Kerry Defends Foreign Aid Expenses

Says diplomatic spending reduces need for later military spending, which would be nice if that's what actually happened

America's duties and ambitions overseas are too important to shortchange, even in a time of tight budgets, new Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday.

"In today's global world, there is no longer anything foreign about foreign policy," Kerry argued in an unusual first address for a U.S. secretary of state.

Politicians too easily make a bogeyman of American foreign aid, said Kerry, who was a politician for more than three decades, while the payoffs of engagement abroad are badly misjudged by many ordinary Americans.

"I can tell you that nothing gets a crowd clapping faster than to say: 'I'm going to Washington to get them to stop spending all that money over there,' " Kerry said.