Editor's Note:

The US has always crowed over its "achievement" of being the world's largest foreign aid donor. However, US foreign aid has, in fact, usually been based on maximizing the country's own interests, disregarding the practical interests and long-term development of the recipient developing countries and regions.

The US has been wantonly interfering in other countries' internal affairs in the name of "foreign aid," which has been described as selfish, arrogant, and hypocritical, for its own gains. This has had serious and negative impacts on world peace and development. In the name of aid, the US acts arbitrarily in some recipient developing countries and regions, upholding the unipolar hegemony, disrupting the international development order, and undermining global prosperity and stability.

The Global Times is publishing a series of articles to expose the hypocritical nature and baneful influence of US foreign aid. This is the second installment, which reveals how the US grabs resources in other countries and regions in the name of aid; how the US stirs trouble around the world and pours oil onto ongoing conflicts to serve its own interests; and how the US secretly finances terrorism while boasting its efforts to crack down on it.

A worker handles 155 millimeter caliber shells post-manufacturing, preparing them for shipment at the packaging area of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 16, 2024. Many of the shells used by the Ukrainian army in the conflict with Russian forces are made in the plant. Photo: VCG

It is anticipated that the US will unveil a new military aid package for Ukraine valued at up to $150 million within this week, which would include munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and other critical munitions, the Voice of America (VOA) reported Monday, citing two US officials whose names were not given.

The move followed the US' announcement of a $1.5 billion aid package to Ukraine in the name of "humanitarian assistance" and helping the country to rebuild its energy infrastructure.

Under the guise of "supporting Ukraine to resist Russia's invasion and rebuild the war-torn country," the US has continually enhanced its aid to Ukraine, but this increased aid has neither brought peace, stability, and tangible benefits to the Ukrainian people, nor does the US really care about their interests.

Unfortunately, the truth is more likely to be that the US is just dispensing the so-called aid as a business that can be greatly beneficial. Handsome profits made by its military-industrial complex (MIC), the endorsement of its international reputation, and the extraction of rich resources from recipient countries are just a few of these examples.

Washington "cannot afford" to allow Russia to achieve victory in the Ukraine conflict as this would mean losing direct access to vast mineral assets, US Senator Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying during an interview with Face the Nation program on CBS News on June 9.

"They're sitting on $10 trillion to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don't want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of, that $10 trillion to $12 trillion of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China," Graham said.

What Graham said reveals the true calculations by the US on Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a routine press conference on June 13 in response to Graham's statement.

"Apparently, some in the US keep talking about rules and principles, but all they think about is just profit and business," Lin stressed.

All about business

Graham, 69, a retired US Air Force Colonel and lifelong hawk, now serves as a senior senator from South Carolina in the US Senate. He has long been a staunch opponent of Russia and one of the most steadfast supporters of Ukraine in the Senate.

He was one of the Republicans who switched their votes to support a $95 billion military aid package to Ukraine, Israel, and the island of Taiwan in April, helping to successfully send the legislation to US President Joe Biden after months of delays and debates.

For nearly one decade, Graham has viewed war as a financial activity based on the rule of moneymaking above all else.

Graham was reportedly one of those who, in October 2019, convinced former US president Donald Trump to keep US troops in Syria in order to "protect" the US' oil reserves. According to NBC News, Jack Keane and Graham displayed a map to Trump on October 8, 2019. They showed Trump that almost three-quarters of Syria's oil fields were in the parts of the country where US troops were deployed and told him that Iran was preparing to move toward the oil fields and could seize the airspace above them as soon as the US troops left the county.

The move successfully persuaded Trump to maintain 900 US soldiers in Syria in small bases such as the al Omar Oil field and al-Shaddadi, mostly in the oil-rich northeastern region of Syria.

Today, the 900 soldiers are still there and are reported to have been helping US oil companies steal oil from Syria.

The Syrian government has repeatedly accused the US forces of violating Syria's sovereignty and "pillaging Syrian resources," a move that further exacerbates the economic hardships of the war-torn country. However, the US has repeatedly stated that the presence of troops is necessary to ensure the "enduring defeat" of ISIS.

Farhat Jameel Abdullah, Syria's assistant minister of oil and mineral wealth, has raised an alarm over how the continued US occupation and oil theft by its allied militia, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), harm the Syrian economy.

"The presence of the American occupation and their support for separatist groups has led to the unjust extraction of oil from wells and reservoirs, which will negatively impact the future productivity of these resources and consequently deprive the country of this wealth," Abdullah was quoted as saying in a report by the Xinhua News Agency on June 2.

According to Xinhua, production from the east of the oil-rich Euphrates River has been about 350,000 barrels per day. Now, the region is under the control of the US and its supporting SDF militias, whose presence, along with other terrorist groups, has deprived the Syrian government of its resources and dealt a heavy blow to the national economy and employment.

In Afghanistan, the US used similar policies for lithium. Now it is repeating the same strategy in Ukraine.

The US has also enhanced military sales and support to the island of Taiwan this year. The US Department of Defense had reportedly established a senior integration group for Taiwan (SIG-T) to enhance efficiency and coordination in offering military support to the island, website of Defense News said in a report on May 30.

The US is only aimed at using Taiwan people's own money to continue to split the two sides on the Taiwan Straits so that it can maintain its hegemony while containing a powerful rival, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times.

A US military vehicle, part of a convoy arriving from northern Iraq, drives past an oil pump jack in the countryside of Syria’s northeastern city of Qamishli on October 26, 2019. Photo: VCG

 Largest troublemaker

The US is also known to have skillfully used aid instruments to tie developing countries firmly to its dominant financial system, transferring risks and responsibilities and exacerbating the "Matthew effect (winner-takes-all)."

A typical example is that, the US, though touting itself as the world's largest food aid donor, is actually an "initiator" of the global food crisis.

Three of the four major grain monopolies in the global grain market today are US enterprises (ADM, Bunge, Cargill). They allegedly not only manipulate international grain prices, repeatedly speculate on food security issues, and seek huge profits, but also create food dependency among developing countries under the manipulation of the US government and monopoly capital.

Mexico is one of the victims whose lifeblood of national food security has been manipulated in the hands of the US. A large traditional agricultural country itself, Mexico signed an agreement with the US Rockefeller Foundation in the 1960s to carry out cooperation between the two countries in promoting agricultural modernization.

However, with US companies monopolizing the Mexican market for agricultural products such as seeds under the cooperation, local agricultural production in Mexico became increasingly unsustainable, which led to a series of terrible results, including great ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, and the displacement of millions of farmers.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is said to have promoted free trade among the US, Canada, and Mexico, but it mainly serves the interests of local US industries. A large amount of cheap US corn products flooded into Mexico after the agreement was signed, which devastated the latter's small-scale and heirloom corn farming operations.

"In NAFTA negotiations, Mexico was strong-armed into giving up subsidies to its corn farmers, while American farmers continued to receive them," read an article published by a nonprofit news website in August 2018. "The surge of corn into the Mexican market caused prices to plummet and displaced millions of farm workers from the agrarian economy," it said.

The US may not aid a country with the intention of destroying its indigenous agriculture. However, much of its aid comes with "America First" conditions, such as making the markets of recipient countries more accessible to the US, with greater convenience and benefits for US grain producers, said Yu Xiang, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University.

"Clearly, these conditions favorable to US grain merchants will have a negative impact on the agricultural development of the recipient countries in the long run," Yu told the Global Times.

Feeding terrorism

It's no secret that US foreign aid has long been linked with the interests of arms dealers. The US not only makes war profits through humanitarian crises, but also indirectly encourages the growth of terrorism in some war-torn regions through its chaotic arms aid, which unfortunately brings more danger and turmoil to the suffering people there.

Ukraine has been a gold mine for the US and its major MICs since the Russia-Ukraine crisis broke out.

Since the conflict began, the US Congress has passed five bills that have provided Ukraine with ongoing aid, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills is "$175 billion," said an article published by US think tank Council on Foreign Relations in May. Also, US media revealed that 40 percent of US military aid to Ukraine is used for the mandatory purchase of US equipment and training services, known as "tied aid." Part of the military aid is a financial loan that will become a long-term liability for Ukraine.

"The US doesn't seem to mind the weapons bringing great loss and safety hazards to Ukraine and the rest of the world," Yuan Zheng, a research fellow and deputy director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Moreover, with an increasing number of weapons being sent to Ukraine, it has been found that many of the weapons have trickled into the local black market, said Yuan.

"That will bring great uncertainty to the security of Ukraine and even the whole world, as no one can guarantee that the weapons won't fall into the wrong hands," he noted.

Alarmingly, most evidence has suggested that the US had long been aiding terrorist groups in Ukraine before the country's conflict with Russia. Since the Azov Battalion, an infamous Ukraine-based neo-Nazi military regiment, was founded in 2014, many American media outlets have revealed its potential connections with US authorities.

In July 2015, two congressmen drew up an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill that limited "arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion," but the amendment was removed later that year in November following "pressure from the Pentagon," an insider told The Nation.

Globally, while the US is busy with "fighting terrorism," it is also fostering terrorists to achieve its own geostrategic goals. In October 2016, WikiLeaks released documents showing that the US had provided various forms of assistance to al Qaeda and the Islamic State in order to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya and the government of Syria, and has instigated terrorist groups to carry out military operations to topple the Syrian government.

No wonder Graham Fuller, a Middle East expert and former CIA analyst, said in a 2014 interview that "the US is one of the key creators of the Islamic State."

Using aid as a tool in its geopolitical games, the US also maliciously suppresses the influence of other countries, which further exacerbates the insecurity and instability of the world. The Congressional Budget Justification: Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Fiscal Year 2023, clearly stated that "foreign aid is a key tool for strategic competition."

Obviously, no matter how well it touts itself, "US foreign aid is never purely for humanitarian reasons, but to serve its own strategic goals," concluded Yu.

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