Scholars have long recognized the dual nature of bilateral foreign aid: on the one hand, foreign aid flows are justified with reference to how they will help achieve economic development goals in aid-receiving countries; on the other hand, the provision of foreign aid supports geostrategic objectives that go beyond sustainable economic development in poor countries. These mixed motives complicate the process of generating public support for foreign aid. Previous research has shown that publics tend to support aid more when reminded of its strategic uses or when cued to think about an international competitor.

Focusing on scenarios in which a donor country wants to rebalance its aid portfolio, we propose that references to an international adversary should decrease support for aid reallocation, whereas references to an international ally should increase support for aid reallocation. We test these hypotheses in large surveys in Japan and the United States. In Japan, we find that references to either an adversary or, surprisingly, an ally reduce support for aid reallocation. In the United States, we find that information about other donors has no effect on support for aid reallocation. We argue that these surprising and contrasting findings likely originate in different national understandings of the role of foreign aid in pursuing geostrategic objectives.