“First do no harm,” quotes Jessica Trisko Darden in the conclusion to her new book, Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence (p. 109). In this book, Darden explores what it means to “do no harm” in foreign aid and whether the United States has succeeded in that simple-sounding goal. A refreshing take on the effects of U.S. foreign aid, Aiding and Abetting lays out the dark side of foreign economic assistance. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis over seven chapters, Darden builds the case for a closer look at the unintended consequences of U.S. foreign aid policy.

Darden’s argument is relatively straightforward: foreign aid, if left unchecked, can provide recipient governments with coercive capabilities to commit atrocities. This is not an unfamiliar argument, as Darden acknowledges. What is novel is Darden’s expansion of this concern into new realms of foreign aid. Counterintuitively, Darden argues that economic and humanitarian aid, because of the lower levels of oversight deemed necessary by the U.S. government, can be more negatively impactful in recipient states than military assistance. In a challenge to observers who claim that fungibility, oversight, and the method of delivery matter, Darden