in debt and people in our country need help, we still decide to give money to countries that consider us their enemy.

We are trying to get a better relationship with the countries we give the most money to. “Washington doles out aid primarily based on calculations about how to advance U.S. strategic interests rather than assessments of pure need, which is why Afghanistan, Israel, and Pakistan top the list of aid recipients rather than Burundi,
Congo, and Mali” (Lindsay). Countries that still consider us their enemy that receive the most money do not know how much we are giving them. Some of the countries that still don’t like us may not understand how much they are actually receiving. “One of the findings was that in all three countries people vastly underestimated how much aid the U.S. government gave their countries and did not know what it was spent on” (Lindsay). It has been proven the countries that still don’t like us after all the money they receive. “The publics in three countries (Israel, Kenya, and Nigeria) like us; the publics in two countries (Afghanistan and Mexico) are ambivalent; the publics in three countries (Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan) are hostile; and we don’t have reliable data on the publics in two countries (Haiti and Iraq)” (Lindsay).

With us being the world’s largest donor, we give more money to some countries than others.
We give the most money to Muslim countries, yet they still don’t like us. “Out of the top six U.S. foreign aid recipients, five of them were Muslim countries. And yet it seems the U.S. can’t buy good press in the Middle East” (Forbes). It seems like we’ll never have a good relationship with the Middle-East. “The UN boasts 193 members, and the U.S. provided economic assistance to 184 of them, or 96% of the countries in the world” (Forbes). You would think that with us giving money to almost every country in the world, that everybody should like us, but that isn’t the
case.

The single country that receives the most money with $440 million.
“These countries receive a ton of “foreign assistance,” or direct cash grants from various U.S. government-backed programs like USAID. In most cases, they receive much more than their pro-U.S. counterparts” (Walsh). This article states, yet again, how we give more money to countries that don’t like us. “The countries with the highest percentage of citizens who consider the U.S. an “enemy” include several NATO partners like Turkey and Greece, as well as major non-NATO strategic allies like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and Argentina” (Walsh). This seems like it is reversed as to how it should be, how the citizens don’t like us, but we’re allied with them. “And, in the world of foreign relations anyway, if you’re trying to turn your enemies into friends, it’s standard practice to throw money at them” (Walsh). This is exactly what the U.S. is doing to try to become allies or neutral with these
countries.

There will always be countries that don’t like us, but as we are the largest donor in the world, you would think most would like us. Mainly the middle-eastern countries are the ones that don’t like us, but we still decide to give them money. We give them more money than any other allied country to try to become friends with them. We should not be giving money to any country, especially that we are in major debt as well.