Aid and Development Archive

President Donald Trump views foreign policy through the narrow lens of economic self-interest. He has reduced the notion of American power and influence to a question of whether the United States is getting a “good deal,” measured only in terms of who is paying for what—say, the cost of basing U.S. troops. Gone are any references to the intangible benefits of international cooperation, let alone the common good. It’s how he has approached relations with NATO and with America’s allies in Asia. In recent days, this economic-centric view of U.S. foreign policy has been on display in Trump’s clumsy and […]

GULU and KAMPALA, Uganda—Earlier this month, a family with a five-year-old boy left the Democratic Republic of the Congo and entered Uganda. They skirted the official crossing point, using an unmarked footpath. The family had attended the burial of a relative in Congo, who had died of Ebola. Since the Ebola epidemic in Congo began in August 2018, more than 1,500 people have perished, making it the largest Ebola outbreak ever in Congo and the second-largest on record. The virus has been notoriously difficult to treat and contain, due to Congo’s instability and its porous borders. Unrest in Congo has […]

This weekend, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomes world leaders to Osaka for the annual summit of the Group of 20. This club of major economies has been at the forefront of global governance since November 2008, when U.S. President George W. Bush convened an emergency committee to help rescue a world plummeting into the financial and economic abyss. The G-20’s ambit has since broadened to encompass an ever-expanding range of global issues. The Osaka summit continues that trend. Japan set an ambitious agenda for its presidency of the G-20, which rotates every year. Major themes include removing structural impediments […]

The ballots hadn’t even been counted yet when the deals were announced. On April 26, just two days after Election Day, Indonesia signed 23 memorandums of understanding with China, worth $14.2 billion in all, for several major infrastructure projects. They came after months of silence about Chinese investment in Indonesia—by design, as President Joko Widodo feared attempts by the opposition to paint him as being too pro-China. It worked, as, in the end, the issue of Chinese investment did not play the same divisive role in Indonesia that it did in elections in Malaysia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Instead, […]

President Donald Trump likes trade wars because he thinks they are “easy to win,” as he infamously put it, and because he thinks they will help improve the trade balance. Trump claims past American presidents have been weak, allowing other countries to take advantage of the United States in trade negotiations. As evidence, he points to the large American trade deficit. But any economist worth her salt will tell you that the deficit doesn’t reflect what Trump thinks it does. Instead, it simply reflects the propensity of Americans to spend more than they save and invest. Trump is wrong about […]

North Korea has never been an easy country to understand from the outside. But the recent cycle of seemingly contradictory developments in one the world’s most isolated countries appears especially bewildering. Last month, there were reports of a major leadership shakeup in Pyongyang, followed by a startling report in South Korean media that several key North Korean officials who had been in charge of negotiations with the United States had been executed or purged. Within a week, however, several of these officials resurfaced. These stories are a reminder that all too often, the immediate coverage about the North Korean state […]

After my first book came out in 2004, I received a surprise phone call from an assistant to former United States Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, asking if I would meet with him to talk about Africa. Sitting together in his executive’s office at Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan, he averred that if Al Gore were to win that year’s presidential election, he could return to a leading position in government, and he wanted to know if there was one initiative Washington could take to engage with Africa, what would I suggest? This was a tall order, not least because I had […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. PUCALLPA, Peru—Delfin Tutucima Rios’ journey as a healer began about two decades ago, when he himself fell ill. He was 30 years old at the time, working as a teacher in this city on the Ucayali River in eastern Peru, when he was afflicted by a malady that doctors could not diagnose. His liver swelled, and his arms and legs became bloated. Doctors later told him he had cancer. Eventually he was […]