AID: What Money Can Buy

As the 85th Congress, in its final hours last week, passed a $3.3 billion foreign aid bill, many were the critics prepared as always to judge the wisdom and virtue of each congressional session by the sheer size of this key appropriation. Such people measure influence abroad by dollars spent, and were thus easy targets for those who regard foreign aid as simple bribery, and are angered every time a beneficiary does not toe the line.

But foreign aid has come a long way from the postwar days when the simple criterion was...