Foreign Aid

The 2012 election has candidates demanding a decrease in foreign aid (or an increase). The actual numbers are listed below; the foreign aid allocation, while controversial, is not economically large: it represents 1.5% of federal expenditures ($47.6 billion out of $1.3 trillion in 2009). Total foreign aid is broken down into military and non-military components, since many would not consider military assistance to be foreign aid but rather war spending by proxy.

Billions / year	Economic Assistance	Military Assistance
2000	$13.20	$4.90
2001	$12.90	$3.90
2002	$15.20	$4.80
2003	$19.10	$6.70
2004	$27.40	$6.10
2005	$29.70	$7.40
2006	$27.10	$12.30
2007	$27.70	$13.20
2008	$33.00	$15.90
2009	$33.90	$13.70

United Nations

• The UN was founded in 1945 with 51 member countries. Its membership has since grown to 189 member countries, with representation from about 90% of the world's countries.

• UN Members are sovereign countries. The UN is not a world government, and it does not make laws. It does, however, provide the means to help resolve international conflict and formulate policies on matters affecting every country.

Some of the UN's major organs are:

• The General Assembly: All UN Member States are represented in the General Assembly - a kind of parliament of nations which meets to consider the world's most pressing problems. Each Member State has one vote.

• The Security Council: The organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. There are 15 Council members. Five of these - China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States - are permanent members. The other 10 are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. Member States have discussed making changes in Council membership to reflect today's political and economic realities.

• UN peacekeeping operations are established by the Security Council. There's an ongoing UN presence in Kashmir since 1949; in Cyprus since 1964, and in Kosovo since 1999, for a few examples. The US commits troops to some of these peacekeeping efforts.

• The Economic and Social Council: Under the authority of the General Assembly, its organs include the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Children's Fund.

• The International Court of Justice: The "World Court" is the main judicial organ of the UN. Consisting of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council, the Court decides disputes between countries. Participation by States in a proceeding is voluntary, but if a State agrees to participate, it is obligated to comply with the Court's decision.

• The International Monetary Fund: The IMF, the World Bank, and other specialized agencies are linked to the UN through cooperative international agreements.

• The UN System: In addition to financial organizations, other specialized agencies include: the World Health Organization, the Universal Postal Union, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and other treaty-based organizations for international cooperation and commerce.

• The US failed to pay its UN dues, until the total reached almost $1 billion in 2000. In May 2001, the House voted 252-165 to withhold $244 million in back dues the US had agreed to pay, until the UN restored the US seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.

• Despite the failure to pay dues, the US contributed a total of more than $1.4 billion dollars to the UN system in other assessments, and spent an additional $8.7 billion from the US military budget to support various UN resolutions and peacekeeping operations around the world.

• The UN budget (1999) is about $1.3 billion per year for the UN itself and about $10 billion for the UN system (excluding the separate budgets for the IMF and World Bank).

Russia

• Russia continues to suffer from 50% annual inflation and a recession exacerbated by the Asian economic crisis. The IMF is planning to shore up Russia with a $4.5 billion loan.

• US-Russian relations were strained by the Kosovo conflict (Russia has historically supported the Serbs); the expansion of NATO (we added 3 former Soviet satellites over Russian objections in 1997); the war in Chechnya (a Russian province suffering from a Muslim uprising and independence movement); and uncertainty over President Yeltsin's political stability.

• Vladimir Putin won election as President of Russia in early 2000. President George W. Bush met with Putin shortly after Bush's inauguration in January 2001.

• While Chechnya still is a thorn in the side of US-Russian relations, Russia's assistance in the US war in Afghanistan seems likely to foster good relations and additional US economic aid.