During the Cold War, the United States waged a war of ideas with the Soviet Union to capture the hearts and minds of the rest of the world. It was in many ways a lop-sided contest, at least in terms of popular appeal. The United States had pop songs, Pop art, Pop-Tarts, not to mention Hollywood films, McDonalds, and democracy. The Soviets had Shostakovich, the Bolshoi Ballet, the collected works of Lenin, Tetris, and not much else.

The two sides also offered various forms of assistance to other countries: disaster relief, humanitarian medical missions, scientific cooperation, and financial loans. Because the U.S. economy was considerably larger than the Soviet one, the advantage here also went to the Americans.

After the Cold War, the United States continued to cultivate what it called “soft power”—the power of ideas and culture—alongside its enormous military. This soft power continued to be a major vector of American influence, for both good and ill. On the positive side, American activists helped construct the world of international law, American aid workers responded to earthquakes and typhoons, American scientists participated in developing new vaccines and other medical breakthroughs, and American consultants were instrumental in building a range of democratic institutions from election monitoring to a free press.

More than half of U.S. aid goes to humanitarian assistance (21.7 percent), health (22.3 percent), governance (3.2 percent), education and social services (2 percent), and environment (1.9 percent).

But there has also been a dark side to this soft power. Foreign aid, for instance, is highly politicized, often distributed according to political allegiances rather than actual need. A good chunk of this aid has been security-related (14.2........

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