US Aid cutoffs as foreign policy tool could be unproductive, warns foreign policy experts

WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (APP):Foreign and international policy experts have cautioned against the approach of the Trump administration to use aid cutoff as a foreign policy tool, saying it ignores diplomatic realities and could be unproductive.
President Trump’s administration last week suspended security aid to Pakistan, a long-time ally which has provided intelligence and security cooperation and fighting terrorism in the region and in Afghanistan.
In addition to Pakistan, President Trump has also threatened to cut assistance to Palestinians in a bid to force them to restart negotiations with Israel. The talks process suffered a setback when President Trump in December announced that US would move its embassy to Jerusalem, a move that has been denounced and voted against in the United Nations.
The Trump administration also threatened those countries with aid cutoff who voted against the US decision to move its embassy and warned that the administration would take stock of the situation and that the aid cutoff could follow.
Many previous US administrations have used US assistance as a tool of diplomacy but the foreign policy experts have said that the approach of the Trump administration is different.
“What’s abnormal [about the Trump administration] is the sort of bullying and overt threats — particularly threats that are often not carried through,” the magazine quoted James Dobbins, a former State Department official who most recently served as the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration, as saying.
He said that that “threatening aid cutoffs as a way of affecting behavior is usually unproductive, at least in the short term,” and that the long-term impacts may or may not be more effective.
Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, warned that such threats to aid run the risk of triggering a nationalist backlash in foreign countries where people see such efforts as US pressure tactics to dictate their terms.
For Patrick, Trump’s threats symbolizes his view of international relations and added that his threats looks more like a high-stakes real-estate deal, but ignore diplomatic realities.
“The threat to cut off aid is a little bit reminiscent of high-stakes bargaining or threats in the real estate business, and that works because you can always walk away,,, the problem with diplomacy is that it’s a repeated game. The countries are still there,” he was quoted as saying by the magazine.