The Hill News

For most Americans, time travel is the stuff of science fiction.  But the men and women who deliver U.S. foreign assistance get to travel through time on a daily basis. Title 22 of the U.S. Code, more commonly known as the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, is their own personal time machine.
 
Want to go back to a time when we had a grain embargo on the Soviet Union?  Or when the map listed countries such as Kampuchea, East Pakistan, or Zaire?  Or maybe something more recent, like our efforts to isolate Taliban-controlled Afghanistan by preventing it from trading with its neighbors?   Or perhaps you’d like to integrate Afghanistan into its region by encouraging trade with its neighbors?  It’s all there in the U.S. Code, ready to guide U.S. Foreign Policy implementation.
 
Sometimes the anachronisms contained in the U.S. Code become relevant again: language regarding the Sandinistas’ control of Nicaragua has been around so long that, in the ! interim, the Sandinistas have lost power, and then regained it via democratic elections.

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