US jostles with China in race for influence

THE Trump team is poised for a major foreign-policy announcement as soon as this week at the UN high-level General Assembly meetings. A new international aid strategy, under which funds would be distributed increasingly on political allegiance to Washington as opposed to humanitarian need, could reshape policy to the largest extent for decades, albeit with the risk of undermining US soft power.

The sweeping premise of the new Trump strategy is that several decades of US foreign aid, including to combat communism and terrorism, has failed in its core objectives. It therefore argues that a new policy framework is needed, especially with the rise of China, for what is asserted to be a need to "realign foreign assistance for a new era of great power competition".

In a nutshell, the Trump team appear set to move toward an approach which will lead to more aid being distributed to "friends and allies", including those which support broader US international goals versus those of rivals, especially China. This will move away from a principle - not always followed in practice of course - that financial assistance should be allocated according to humanitarian need, not political allegiance. It may particularly affect countries in the developing world, from Africa to Asia and Latin America.