American foreign aid has been adrift since the Cold War abruptly ended nearly eight years ago. No longer firmly anchored as a key tool of foreign policy aimed at containing communist expansion and combating Soviet influence, foreign assistance has lost its core political constituency and much of its support, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Yet, the United States has an array of foreign policy goals and international interests that argue as powerfully for assistance today as at the height of the Cold War.