Economic security

Aid and geopolitics

The US Congress has recently put a spanner in the sale of F16s to Pakistan on concessional rates. Aid and geopolitics has apparently again started interacting to the detriment of the future Pakistan-US relations at a crucial juncture of Afghan peace parleys.

Geopolitics has been influencing the humanitarian and development aid disbursement strategies ever since the end of the World War II and the establishment of global institutions, like the UN and the two Bretton Woods sisters, ie the IMF and the World Bank. Humanitarian aid and development was initially projected as a noblesse oblige reconstruction endeavour, during the state-building and stabilisation stage of post-war Europe and Africa, and later during the cold war as a conflictual concomitant of the neo-colonial struggle for global domination.