Affiliation:
1. The Ohio State University/University of Leiden.
Abstract
This review essay was prompted by a reading of Salvador Santino F. Regilme's (2021) book entitled Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). American development aid is motivated by a mixture of security, commercial, and humanitarian interests. All three rationales are characteristic for foreign aid since the Second World War, but not always in the same mix. Security concerns were quite influential in the 1950s and early 1960s and again after 9/11. Regilme describes American foreign aid rationales for two Southeast Asian countries (the Philippines and Thailand) and shows how quickly humanitarian considerations give way to security interests. What makes his study quite unique is that he focuses on the intertwinement of donor and recipient interests. Both donor and recipient act more on the basis of territorial and domestic concerns than with an eye on international, humanitarian needs.