Monday, April 29, 2013

logic, bribes, and threats

So the CIA has been bringing bags of cash to Afghan President Karzai since 2001. Was it worth it?

That depends, of curse, on the total cost -- so far -- and the opportunity cost of other expenditures.

It's easy to deplore this, as Spencer Ackerman does.

On the other hand, I remember hearing the preeminent realist scholar on international affairs, Hans Morgenthau, say that statesmen have only three tools to promote national interests -- logic, bribes, and threats. 

Isn't our whole foreign aid program, however beneficial in intent and results, just another bribe?

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