Foreign Policy interviews Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, and he’s none too pleased about charges that Pakistan ought to better account for the aid money we give them:
This all illustrates a general problem with aid as a tool of influence. If you see a country that just seems awesome and worth supporting, you can give them a bunch of money and there it is. But if you see a regime that’s not especially awesome, and think your aid money can rope them into a web of influence, you find that trying to actually use the aid to manipulate the other country prompts more than a little of the old nationalist backlash. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in some circumstances, but there are real limits to what can be achieved this way.