Measures Taken to Ensure National Security include:
- the maintenance of armed forces;
- civil defence measures and emergency preparedness;
- attempts to create resilience and national infrastructure;
- the maintenance of intelligence services to detect threats;
- the protection of classified information.
National security for example, has become a popular topic in the United States as the terrorist attack of 9/11 brought an end to many people’s beliefs that US was safe from national security threats. In many nations around the world, including the United States, terrorism is becoming the primary focus of national security measures.
As the world’s interest in national security has risen the once forgotten conflict between national security and civil rights has reemerged as a major topic of discussion. The United States controversial Patriot Act has brought this issue to the attention of even the average citizen. The debate centers on the question, “is it justified to restrict the people’s freedoms for the sake of the nation’s security?”
3.2 Foreign Aid
Foreign aid, international aid or development assistance is when one country helps another country through some form of donation or assistance. Usually this refers to helping out a country that has a special need caused by poverty, underdevelopment, natural disasters, armed conflicts, etc.
The main receivers of foreign aid are developing nations (third world countries), and the main contributors are the industrialized countries.
Foreign aid comes naturally with two important features- the first is that the receiving country gets some assistance from willing partners who will help improve its economy in the short to medium term; the second is that such aid come with conditionalities, political and economic which may not necessarily be in the best interest of the recipients.
In terms of bilateral assistance, often this has some economic and political conditionalities attached. These conditionalities may include the practice of western style democracy, embracing the market economy with the attendant requirements of deregulation and privatization of one’s economy. These demands may come from the advanced industrialized countries or from multilateral bodies like the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. The important thing is that countries receiving foreign aid should ab initio consider the implications of such aid for their countries.
3.2.1 Types of Foreign Aid
One major type of foreign aid, development aid, is aid given by developed countries to support economic development in developing countries. Humanitarian aid, on the other hand, is short-term foreign aid used to alleviate suffering caused by a humanitarian crisis such as genocide, famine, or a natural disaster. Finally, military aid is used to assist an ally in its defense efforts, or to assist a poor country in maintaining control over its own territory.
Other types of foreign aid exist as well, although many could be considered to fall under one of the three categories listed above. Latin American countries, as well as countries on other parts of the world, receive a great deal of aid designed to help them fight drug trafficking and cultivation. Many countries receive military aid to help with counter-insurgency efforts, or to help them fight terrorism. Much of the aid to Africa is used to help combat diseases such as AIDS and malaria.
The World Health Organization assists countries in keeping under control possible pandemics such as Avian Flu and (in the recent past) SARS. Other problems poor countries are assisted with include landmines, corruption, democratization, adjustment to trade liberalization, money laundering, and peace building.
There has been some criticism of foreign aid. The von Mises Institute has pointed out that it can be route to reward multinational companies rather than the citizens of the country that it is supposed to help.
Corruption in many third world nations leads to a portion of the aid money being siphoned off into private bank accounts. In addition, it can be a method of corruption at home. The money, once in the hands of corrupt dictators and off the stringent accounting books of most Western nations can then be kicked back to corrupt domestic politicians in a number of ways. And as an apparent act of charity it is also less politic to scrutinize such a transaction.
Development aid (also development assistance, international aid, overseas aid or foreign aid) is aid given by developed countries to support economic development in developing countries. It is distinguished from humanitarian aid as being aimed at alleviating poverty in the long term, rather than alleviating suffering in the short term (Foreign aid, on the other hand, includes both development aid and humanitarian aid. Some governments include military assistance in the notion "foreign aid", while a lot of NGOs tend to disapprove).
Historically the term used for the donation of expertise has been technical assistance.The nations of the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD), made up of the developed nations
of the world, have committed to providing a certain level of development assistance to underdeveloped countries. This is called Official Development Assistance (ODA), and is given by governments on certain concessional terms, usually as simple donations. It is given by governments through individual countries' international aid agencies (bilateral aid), through multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, or through development charities such as Oxfam.