I am right now finishing up a book on Congress and the Cold War; given the topic, it should come as little surprise that foreign aid plays a critical role. Because the program so clearly involved a power assigned to the Congress—to appropriate money—it was not subject to the expanded version of executive power that the post-World War II era featured. Commentator Robert Pastor correctly termed the annual foreign aid measure"the nearest thing Congress has to a 'State of the World Message.'"

It’s worth keeping the history of the program in mind, however, in judging the likelihood of success for President Bush’s “new” foreign aid policy, the Millennium Challenge Account . The program’s implementation, which was delayed for two years, is now set to launch, with an idea of targeting aid only to governments that the United States deems"just."

Since its inception, the foreign aid program has provided a classic demonstration of the tension between reality and idealism in American foreign policy, and I suspect that this permutation of the program will be no different: we’ll see what happens when the President, for the first time, waives the program’s criteria to justify aid to a strategically vital regime.