To the incoming director of foreign assistance,

As you well know, for more than six decades, foreign aid has played an indispensable role in the conduct of the United States' foreign affairs. Today, 154 countries benefit from some kind of financial assistance. Along with defense and diplomacy, foreign aid is a massively influential foreign policy tool. A recent government report (.pdf) put it well: "Foreign aid is probably the most flexible tool -- it can act as both a carrot and a stick, and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems, and projecting U.S. values." Yet, in contrast to the hugely powerful and lavishly funded military or the esteemed diplomatic corps, the foreign aid apparatus at times lacks the coherence and institutional weight relative to the essential role it plays.

Part of the problem is that the U.S. foreign aid effort lacks a strategy. That wasn't always the case. The billions spent on the Marshall Plan immediately following World War II may well be the country's wisest international investment ever made. Throughout the Cold War, foreign aid bought influence over proxy states in the ideological battle against communism. As the Soviet Union collapsed, however, so did the underlying principles of foreign aid. Budgets dwindled, and in recent years, aid has been more narrowly used to wage the Global War on Terrorism. But the Obama administration is moving away from such a strict construction.

Obama has pledged to lift the foreign aid budget to some $50 billion by 2012. Undoubtedly, the director of foreign assistance will have a vital role to play. Vital, but not easy. Unfortunately, the office has already been riddled with problems. Upon its unveiling, specialists at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) protested that they'd be overpowered by the diplomatic corps. And dismally, a year later, Randall Tobias, the first head of the office, resigned after being discovered frequenting a prostitute.

But a serious, committed new leader will have to put the scandal in the past and engineer the bureaucratic overhaul that's needed. Most of all, he or she will have to offer a vision for foreign aid and explain it to the rest of the country -- and the rest of the world.

First is the issue of quantity. Setting aside Obama's pledge for increased aid, which itself could be sidelined by budget pressures, the country's foreign aid budget hasn't kept pace with its economic growth. At the time of the Marshall Plan, foreign assistance consisted of more than 3 percent of GDP. Since then, it has consistently fallen, and today constitutes less than a fifth of a percent of GDP. By far, of the major donor countries around the world, the U.S. gives more than anyone else, but as a percentage of GDP, it actually ranks last.

Where the aid goes has also changed dramatically in recent years. A decade ago, the lion's share was sent to the Middle East. Not anymore. Though Israel is still by far the biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid -- with about $2.3 billion in 2008 -- much of the focus is now on South Asia and Africa. The reasons? In large part, assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and President Bush's AIDS initiative.

The biggest challenge is reshaping foreign aid for the reality of today's complicated international order. The first step would be to move away from a terrorism-focused strategy. It's not wholly incorrect to think that underdevelopment and poverty give rise to conflict and radicalism, but employing terrorism as a focal point in the way that communism was in previous decades misses a larger point.

Take agriculture, for instance. According to the Congressional Research Service, "Agriculture programs have seen significant decreases since the 1970s and 1980s when they represented the bulk of U.S. development assistance." The budget for such programs is now a fraction of what it was two decades ago. However, one of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan is developing the rural parts of the country, where nearly all the population gains its livelihood from farming. Reshaping foreign aid along its own core principles -- rather than a narrow definition of terrorism -- could actually support the war more than it does now.

There is also multilateralism. As it stands, less than 6 percent of foreign aid is delivered to multilateral development projects, which include programs like the U.N. Development Program and UNICEF, the children's fund. However, considering that USAID has been stripped down in recent decades, the country could benefit from employing the established -- and far-reaching -- infrastructure of these international development organizations. In the short to medium term, though this would put U.S. dollars in the hands of others, it could very well prove a more effective way to disburse foreign aid.

Lastly, there is military aid, which has largely decreased since its peak in 1984. Still, the huge contributions to Israel and Egypt would benefit from constant reconsideration. In international politics, power balances now tip due to much more than just increasing standing armies, weapons stockpiles, and the confidence of military capability. Perpetuating the old laws may well be doing more harm than good.

Without a doubt, a huge part of your job is going to be bounding over countless bureaucratic hurdles, constructing an interagency process and consolidating offices. Surely, that stuff has to be done. But you must see your task as larger: to give a wholehearted vision to foreign aid. First, so that the Congress, which holds the purse strings, can make more strategic decisions about funding. But also, and more importantly, so that the billions each year accomplish what ought to be the guiding principle: making sure that the U.S. benefits from the foreign assistance it doles out, and that the countries receiving it benefit just as much, if not more.

**Andrew Bast has reported from four continents for several publications, including Newsweek and the New York Times. His weekly WPR column, Under the Influence, appears every Friday.