Foreign Spending Scorecard
What donor countries claim they receive from sending money abroad, and how citizens can independently verify whether the money is being spent well.
When a country sends money abroad, every donor government publishes a public rationale — security alliances, humanitarian leadership, climate finance, resource access, religious or sectarian alignment. The rationale is rarely the whole story, and citizens have no professional path through the line items unless they know where to look. This page is the path through the line items.
The structure: for each major donor we publish what they claim, what is independently documented, where a citizen can verify it, and the honest counterweight to the easy critique. For US assistance specifically — the largest foreign-policy expenditure of any government on Earth — we publish the full recipient-level breakdown with the cumulative figures, the recent annual figures, the public verification sources, and the leading scholarship for each case. None of this is hidden. It is merely uncurated until somebody curates it.
Part I · Donor profiles
Eight donor profiles covering ~85% of global ODA: what they claim, what they have demonstrably produced, and where a citizen can read the receipts. Annual figures are 2023–2024 unless noted.
Part II · The US recipient ledger
The full list of the largest US aid recipients since 1948, with cumulative figures (CRS, inflation-adjusted) and the canonical verification source for each. This is the chart on which every reader gets to draw their own conclusions; we provide the receipts.
| Recipient | Cumulative since 1948 | Recent annual | Where to verify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Israel | ~$260B (CRS, inflation-adjusted) + ~$26B 2024 supplemental | $3.8B/year (2016–2028 MOU) | CRS report "U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel" (RL33222) is updated annually and is the canonical public source. Foreignassistance.gov provides line-item detail. Treasury IFS shows financial flows. |
| Egypt | ~$80B | $1.3B/year | CRS "Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations" updated annually. GAO has conducted multiple reviews of FMF to Egypt. |
| Afghanistan | ~$150B reconstruction (2001–2021), plus ~$2T total war cost | Wound down 2021 | SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) issued ~50 reports plus the "Lessons Learned" series — the single most thorough public accounting of any large US foreign expenditure. |
| Iraq | ~$60B reconstruction + ~$2T total war cost (Watson Institute estimates) | Modest ongoing support | SIGIR final report; Watson Institute Costs of War Project; CBO annual war-cost reports. |
| Ukraine | ~$175B authorized 2022–2024 | Highly variable; ~$60–$80B in peak supplementals | Kiel Institute Ukraine Support Tracker (best-in-class). DoD lethal-aid PDA announcements. State Department FMF announcements. CRS Ukraine reports. |
| Jordan | ~$25B | $1.5B/year (MOU) | CRS "Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations." |
| Pakistan | ~$80B (cumulative, mostly counter-terrorism era) | Reduced sharply post-2018 | CRS "Pakistan-U.S. Relations." GAO reports on Coalition Support Funds. |
| Colombia | ~$15B (Plan Colombia 2000–2016 ~$10B alone) | ~$0.5B/year | CRS "Colombia: Background and U.S. Relations." GAO reports on Plan Colombia. |
| Taiwan | Smaller direct aid; ~$25B authorized weapons backlog as of 2024 | Variable; major recent commitments under Taiwan Relations Act and 2023 supplementals | CRS "Taiwan: Major US Arms Sales." DSCA announcements of Foreign Military Sales. |
| NATO commitments (collective) | Difficult to attribute; ~$700B/yr of US defense budget portion attributable to European defense | Ongoing | DoD budget justifications. CBO annual report on US defense spending allocation. |
Israel
Notes: Largest cumulative recipient. Per-capita US aid to Israel is dramatically higher than to any other country. The aid is structured as Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and is largely required to be spent on US defense-industry products — meaning the dollars flow through US contractors before reaching Israel as equipment.
Scholarship: Walt & Mearsheimer, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (2007) — the most controversial but rigorously argued mainstream treatment, with both authors at Harvard and U Chicago respectively. Their central claim is that the lobby is one influence channel among several, not a singular controller. Beinart, "The Crisis of Zionism" (2012) is the more constructive companion. The Anti-Defamation League maintains active monitoring of how this scholarship is misrepresented.
Where to verify: CRS report "U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel" (RL33222) is updated annually and is the canonical public source. Foreignassistance.gov provides line-item detail. Treasury IFS shows financial flows.
Egypt
Notes: Conditional on the Camp David Accords (1978). Roughly half is FMF (military), half ESF (economic support).
Scholarship: Sharp, "U.S. Aid to Egypt" (CRS) is the standard reference.
Where to verify: CRS "Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations" updated annually. GAO has conducted multiple reviews of FMF to Egypt.
Afghanistan
Notes: SIGAR final reports estimate ~30% of reconstruction spending was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse — a number that is itself an estimate of what could be documented.
Scholarship: Whitlock, "The Afghanistan Papers" (2021) compiles the SIGAR interviews into a single readable narrative.
Where to verify: SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) issued ~50 reports plus the "Lessons Learned" series — the single most thorough public accounting of any large US foreign expenditure.
Iraq
Notes: The reconstruction effort was widely judged a failure on its stated metrics. The strategic outcome (Iranian-aligned Shia government) was the opposite of the stated intent.
Scholarship: Watson Institute "Costs of War" (Brown University) is the canonical academic accounting.
Where to verify: SIGIR final report; Watson Institute Costs of War Project; CBO annual war-cost reports.
Ukraine
Notes: Largest single-conflict US commitment since Vietnam. ~60% is military assistance (most in the form of older US stockpiled equipment, valued at replacement cost); the rest is direct budget support, humanitarian, and reconstruction.
Scholarship: Kiel Institute Ukraine Support Tracker (https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/) is updated quarterly and includes every donor.
Where to verify: Kiel Institute Ukraine Support Tracker (best-in-class). DoD lethal-aid PDA announcements. State Department FMF announcements. CRS Ukraine reports.
Jordan
Notes: Strategic stability partner; Syrian-refugee absorption is a major line.
Scholarship: CRS Jordan reports are the standard reference.
Where to verify: CRS "Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations."
Pakistan
Notes: Coalition Support Funds (CSF) reimbursements were a major channel 2002–2018. Effectiveness widely contested.
Scholarship: Fair, "Fighting to the End" (2014) is the canonical strategic analysis.
Where to verify: CRS "Pakistan-U.S. Relations." GAO reports on Coalition Support Funds.
Colombia
Notes: Generally considered a success on its narcotics-and-security objectives — coca cultivation reduced (then rebounded), FARC peace agreement (2016). One of the cleaner case studies of US aid working.
Scholarship: Tickner & Morales (Universidad de los Andes) provide the best academic accounting.
Where to verify: CRS "Colombia: Background and U.S. Relations." GAO reports on Plan Colombia.
Taiwan
Notes: Aid is almost entirely defense articles. Strategic importance has risen sharply with semiconductor-supply concerns and Chinese assertiveness.
Scholarship: Mastro (Stanford) and Glaser (CSIS) are leading mainstream analysts.
Where to verify: CRS "Taiwan: Major US Arms Sales." DSCA announcements of Foreign Military Sales.
NATO commitments (collective)
Notes: The largest US foreign-policy expenditure line, and the least-discussed politically because it is embedded in the regular defense budget rather than the foreign-aid line. Burden-sharing with European allies has shifted significantly post-2022.
Scholarship: Posen (MIT), "Restraint" (2014) is the canonical critique of US global posture costs.
Where to verify: DoD budget justifications. CBO annual report on US defense spending allocation.
Part III · A citizen’s verification playbook
How to check whether any specific foreign-aid program is doing what its sponsors claim. Seven steps, each with a public source you can use without credentials.
- Step 1Start with foreignassistance.gov
This is the US Treasury-published canonical line-item database. Every dollar of bilateral assistance is searchable by recipient, agency, and fiscal year.
https://foreignassistance.gov → - Step 2Cross-reference with USASpending.gov
Federal contractor-level detail. Lets you trace FMF dollars back through the US defense contractor that received the order.
https://www.usaspending.gov → - Step 3Read the relevant CRS report
Congressional Research Service reports are written for Congress, are bipartisan-staffed, and are public via crsreports.congress.gov. The canonical reference for almost any major recipient.
https://crsreports.congress.gov → - Step 4Check the SIGAR/SIGIR archive for completed programs
For Afghanistan and Iraq specifically, these Special Inspectors General produced the most rigorous public accounting of any large foreign expenditure in modern US history.
https://www.sigar.mil → - Step 5Use AidData for project-level geocoding
William & Mary’s AidData project geocodes individual aid projects across donors. The best resource for "where did the money physically go and what does the on-the-ground evidence show."
https://www.aiddata.org → - Step 6Consult Publish What You Fund for transparency rankings
The Aid Transparency Index rates donor agencies on whether they make their data accessible at all. Use it to weight how much trust to place in any donor’s self-reported figures.
https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org → - Step 7Apply the five-question test to any specific program
For any program: (1) What was the stated objective? (2) What metric measures it? (3) What does the metric show now? (4) What independent source corroborates the metric? (5) What is the counterfactual — would the outcome have occurred anyway? If a defender of the program cannot answer all five, that is the answer.
What you just learned
The decoupling between foreign-policy spending and median voter preference is a structural feature of the appropriations pipeline. The mechanism is universal; the cases are many. The citizen who learns to read foreignassistance.gov, USASpending.gov, and the CRS catalog has more genuine policy literacy than 99% of people commenting on the same numbers on television.