Success Quote by Lee H. Hamilton

Hamilton’s line is the kind of Washington realism that sounds like common sense until you hear the warning underneath it: foreign aid isn’t a magic wand, it’s a test of state capacity and political will. As a career legislator and national security hand, he’s policing expectations. The sentence is built to puncture the comforting narrative that money alone equals progress, while also shielding aid from the charge that it “never works.” It can work, he insists, but only under conditions that are often missing.

The subtext is about accountability, but also about leverage. “Good governance” is doing a lot of diplomatic work here: it’s a proxy for institutions that can absorb funds without hemorrhaging them to corruption, patronage, or conflict. By framing failure as the product of governments “unable or unwilling,” Hamilton keeps the moral indictment flexible. “Unable” nods to weak states, shattered bureaucracies, and limited administrative reach; “unwilling” targets regimes that prefer control, rents, or repression over public welfare. Either way, the blame lands at the feet of political leadership, not donors.

Context matters: this is a post-Cold War, post-9/11 consensus logic that tied development to stability and security. Aid becomes conditional, not purely humanitarian. Hamilton’s intent isn’t to romanticize austerity; it’s to argue that without governance reform, aid is not just ineffective but potentially enabling - propping up governments that treat citizens as subjects rather than stakeholders.