Peer Review of U.S. Foreign Assistance

The Development Assistance Committee of the OECD periodically schedules a peer review of the development assistance of each provided by each of its member countries. A peer review panel led by Canada and the United Kingdom reviewed U.S. Development Assistance in December 2007. Among its findings:

With a record high USD 27.6 billion of official development assistance in 2005, the United States ranked first among DAC members in terms of aid volume. This represented 0.22% of its Gross National Income, twice the percentage registered in 2002; the DAC average is 0.33%. More than a third of this amount went to Iraq reconstruction and debt relief. Reflecting this, the Department of Defense accounted for 21.7% of ODA in 2005.

Of course the average of the other OECD country foreign assistance contributions is larger than 0.33% of GNI. The Peer Review Committee recommended that the U.S. focus more of its development assistance on poverty reduction. Not surprising since so much of it is now focused on Iraq, Israel and Egypt -- for political rather than humanitarian reasons. Why, I wonder, does the military administer any U.S. foreign development assistance, and why is any U.S. military expenditure considered "development assistance"?