“Foreign aid has a great future—behind it,” observed a United States congressman in the late 1960s. The words were prophetic. Since then the aid program has encountered growing opposition; it has steadily dwindled in size, especially in real terms; and worst of all, it has become more than ever an odd amalgam of contradictory objectives. Meanwhile, what had been its sole purpose—to help build the nascent economies of the poor nations on sound foundations—has receded into the background. Today that purpose is almost foreign to foreign aid.

This, at least in hindsight, is not too surprising. Foreign aid was born of mixed parents, a hybrid; and as time went by it was further hybridized as it was impregnated by ever more extraneous elements.