| Gobbledygook. > The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents. Truism. The point of contention is around what constitutes "best interest." > The interests of outsiders are simply not relevant to that If this is so simple, why did it require an additional 500ish words to qualify it? Your point seems to boil down to this: In cases where there is a conflict between the perceived "best interest" of citizens and those of non-citizens, if the citizens haven't specifically directed the government to do otherwise, the government should act in the perceived "best interest" of its own citizens. But it's reductive and short-sighted to say that humanitarian aid "hurts" one side and "helps" the other. For instance, the marginal impact of a U.S. dollar on a U.S. citizen's productivity is effectively nil. But that same dollar spent in a third-world country would have much higher marginal impact. The productivity of that other citizen allows them to specialize and trade, and then everyone benefits in the long term. The hyper-nationalism perspective that your country should take whatever it can at the expense of other countries is exactly what led to both of the world wars. |