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?