All About Aid.

Well, probably more than you wanted to know, anyway.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you will have heard about the controversy surrounding the overseas aid and development agency of the US government, called, without risk of originality, USAID. And you may have noticed the furious fisticuffs involved, and wondered why there are such violently different opinions, when hardly anyone seems very sure of even the most basic facts.

I can’t pretend to have read everything that’s been written on the subject, but what I have read often seems startlingly ignorant about not just aid programmes, but the very basis of the way governments relate to, and interact with each other, and seek to influence each other and public opinion. So I decided it might be worth writing something about all that. I should say right away that I have no first-hand knowledge of the operations of USAID on the ground, but on the one hand that’s not my subject, and on the other hand hardly any of those whose subject it is, seem to have any relevant knowledge either. So let’s go right back to the beginning, or if you like to stage minus one, and take it from there.

Governments pursue national interests. Surprisingly, when I say that, people start to shuffle their feet and look embarrassed. There seem to be two reasons for that reaction, both based on misunderstandings. First, there’s a widespread, half-articulated feeling that nice, decent Liberal states should not pursue national interests, because it’s somehow wrong and indecent to do so. The reasonable question, Whose interests should they then pursue? is usually answered with hand-waving about human rights and international law and so forth, which is not an answer, since these things are not necessarily in conflict, as I’ll explain in a moment. Moreover, in a democracy, no government that I’m aware of has ever been elected to pursue the interests of another state. We would think it strange if Mr Putin were to announce that his policy was to pursue the national interests of China, and no doubt his electorate would, too.

In fact, it would be truer to say that the embarrassment comes from talking about the pursuit of national interest. In turn, this is because of the dominance of a particularly adolescent form of theorising about international relations, based on so-called “realist” or “neorealist” concepts of the world as an arena where states continually compete to maximise their power and influence. This implies a zero-sum game, in which all national interests are in competition with each other, and furthering your own national interest implies doing harm to some other nation’s. Thus, the understandable embarrassment.

Obviously, the world doesn’t really work like this. As I’ve pointed out many times, the international system works far more by cooperation than by confrontation: indeed, if it had to work through confrontation alone it probably wouldn’t work at all. Of course, the national interests of different nations are sometimes opposed to each other, and this is what gets the publicity. But if this were the rule, there would be no international system at all. Bear in mind also that, as I’ve also often said, different national interests may be complementary, with each side getting very different things. A small nation in an unstable region agrees to host a foreign military base: the foreign power gets a presence, the small nation gets status in the region and more security with respect to its neighbours. Both countries advance what they see as their national interests, but in entirely different ways. Indeed there are certain international collective goods, such as stability, freedom of navigation, sanctity of diplomatic premises and many others, which make sufficiently good sense that most countries see them as in their national interest nearly all the time, even if no two countries necessarily view them in exactly the same way.

Let’s take simple example of how this works from high politics, before we get into others more nearly related to the main subject of this essay. Lebanon has been kept together since 1990 by a tacit set of agreements between influential regional and international powers, according to what they see as their national interests. For fifteen years, the Syrians occupied much of the country after the Civil War, and even when ejected in 2005 remained influential in what they regarded as a strategic area until their own civil war began in 2011. Israel coveted part of Lebanon, but realised that a collapsed state would only increase the power of Hezbollah. Iran wanted a weak state, but it also wanted it to continue to exist, so that its proxy Hezbollah could play an important role. Powers interested in regional security (Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and international players (the US and France) got together as the Group of Five to pressure the Lebanese political system into finally electing a President and unblocking the logjam. Their motives for doing so were probably at least somewhat different in every case, but what mattered was the convergence and overlap of what they saw as their national interests. The battering taken by Hezbollah last year and the fall of the Assad regime greatly enfeebled Iran, and the regime decided that its national interests were best served by not provoking further conflict. So Lebanon now has a President, a Prime Minister and a Government as a result of very different but ultimately converging perceptions of national interest.

Of course, there is an entirely justified wariness about the term being tossed around too freely, as if it were a universal solvent, and as if it was only necessary to invoke “national interest” to justify even the most hare-brained scheme. And indeed this has often happened. To continue with the example of Syria, western states believed that Syria would follow the example of Tunisia and Egypt, and that Assad would fall quickly. Thus, there was a natural rush to position themselves alongside the putative new rulers of the country, by providing them with arms and training. Had this judgement been correct, the “national interest” argument might have been sustainable, but in fact as the civil war went on, the armed opposition became unduly dominated by Islamist groups. Yet because the West was by that stage totally committed to getting rid of Assad, it pre-emptively excused and embraced all opposition groups and, as I know from personal contacts, didn’t enquire too closely into the antecedents of those it armed and trained. It’s not impossible that some of those who carried out the murderous terrorist attacks in Europe in 2015-16 were western-trained, which counts as a disastrous own-goal under the rubric of “national interest” if ever there was one. So yes, national interest is something that has to be demonstrated, not just asserted.

The second reason why the term attracts controversy is because it is what academics like to call a “contested concept,” which is to say that there are lots of arguments about what it means, and how to define it. It is quite reasonable to ask who gets to define “national interest,” and whether a nation does in fact have a single “interest,” and whether for that matter interests within a nation can be in conflict with each other. But that doesn’t invalidate the concept, any more than it invalidates freedom, or democracy or human rights, because they are equally“contested” concepts, if not more so. Indeed, if we were to stop discussing “contested concepts,” half the university departments in the western world would have to close down. And after much debate, nobody has been able to find a better formula than to say that the national interest is what the legitimate government of the day says it is: after all, you can hardly decide the national interest through opinion polls or referenda.

I therefore take it that governments pursue what they see as the national interest, sometimes well, sometimes badly, and that this pursuit is not necessarily inimical to other nations, nor is it necessarily at variance with international public goods, such as stability or international law. Indeed, few governments would want to live in an unsettled and therefore dangerous world when they could live in a more settled one. Those who find this conclusion awkward can go and form a group in the corner and talk among themselves.

The next step is the recognition that to promote their national interest, governments wish to influence other governments and nations. Again, there is nothing new about this: it’s been going on since there were governments, and it takes place in an almost infinite number of ways. And again, whilst this often makes people uncomfortable, there’s no reason why it should. It would be hard for a government to justify letting other states determine the outcome of commercial negotiations without making an effort, or not bothering to try to persuade other governments to cooperate on resolving a common problem like maritime pollution or human trafficking. There are also cases where the national interest means pushing for a solution that you think is superior in an international debate. In some cases, this may involve actual pressure, as in persuading countries to abandon excessive banking secrecy. Finally (from a very long list) governments want to increase their influence in the world or in the region generally, and this can involve offering to host international organisations (Brussels and The Hague consist of little else), or trying to secure senior posts in such organisations.

That’s all I’m going to say about direct influence on governments and international organisations, because I think that the principle, at least, is relatively well understood. But what about having influence with a nation and society as a whole, in pursuit of your national interest as you define it? This, I think, is where a lot of the current confusion and acrimony comes from. Again, it’s useful to take a stroll back to first principles.

To begin with, most nations want to improve their status with current or future foreign elites. (This has been going on at least since Roman times.) Empires and major powers historically sought to educate foreign elites at schools and universities, in royal households, at military colleges or government training establishments and in many other ways. Today this is almost universal: indeed, Staff Colleges are a good modern example. In most of the major military powers, and many regional ones, anything up to fifty per cent of the student body will be from overseas. Partly, this is about building international contacts, projecting a positive image of the host military and the state, and even modestly building stability by, for example, having students from countries that regard each other as enemies on the same course. But the most typical motive is influence for the future. Given that most nations won’t send complete idiots to your College, then if every year or every other year you have a student from country X, there’s a fair chance that in due course one of those students will rise to a high position in their military, and you will gain influence as a result. Thus, General Meiring, the last Commander of the apartheid era Defence Force, had been trained in Paris, and this gave the French considerable influence in the last days of the old South Africa, although it subsequently rebounded to their disadvantage.

In turn, nations often want to send people to these courses, and there can be considerable international competition for places on the most prestigious ones: the Royal College of Defence Studies in London is one such. But sometimes also there is a more general demand. Just as the French trained the apartheid-era South African military, so the African National Congress approached the British government in he late 1980s through intermediaries, seeking training and experience in the UK for some of their top people who would one day go into government there. When this became known, there was criticism that the UK was “training terrorists:” an occupational hazard in such cases. In fact, the UK played a discreet but valuable role not only in preparing the ANC for government, but in the merger of the various armed forces that followed the 1994 election. In a sense, this could be criticised as “seeking influence,” and there’s no doubt that in practice the ANC were influenced by UK practices and concepts. But this shows perhaps just how complicated the “influence” argument is. The ANC deliberately sought out British advice, and the British sought to influence them in a way they thought would best serve the stability of the country. (It should be added perhaps that a whole range of other countries turned up in South Africa after 1994, offering money and advice, not all of which was wanted or appreciated.)

But attempts to influence go well beyond just governments and future elites, and here most countries have networks of organisations, mostly state-funded, that promote that country’s language and culture, and encourage reciprocal cultural visits. What is known as “cultural diplomacy”may be coordinated by an Embassy, but much of the delivery is in the hands of semi-independent agencies like the British Council, the Alliance Française, the Goethe Institutes and the Confucius Centres. (The Americans have Disneyland.) Cultural visits, exhibitions, university exchanges and artistic events are all part of improving the image of the country abroad. (Michel Foucault, no less, was a cultural diplomat in Poland and Sweden in the 1950s.) And if you live in a capital city, you will have seen Cultural Centres from all sorts of countries, with their displays of arts and crafts, food and customs. Sometimes the promotion is indirect. For example, the 2025 Formula 1 Grand Prix Calendar includes no less than four races in the Gulf region, which has not historically been a centre for motor racing. And Paris St Germain, the most famous football team in France, is 85% owned by what is effectively the government of Qatar.

Likewise, the time when, say, every hotel lounge in Asia showed only CNN, is long gone.These days, all major nations have their own TV channels, often broadcasting in English, and this has been the source of a lot of anguish, usually over silly accusations like “propaganda.” Here, though, it’s important to make some simple distinctions. All governments issue official statements, and many have official TV and radio channels, (these days Internet as well) for diffusing them. These do not pretend to be anything more than they are, and few non-nationals, even those who listened religiously to Radio Moscow during the Cold War, would have believed everything. But many countries also have semi-official, government funded news and current affairs stations, usually broadcasting in English, even if in parallel to a native-language service (NHK World is a good example.) It’s common to see these channels as the servants of their governments, but the truth is usually more complicated. They are run as the original state-owned broadcasting services were run, by members of the establishment of the country concerned, who share much the same views about the world as the politicians and other public figures they cover. There was a time when journalists came from a wider variety of backgrounds (though not necessarily opinions) but these days they are as prefabricated as the political leadership and the rest of the Professional and Managerial Caste (PMC.) It’s therefore not necessary for the German government to give DW its instructions about how to cover the war in Ukraine: they live in the same bubble as everybody else. Indeed, my experience is that the media are often more screamingly gung-ho and aggressive than the politicians, who are often slightly less out of touch with reality.

So the output of such stations and internet spin-offs will tend to reflect the PMC consensus in the country concerned. It could not be otherwise. Independent journalists and media figures have largely disappeared these days, and the field is now mostly split between rival camps: PMC clones on side, and “campaigning journalists” who hate their own country sufficiently to believe anything bad about it, on the other. The old skills of weighing and judging facts and trying to produce objective analysis are rapidly decaying and may soon disappear completely. This isn’t helped by the increasing belief over the last generation or so that, because perfect objectivity is impossible, there is no point in trying to be objective anyway. But of course the answer to distorted reporting is not equally distorted reporting.

Yet there are real doubts about how genuinely effective all this is. It’s obviously true that insofar as the PMC media gives a single account of one episode—Ukraine is the obvious current example—then that account will dominate, and tend to determine peoples’ understanding. Even so the practical effects are limited, and Ukraine is not a major preoccupation for ordinary people. Indeed, people will naturally believe their own experience more than what they see in the media: in most European countries, people know that life is getting harder, prices are rising and jobs are harder to find, even if the media say differently: so much the worse for the media.

Attempts to influence public opinion in other countries are seldom any more effective. We tend to forget that most populations have a healthy distrust of what the media say anyway, and that people are not totally stupid. Propaganda campaigns waged in the media seldom have much lasting effect, and much effort trying to influence foreign media is simply wasted. The subject of relations between journalists and government is very complex and would take too long to go into here, but journalists are generally not simple stenographers nor, in most countries, do they faithfully take orders from governments. (In one-party states that’s the point, of course, but we’re not talking about that here.) The issue of financing foreign media, and training foreign journalists is one we’ll come back to in a moment: but it’s also worth pointing out that governments have always been massive consumers of media and, with many publications now disappearing behind paywalls, they often pay substantial sums of money for access. (It would be possible, although a little perverse, to claim that the Financial Times was being subsidised by the Chinese government.)

All this is separate from such concepts as “psy-ops” and “influence-ops,” which are terms (like “intelligence asset,”) that people throw around to try to convince others that they have knowledge and experience in the area, and so know what they are talking about. (Usually, they don’t.) In reality, this kind of thing happens relatively rarely. Domestically, governments may play on the egos and professional ambitions of journalists to get them to write supportive stories. This has happened basically everywhere for as long as there have been journalists. There are also cases of foreign journalists being suborned in this way, but relatively rarely. In the Cold War, a number of Communist Party members were also journalists, and they wrote what Moscow wanted. But since everybody knew this, their work had little practical effect. On the whole, with the end of overt ideological struggles, this kind of thing is much less common.

The above has little to do with intelligence agencies as such, but there are certain cases where governments do plant stories for political effect in the media, and attribute them to “intelligence sources.” But the public is seldom the target. A typical, if imaginary, example would be a story on the western media that, according to “intelligence sources” the Russians were constructing a new naval base in Libya, along with various details. The purpose of this would be to pass a message to the Russians that the West was aware of what they were doing, and to leave them uncertain about how much else the West had discovered, which they were not revealing. By definition, of course, such operations are very rare.

That is a highly simplified and schematised presentation of how governments seek to influence each other, national elites and sometimes even populations, and it’s essential to an understanding of the recent kerfuffle over USAID and its wider context. But we next need to look at the whole issue of development aid and how it has been conceptualised and implemented since the1960s, as well as its somewhat earlier origins.

As long as cultures have existed in proximity, they have influenced each other. Alexander’s Macedon had a very heavy Persian influence, just as many Roman intellectuals and statesmen had Greek tutors and wrote in Greek. Most Empires introduced their own administrative and taxation systems. To some extent, there were also attempts to spread philosophies and ethical systems, but before Christianity and later Islam this was generally superficial The Spanish and Portuguese explorers opened the way for the spread of Catholicism from Brazil to Japan, but it was not until the late nineteenth century, with the massive expansion of the British and French Empires that serious attempts at ideological and structural changes were made. The British had a very Victorian, Nonconformist sense of duty and obligation to help others. The French had the universally valid ideas and principles of the Revolution to spread, just at the point where the long and bitter domestic struggle against the forces of reaction had been won with the founding of the Third Republic.

So as missionary societies (the NGOs of their day) brought enlightenment and religion, as well as education and literacy, a new series of colonial administrators brought what we would now understand as “good governance,” written laws and the beginnings of modern political and economic systems. Moreover, the moral norms the colonialists brought with them were not negotiable: slavery was abolished everywhere in Africa, and no excuses. Reading accounts of the Sudanese Civil Service a hundred years ago suggests that they faced much the same problems as modern international officials do, except that they were much more competent and knowledgeable, and often spent a good part of their lives working in the countries they administered.

So in the rush of de-colonialisation, it was not surprising that the new generation of (especially) African leaders, educated abroad or in missionary schools and universities, turned to western models of development, just as they did to western models of the nation-state, and with equally ambiguous results. The concept of economic development dates effectively from that era, when economists like the American Rostow believed that they had found universal laws to explain how societies developed, both economically and socially, and that it was possible to situate societies on a continuum depending on what stage they were at. This thinking—which greatly influenced President Kennedy—was partly intended to define a system of development in opposition to the Marxist model which was vey influential among Third World nations.

So why not give a hand? Whilst the progression of development theory was complicated and sometimes contradictory, the political impetus behind it was clear enough. Former colonies should be helped and encouraged to develop western-style economic systems, turning them in a generation or two into industrialised states, trading partners and export markets for the West, all the time showing the inferiority of the Soviet state-directed model.

As economic and intellectual fashions changed in the West (import substitution, export-led growth, central planning and others) the prescription correspondingly changed. Many governments established special departments designed to help and advise with this process, both through improvements in health and education (following the example of the colonial era) and now also seeking to train and equip the new generation of leaders and their advisers with the necessary skills. The motivations for doing this were various, and usually mixed up with each other. Partly, they were ideological: to provide an alternative to the Marxist development model popular in many parts of the world. Partly, there was a residual sense of responsibility for ex-colonial powers, partly the sixties belief in effective and benevolent government, partly a belief that they were assisting in a historically inevitable process, partly an investment in markets and trading partners of the future, partly concern about the political and strategic consequences of failed development …and many other things. Above all, perhaps, it was believed that there was a model of development—most recently exemplified by the stunning reconstruction of Europe after World War 2—that was valid everywhere. And there was a clear and understandable demand for assistance from ex-colonies themselves: those who tried to be “independent” from the West largely generally found themselves following the advice of the Soviet Union. (It is legitimate to add, by the way, that development theory has never really been able to take account of genuinely successful experiences in such countries as Japan, Singapore and South Korea.)

Nonetheless, at least through the end of the seventies, it did seem as if this was working. Former colonies established governments, diversified their economies and began to industrialise and their societies became what we would describe as more “modern.” The process of modernisation had begun under colonialism (especially in the Arab world) with the introduction of more liberal and secular ideas: indeed, the Iraqi Communist Party, the dominant Leftist political force in Iraq, was extremely influential under British rule, especially among the urban middle classes. And with power in the hands of secular, modernising post-independence governments in countries such as Egypt and Algeria, it looked as though this trend would continue.

A number of things then changed radically. Development theory had assumed a stable and regulated world economy. Deregulation of raw material prices and floating exchange rates from the 1980s played havoc with the economic assumptions, and plunged many former colonies into debt and poverty. Military and authoritarian regimes proliferated, and a backlash against western-inspired social and political modernisation began, most spectacularly of course in Iran. Even while these developments were being absorbed, the Cold War ended, leaving western powers feeling a little lost, in a world which changed out of all recognition in a couple of years. It wasn’t just the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, nor just the immediate effects on Europe, but also many wider issues that had to be taken into account.

Western attitudes were a strange mixture of shock and arrogance. Shock because of the speed of events, arrogance from the sense of having “won” and thus being tempted to run riot all over the world with an apparent winning formula. Not that there were’t things to do: the newly independent states of Eastern Europe had in many cases no tradition of parliamentary democracy or multiparty government at all. The new governments turned naturally enough to the West for help, often with the development and training of entirely new functions, such as parliamentary researchers and independent journalists. (I had some little involvement in these things myself.) Likewise, pressure was put on African states to rapidly adopt multiparty systems (not always wisely, frankly) and to somehow develop the new and complex skills that went with them.

A new vista opened up, therefore, of influence over countries around the world, often in the most sensitive parts of government and society. The West rushed in, without opposition, and at least at the beginning there was a felt need on the part of many countries for genuine help, even if what was provided was not always wanted. So most western governments now have Development Ministries, and they are often politically powerful and well-funded. In many countries, they are more influential abroad than the Foreign Ministry, as well as enjoying parliamentary and media support at home, because they are seen to be Doing Good. (Recall the Calvinist heritage of many of the principal donor nations.)They also enable small but wealthy countries—Sweden, Canada, Switzerland—to have an influence on the policies of other countries out of all proportion to their own size and importance. The period after the millennium saw some of these organisations conducting an effective alternative foreign policy—DFID in the UK was a particularly egregious example—sometimes at cross-purposes with other parts of government.

During this period, the development agencies abandoned, or at least de-emphasised the traditional “missionary” functions, or health, agriculture and education, and embraced the “colonial administrator” functions of government reform, spurred on by a highly normative Liberal agenda that their staffs had absorbed at university and from the PMC media. Thus, under-development, corruption, poverty, crime, insecurity were all seen less as practical problems than ideological and moral ones. The answer to corruption was lectures on honesty, the answer to conflict was promotion of dialogue and mutual understanding. Whitey had the answers, as a century before, except that this time Whitey was much worse informed about the issues. And weak and often poor governments would not say no to a rich donor’s belief that crime could be reduced if the police contained more “diverse” members, from different groups and sexual orientations. In effect, the impulsions and objectives of the development ministries, based on PMC Liberal norms, exist independently of and prior to the actual problems of the world: the trick is to find a plausible sounding context in which to apply them. Moreover, the programmes themselves have to be politically safe, attractive to the PMC media, and thus avoid engaging with real problems where things might go wrong.

Just as in the days of the colonial administrators, the money is held and the programmes managed, by people far away. When Rory Stewart was the UK’s Development Minister he was astonished to discover that his senior officials never visited the countries they were responsible for, and that most of their time was spent in a Kafkaesque world of complex plans and timetables, logical frameworks and lists of deliverables. (From my own experience with various governments, this seems to be typical.) Stewart tells the story of a £50,000 project he approved which consumed £48,000 of its budget in administrative costs, consultancy fees, auditing and other purely ceremonial functions.

How is this possible? Well, for a start development ministries tend to be small, and to have few experts on the countries they work in. They therefore work almost exclusively through consultancies, NGOs and local organisations, who in theory have this experience. This is nothing to do with “deniability” or “cut-outs” or whatever: it’s just the way things have to be. It produces something like the following: an imaginary but realistic example.

A small but wealthy donor has a programme in a small, poor, African country where crime is a big problem. The police are paid rarely if at all, and won’t investigate crimes unless you give them money. They have no radios, few vehicles, and no technical expertise. They respond to public anger about crime levels by arresting habitual criminals and beating confessions out of them. But as the jails are overcrowded, the alleged perpetrators are often freed. A development ministry wants to intervene, but most of this agenda is too sensitive to touch. So they engage a consultant to look at priorities, and the report identifies projects which the writers know the department will fund. Three “work-streams” are identified: anti-corruption training, human rights training, and greater representation of women in the police. The project is launched over two years with a budget of 1M€.

The first step is to award a contact to a large consultancy to manage the project. That consultancy won’t have detailed expertise either, so they will need to bring in subject experts on contract to do the managing. They will in turn identify a national or international NGO to actually do the delivery, which will need to recruit staff, and in turn an NGO in the country or the region which can do the organisation, though it will need to recruit staff too. Because the management, legal, payment, reporting and auditing requirements of such projects are often very laborious and complex, experts in all these areas will be needed. Several meetings are held to define the “deliverables,” which might be, for example, conferences on best anti-corruption practices, visits to the donor country to see women police officers at work, visits by human rights experts to train local policemen, and an Internet-based publicity campaign to persuade policemen to be more honest and less brutal. After two years, when most of the money has gone on consultants, short-term contracts, oversight, administration, report-writing, air fares, hotel costs and high-profile conferences, the project is judged a success, as the”key performance indicators” have all been met within the budget. True, nothing has been done about crime, but then you can’t have everything.

There are a couple of inescapable consequences of operating this way. One, given that Liberal normative values are compulsory at all stages, is that the programmes may well be at odds with the norms of the society itself, and with policies that the government has been elected to implement. Nonetheless (and this is a common complaint) donor-funded NGOs may in the end be more powerful than elected governments, as well as attracting good people away from them. Second, such programmes encourage the appearance of something resembling a colonial elite, who “think like us” who “understand the need for change” and who are in turn rewarded with patronage, university places for their children and often jobs in government under donor pressure. As far as donors are concerned, this is entirely defensible, because they are thus assisting in the modernisation and development of the country, and combating obscurantist reactionary forces.

Of course, it’s wrong to see governments and populations just as passive victims of selfish donor objectives. There are plenty of highly-capable and quite ruthless entrepreneurs in such countries, who know how to give Whitey what he wants, whilst carving out a decent career for themselves. And the fact remains that there are actually jobs to be done. The provision of justice, security and well-run government services are the most basic demands of people in developing countries, and they don’t create themselves. Foreign expertise is always useful, and can be essential and, though I’ve been critical of the assumptions behind a lot of it, I can testify to its effectiveness of only the ideological baggage can somehow be thrown overboard..

Finally, going back to the start of the discussion, these projects are naturally undertaken in the national interest, and have to be part of wider policies towards particular countries. It would be astonishing if this were not so: a country which is a priority interest for development aid is likely to be a foreign policy priority anyway. The extent to which these sorts of development projects actually bring much stability to countries is questionable—and I am among the doubters—though they probably do little actual harm, and may at least require western countries to take an intelligent interest in problems overseas. Such programmes, like any others, can be misused, though much recent coverage has been ignorant and misguided. For example, embedding intelligence officers in development agencies is a dubious idea, though for all I know it might happen. But intelligence officers working under official cover—in spite of what Hollywood wants you to believe—generally spend their time cultivating and servicing sources providing them with human intelligence. For this they need a plausible cover to meet the kind of person who might become a source, which is why traditionally they work in the political section of the Embassy. Working as a development officer, with lots of local staff (themselves probably reporting to the local intelligence agency) obliged to disappear for periods of time without saying where you are going, dealing mostly with NGOs and local politicians, and often and inexplicably not available or “at the Embassy”: well, not the best of covers. But then neither I nor 99,9% of the people who write about such things really know.

In the end, development aid is part of a country’s foreign policy, and obeys the same rules and has the same priorities. It’s not charity, though it is often done out of a sense of duty and a desire to do good. Whether it really does that, though, as I have suggested, is very much an open question.