system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What would happen if the US govt cut all foreign aid?

This is the pure, isolationist "Why are we giving all these other countries money when we're in trouble here at home?" I know that foreign aid is a very tiny amount of the budget, I'm interested in what the effects of cutting aid would actually be, and what repercussions would follow.
gpt
US Foreign aid breaks down roughly as follows:

15 billion - Rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, which are two countries where we started wars.  We feel responsible for trying to repair some of the damage.

3 billion - Military aid for Israel.  Mostly in the form of expensive weapons.  Without our assistance, Israel would almost certainly get attacked by one of their neighbors (who do not like Israel).

4 billion - Economic and Military aid for Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan.   The goal is to have a few people in the mideast who call us allies.  Essentially, we buy their cooperation.  That cooperation is sometimes useful.  For example, when we killed Osama Bin Laden, we sent troops into Pakistan.  Normally, countries don't tolerate troops from other countries.  The Pakistanis did complain a little, but they didn't do anything about it.  That's what we're buying.

10 billion - Assorted disaster zones around the world.  For example, we send 1 billion to Haiti, which is where that horrible tsunami/earthquake happened.  A lot of this is done in a spirit of charity, but there's also an element of self-interest.  Many of these areas have unstable governments or no governments, and we're hoping that if they do get stable governments, the new government will be friendly to us.

Just for perspective: the total money spent by the US government on our *own* citizens and our *own* military is 3,500 billion, that is, roughly 100x more than we spend on foreign aid.