Foreign assistance creates long lasting partnerships with countries and foreign publics—partnerships that benefit the national security of the United States. By helping to educate, empower, employ, and befriend people in other countries, we decrease instability...

Food aid to hungry countries, training for political parties in young democracies, improved medical services for expectant mothers and the U.S. response to natural disasters such as earthquakes and droughts could be hit in a major scale-back of U.S. assistance.

I believe that American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted. We must use what has been called "smart power": the full range of tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural -- picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation.

...A growing number of historic buildings in Central Asia, the Balkans, Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been restored and renovated. Turkey has also been carrying out a broad initiative in a large number of different countries in the fields of education, cultural cooperation, energy, commerce, transportation, health, housing and administrative issues as well.

No amount of economic aid by the Obama administration has been able to ease Pakistani concerns over US counterterrorist policies and Washington’s ties with India, with opinion polls showing that Pakistanis now overwhelmingly view China more favorably than the United States.

Nearly 64 years after Harry Truman laid out the case for reconstructing Europe’s economies, in a speech that became known as the Marshall Plan, few diplomatic, economic and foreign policy accomplishments have garnered such residual feelings of goodwill and accomplishment in the United States.

[President Obama] had particularly productive and substantive meetings with the leadership of these three countries and also engaged with representatives of the private sector and civil society. The president’s message, and the dozens of agreements completed during the trip, underscored how tremendously significant the region is for the United States...

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has accused the U.K. of adopting an “anti-Christian foreign policy,” after the government announced it would double foreign aid to Pakistan without setting any conditions to help the Islamic country's endangered religious minorities.