US-Pakistan Foreign Aid Regime: Changing Trends from the Cold War to the War on Terror

Year 2024, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 119 - 137, 30.12.2024

Ömer Naim Küçük

Abstract

The research employs US-Pakistan foreign aid relations as a case study and examines how the foreign aid policy of the United States evolved in response to two substantial political developments: the end of the Cold War in 1990 and the eruption of the War on Terror in 2001. The research finds that during the bipolar competition of the Cold War, Pakistan’s strategic importance for the US’s containment policy of the Soviet Union was a crucial factor affecting the foreign aid flows. The end of the Cold War coincided with a reduction in the US’s foreign aid flows to Pakistan and disbursed aid conditioned to the normative criteria, as the political saliency of Pakistan to the US’s national interests waned. In the aftermath of the War on Terror, on the other hand, Pakistan’s rekindling of strategic importance led to a resurgence of US aid with less moral strings attached, albeit not reaching the Cold War levels. The findings endorse studies arguing from a state-centric approach, claiming that foreign aid allocations can be a foreign policy tool aimed at retrieving strategic political concessions from the recipient state, but the study also contends that systemic factors also function as a prominent intervening force.

Keywords

U.S foreign aid policy, Cold war, War on terror, U.S-Pakistan relations, Pakistan politics

ABD-Pakistan Dış Yardım Rejimi: Soğuk Savaş'tan Terörle Savaşa Değişen Eğilimler

Abstract

Araştırma, ABD-Pakistan dış yardım ilişkilerini bir vaka çalışması olarak ele almakta ve ABD'nin dış yardım politikasını 1990'da Soğuk Savaş'ın sona ermesi ve 2001'de Teröre Karşı Savaş'ın patlak vermesi olmak üzere iki önemli siyasi gelişme karşısında nasıl evrildiğini incelemektedir. Araştırma, Soğuk Savaş'ın iki kutuplu rekabeti sırasında Pakistan'ın ABD'nin Sovyetler Birliği'ni çevreleme politikası açısından stratejik öneminin dış yardım akışını etkileyen önemli bir faktör olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Soğuk Savaş'ın sona ermesi, ABD'nin Pakistan'a yönelik dış yardım akışının azaldığı ve Pakistan'ın ABD'nin ulusal çıkarları açısından siyasi öneminin azalması nedeniyle yardımların normatif kriterlere bağlı olarak dağıtıldığı bir döneme denk gelmiştir. Öte yandan, Terörle Savaş sonrasında Pakistan'ın stratejik öneminin yeniden canlanması, Soğuk Savaş seviyelerine ulaşmasa da, ABD yardımlarının daha az ahlaki bağlarla yeniden canlanmasına yol açmıştır. Bulgular, dış yardım tahsislerinin alıcı devletten stratejik siyasi tavizler almayı amaçlayan bir dış politika aracı olabileceğini iddia eden devlet merkezli bir yaklaşımı savunan çalışmaları desteklemektedir, ancak çalışma aynı zamanda sistemik faktörlerin de önemli bir müdahale gücü olarak işlev gördüğünü iddia etmektedir.

Keywords

Amerikan dış yardım politikası, Soğuk savaş, Teröre karşı savaş, ABD-Pakistan ilişkileri, Pakistan siyaseti

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