{"id":1957,"date":"2013-08-22T09:46:44","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T15:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1957"},"modified":"2013-08-22T09:46:44","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T15:46:44","slug":"the-biggest-recipients-of-military-aid-are-also-some-of-the-biggest-headaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/the-biggest-recipients-of-military-aid-are-also-some-of-the-biggest-headaches\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Recipients of Military Aid Are Also Some of the Biggest Headaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Joshua Keating, Slate
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

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Tempting as it might be to start this blog off on a #slatepitchy note by disagreeing with my new colleagues\u00a0Will Dobson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Fred Kaplan<\/a>\u00a0and my former colleague\u00a0Marc Lynch<\/a>\u00a0on the wisdom of continuing U.S. aid to Egypt, it seems safe to say now that whatever leverage this aid may have given Washington in the relationship has proved ineffective after Chuck Hagel\u2019s17 phone calls<\/a>\u00a0failed to prevent last week\u2019s carnage. (Les Gelb<\/a>\u00a0has you covered if you are interested in that take.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Beyond the situation in Egypt, this seems like a good moment to consider why we always seem so surprised when countries on the receiving end of large U.S. aid packages don\u2019t do exactly as Washington wishes. Coincidentally, Monday also brought news that Egypt\u2019s next-door neighbor Israel is\u00a0seeking to increase<\/a>\u00a0its current $30 billion aid pact with the United States in order to offset increased\u00a0U.S. arms sales to<\/a>\u00a0other countries in the Middle East. The new request comes amid Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s latest bid to restart Middle East peace talks. Israel apparently felt there was nothing amiss about asking for more aid a week after announcing new settlement construction on the West Bank, despite\u00a0Kerry\u2019s disapproval<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And the U.S.\u2013Israel relationship\u2014even despite recent bumps in the road\u2014is cordial compared to the other top recipients of U.S. military aid. Going down this\u00a0handy chart<\/a>\u00a0put together byPBS NewsHour<\/em>\u00a0last year, Afghanistan received $6.8 billion in military aid from Washington in 2010, the year its president publicly mused that he might\u00a0join the Taliban<\/a>. The U.S. and Iraqi governments have\u00a0differed sharply on Syria<\/a>\u2014particularly reports that Iranian arms are entering the country via Iraqi airspace, which Iraq denies\u2014despite more than $1 billion in annual U.S. aid and a\u00a0recent contract<\/a>\u00a0to provide the country with 18 F-16 fighter jets. Then there\u2019s Pakistan\u2014the fifth-largest recipient of American military largesse and arguably the Obama administration\u2019s biggest foreign policy headache. Even Edward Snowden\u2019s new home, Russia, was the recipient of almost $127 million in aid in 2010.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It could be that this is a sign of declining U.S. influence in the world or the result\u00a0of ineffective diplomacy<\/a>\u00a0on the part of the Obama administration. It could also be that U.S. military funding doesn\u2019t\u2014and isn\u2019t intended to\u2014act as an all-purpose policy veto. These governments aren\u2019t client states, and the canny ones know just how much they can irritate Washington without the aid spigot closing. The U.S. may, for instance,\u00a0criticize<\/a>\u00a0Bahrain\u2019s crackdowns on the opposition and the press, but the country\u2019s government knows full well its military assistance is secure as long as it continues to be located in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The only good news is that while the \u201cleverage\u201d provided by U.S. military assistance is often overstated, the same is likely true of other superpowers. Many in Washington have watchedwith increasing alarm<\/a>\u00a0in recent years as China has\u00a0increased military aid<\/a>\u00a0to countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. But Beijing will likely find its efforts to dictate policy in the countries as frustrating as Washington has.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Joshua Keating, Slate click here for original article Tempting as it might be to start this blog off on a #slatepitchy note by disagreeing with my new colleagues\u00a0Will Dobson\u00a0and\u00a0Fred Kaplan\u00a0and my former colleague\u00a0Marc Lynch\u00a0on the wisdom of continuing U.S. aid to Egypt, it seems safe to say now that whatever leverage this aid may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/130819_WORLD_GenSisi.jpg.CROP_.rectangle3-large.jpg?fit=248%2C346&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}