President Obama’s implication that the Bush Administration stinted on foreign aid was the most disingenuous part of his inaugural speech. It may also have been the most depressing. It signals that he is likely to replace one kind of faith-based policy with another, equally blind variety.
I couldn’t agree more, Heather. One of the things that depresses me most about public affairs is the extraordinary persistence of bad ideas. A thing can be disproved a thousand times over, but there will still be earnest people plugging it, and politicians listening to them. (Head Start, anyone?)
Foreign aid is a prime example. It is now 40-odd years since Peter Bauer taught us that aid is “a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.” Nothing that’s happened in those years has contradicted his judgment. The influence of religion on government in these areas, as in the matter of immigration, has been entirely malign. I expatiated on the topic at the time of George W. Bush’s visit to Africa last Spring.
Asked by the NRO editors for some predictions at the end of last year, I included this one: “USAID will be elevated to a cabinet-level department.” Obama’s just the man to do it. Jimmy Carter gave us a cabinet-level department for maintaining the power of the teacher unions; Obama will give us a cabinet-level department for sluicing taxpayers’ money through to the Swiss bank accounts of foreign gangsters and despots, to the great joy of clerics everywhere. My ECUSA Diocesan magazine — they still send it to me, though I haven’t been to church in over four years — is full of cheerleading for aid programs.
Add the trendiest of all diseases to the feelgood factor of foreign aid, and you have a perfect storm of self-congratulatory piety to justify the squandering of public funds to questionable purposes.
I’m tempted to agree, but let’s give Obama time to show what kind of aid he has in mind. Maybe he’ll airdrop half of Kansas into Sudan and Zimbabwe, would that make rich people in poor countries richer?
And don’t forget the discussion about Africa needing God: http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=1094
Well, I suppose a pragmatist would say that the true purpose of foreign aid isn’t to feed and clothe and shelter the poor of the recipient country, but to bribe whatever genocidal lunatics run it to not ally themselves with an enemy country.
Susan makes an excellent point, as does our esteemed author.
I’d long ago come to the opinion that the US should have a policy of only offering foreign aid to countries that aren’t involved in any territorial conflicts.
I’ll be watching this thread with quite a bit of interest, but in the meantime I have to get back to my life as a math major.
Direct foreign aid may well be comparatively worthless, but funding research into tropical diseases is not. AIDS isn’t the best candidate, but given the vast economic, cognitive, and developmental damage caused by malaria, a successful eradication campaign could have a significant positive impact. In the meantime, I’ll support aid in the form of contraceptives for just about anyone anywhere.
Fifty years ago my parents “adopted” a Filipino boy. His name was Ernesto and he wrote my parents letters detailing how their money was helping him gain an education and a career.
I hope Ernesto is a successful Filipino. His adoption by my parents was directly due to the aid Filipinos gave to my uncle, a WWII survivor of the Palawan Massacre.
You see, we pay back what we’ve been given, yet we put no strings on the gift.
My parents felt that every donation they gave explicitly helped Ernesto. This is what kept the giving going.
How… can one reconcile giving through tax dollars with the same feeling of truly having made a difference? We do not KNOW where our tax dollars are going — to the corrupt or to the needy.
I am wary of foreign aid that goes to government authorities, because my own American government has conditioned me to be wary of government handouts.
If you’re saying that we should leave the suffering masses to their own devices that’s just fine but it’s a childish thing to say before you’ve been there and taken the opportunity to gain empathetic feelings for them. Once you’re granted the proximity that allows you to choose to care about them just as you would the local white kids in your neighborhood college you can choose to reject that sentiment or to embrace it and can be credible in doing either. Should you choose however to embrace that sentiment you might have a faint feeling as I do that Rudyard Kipling’s call is a worthy one. That doesn’t speak toward enriching connected assholes in foreign lands but to other projects, imperialism perhaps. Anyhow, the mainstay of what I’m saying is that being critical of the ridiculous is easy but that the issue of massive human suffering in our day is a serious one and that should one choose callousness he should grant himself the opportunity to develop a personal connection with these people and then to say that he prefers callous indifference or alternatively a non-ridiculous approach to aiding the suffering billions. Let’s not be glib about such serious matters as the literal physical pain of billions.
WARNING: Bradlaugh is at this point (1:15am Tuesday morning) fairly seriously drunk — half a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt. In vino veritas though, so pay attention, damn you!
Susan: If it’s in our national interest to bribe the buggers, let’s just bribe them. Can’t we do it without all the moralistic cant?
Roger Hallman: You are quite right. Life as a math major is far more important than anything you will read on a blog. Good luck to you! Work all the exercises in your textbook. Math understanding comes from practice, as with music and language learning. The three — math, music, language — "travel together." There’s deep truth in that. In any case, you have followed the correct path to truth and wisdom. May your tribe increase!
Donna B.: I congratulate your parents. They did a good and noble deed — really. I’d encourage that sort of thing if I knew how to. When GOVERNMENTS try to do it, it of course turns to crap at once. Politicians are vermin and scum, and everything they do is evil. This is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
@Bradlaugh
Awesome. If there’s one regret I have in life it’s that I don’t drink often enough. I had some fine Green Label the other day but all I have available at the moment is beer, Nonetheless, inspired by your example, I may take to cracking open a few cans.
I’d be willing to pay a decent chunk at some sort of charity auction for a night getting drunk with Derb. Perhaps the money could go to Filipino children?
[8am] I apologize for the opening of that comment. One should not advertise one’s inner states, or give a bad example to others with low impulse control.
My head hurts.
Don’t think of it as a giveaway. Think of it as a stimulus package for Mercedes. They have a plant in the U.S. now, don’t they? Maybe they can start making Grossers again.
Bradlaugh, I hope your head isn’t hurting too badly this morning. I agree with you about the moralistic cant, but again, there may be a pragmatic reason for that as well. After all, you can’t give a press conference saying, “We’re giving seven billion dollars to this degenerate thug in the hope he won’t start palling around with folks who want to launch nukes at us.” No, you have to pretty it up for public consumption by saying “We’re feeding the starving children.” And that gives the members of the public the opportunity to feel good about themselves.
@Bradlaugh
My head hurts.
Unsurprising. A single malt tasting party in the basement of our local tavern included an amazing variety of labels (even one called Sheep Dip). Our host explained that what made these peaty beverages so singularly delicious was the fact that they contain many “impurities”–which also intensify the after-effects. Worst hangover in my life.
Perhaps single malts ought to be our foreign aid in kind. That would at least give recipients the opportunity to feel as good about themselves as the donors.
I don’t know if “Secular Right” has any ambitions to grow and become a profit centre, but if it did I have what I think is a wonderful idea. I can never imagine myself on one of those cruises advertised on (for example) NRO, but what about: “Get Legless with Derb!”. The cost could be a bottle of good spirits and perhaps a case of nice wine. Hmmmmm.
Well, Saunders, your idea certainly brings new and exciting meaning to the term “booze cruise.” Instead of lectures and seminars, we could have drinking games. Or a prize for who makes the best vodka martini. Perhaps a debate: “Resolved: Olives Go Better with Gin than Lemon Twists.”
China was as poor as Africa in 1980. Today, excepting for the current recession, it has had the fastest growing economy in the world and has received relatively little aid over the decades. Also, countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have developed into prosperous societies since WWII while receiving little or no aid.
India has receive more aid than East Asia and has had less economic growth than China. Most of the economic growth in India has been a result of liberalization in 1991 and has coincided with a reduction of received foreign aid.
Sub-Saharan Africa has received the most amount of aid over the decades and is the only region of the world that is as poor today as it was, say, in 1965.
A region’s economic growth appears to be inversely proportional to the amount of foreign “aid” it receives. It is logical to conclude the foreign aid does not work and should therefor be discontinued.
Yes well Susan after some sober review I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or not… kind of fun to think about letting Derb wax lyrically after he’s had a few belts though. Would he become somehow a kinder and gentler Derb? Would he recite “The Wreck of the Hesperus” with a tear in his eye?
To your main point it seems as though Africa remains our most intransigent and difficult problem (at some risk, I am calling it “our’s”), but I’m not sure bribing genocidal perverts should be a legitimate foreign policy of any developed western country.
Nigeria is taking in displaced white farmers from Zimbabwe who in their turn are making central Nigeria into a new breadbasket for Africa. I’d like to see more of that – I’ve always liked Nigerians but mostly when they’re not in Nigeria, and I would like to see them take up more of the heavy lifting there. Maybe some help could be given along these lines.
Kurt and Saunders: Africa is, of course, the most glaring example of pouring trillions of dollars of aid into a country with no result in terms of eliminating poverty. Of course the loons running most of the African countries appropriate all the cash. Africa is still a tribal society, and it’s always going to be impoverished and at the mercy of whatever genocidal thug butchers his way to a throne/dictatorship precisely because it IS a a tribal society. With no exceptions I can think of, anywhere you find the inhabitants residing in refrigerator cartons or mud huts with a gross annual income of ten dollars, groveling at the feet of some clown who likes to deal with his political opponents by pot-roasting them, you’re going to find a tribal society.
John F. Kennedy saw “the problem of Africa” as one of his most pressing concerns. I’m sure at the time he was afraid of it falling to the Soviet Union. He probably figured that dumping more money into it than the Soviets could was one way of ensuring that when the time came to pick sides, the bribed dictators would choose the U.S. rather than the U.S.S.R. I’m sure many of his successors were so motivated.
Saunders: Maybe Derb would recite some Kipling for us. Or we could read aloud to each other from the Flashman books.
Susan – I can only speak to my experiences in a small part of West Africa, chiefly SE Nigeria (i.e. Biafra) and Cameroon. I do think your description of Africa is a bit over-the-top even though there is much truth in what you say. However I know there are large parts of Port Harcourt (Nigeria) and Douala (Cameroon) with lots of gainfully employed welders and pipefitters and merchants and truck drivers… and to the point of this blog, both of these places have a rich Christian tradition which goes some way toward diminishing the tribal tendencies to which you have alluded.
There is much to the point Derb made in his original post, but I think there could also be a 3rd way here. It could well be that some good old-fashioned Christian proselytizing and grass-roots missionary work could achieve the results Derb’s incompetent government can never hope to accomplish.
As to the choice of literature – if Derb gets on the whisky, definitely Fwashman.
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Though as an atheist I don’t hold religion as a value, the post seems like a non-sequitur. Certainly religious altruists lean on their doctrine to justify transferring money from the U.S. government to people in Africa. But there are, regrettably, many not-so-religious to outright atheististic altruists around, too. It’s the underlying moral beliefs that are relevant and neither Christianity nor any other religion is a necessary support for that ethical position.
Even if one thought it was appropriate to give money to citizens of foreign countries, that it’s done under the aegis of ‘foreign aid’ is the most harmful practical aspect in the long run. Separate the State from charity and I couldn’t care less what people like Bill Gates do with their own money.
The idea that “if it’s good, it’s good for the government to do it” is what needs to be challenged.
The snarly curmodgeons posting here seem to need some reminding about what has really counted in the history of US foreign aid.
When US foreign aid has been aimed at rational outcomes clearly favorable to the US, it has been profoundly successful. The #1 bit of evidence of this is the Marshall Plan, which got Europe functioning again. Similarly, in Japan the US provided both direct humanitarian aid immediately after the end of WWII and expert assistance in re-developing industry (remember Edward Deming, who after successfully helping US industry in WWII went to Japan and sowed the seeds of modern high tech manufacturing; see the Deming Awards). In both these cases, a truly enlightened US approach to helping other countries help themselves established what was called the Free World, which outperformed Soviet and Chinese communism utterly and completely, leading to the successful avoidance of ideologically driven nuclear war. I’d say that is a pretty cosmic success story.
The current largest recipients of US aid are Israel and Egypt. We help Israel defend itself as the only real democracy and modern innovative society in the Mideast. By the way, Israel has more venture capital activity than all of Western Europe put together.
We support Egypt to neutralize (at least) what was the largest catalyst of Mideast violence until the recent upsurge in jihadism. Remember the Suez crisis and the 1976 and 1973 wars with Israel? The outcome is much less than thrilling in an absolute sense, but it sure beats a fight to the death between Israel and the only country with enough moxie to face off against the Israelis. (the others talk big, but do little more than threaten, though that could change with Iran).
Those are just the biggies. No doubt some of the self-hypnotized ideologues here were against these, too, and their heads will explode at the successes being thrust at them. But it is hard to argue with success.
JHH: No one’s head is exploding over the Marshall Plan or aid to Japan and Israel. Nor over aid to Egypt to “neutralize” it, to use your word. (In fact, by using the example of Egypt, you made my point for me about foreign aid being used to placate thugs.) The real discussion seems to be over what the purpose of foreign aid is to countries that clearly don’t use it to feed, clothe, and shelter their indigents. My point was that, as in the case of Egypt, it’s mostly used to keep the thugs in charge of tribal states in line. Or at least in the hope of keeping them in line.
JHH – You are quite right in your citing both the Marshall Plan’s success and Mr. Deming’s influence in Japan. However as Susan has pointed out, the discussion here is about the efficacy of the (Marshall Plan $) x 100 that has been spent in Africa.
I agree with Susan that much of the monies spent in Africa to date have been wasted, however I disagree with this blog’s premise (in part), in that were we (i.e. the West) to engage in good old-fashioned Christian Missionary Work and proselytizing a great deal of good could be done.
In short, I wonder if this blog would throw the baby (Africa) out with the bathwater (Judeo-Christian Liberalism).
The Marshall Plan is a bad analogy for a number of reasons. First, it was sent to countries that had the basic human infrastructure in place to use the money. Second, the countries that got the most money, like Britain, took the longest to recover, as opposed those who got the least, like Germany. Third, much of Europe and Japan’s postwar miracle was due to the introduction of true mass production. What had been around before was still largely built on a craft basis. The culture was so ingrained even Henry Ford gave up on innovating. Well, the war put and end to that, and production increased and the western and Japanese economies increased.
In Africa, there is no human infrastructure worth speaking of. There are no craftsman, and the country is so besotted with aid that it kills private enterprise. For example, why should a Kenyan farmer plant a crop when a flock of western dodo’s is handing out free food a town over? Why should a Malawan tailor make clothes, when aid groups pass out old T-shirts, jeans and shoes for free? As one African put it, “For God’s sake, stop sending us aid!”
Mr. Deming’s influence in Japan
Deming’s techniques were a help, along with lean manufacturing techniques pioneered by companies like Toyota, but those didn’t really take effect until well into the 60s and 70s. What pulled Japan up so quick was simple mass production. I’m sure you know about the firebombing missions. The USAAF had to do that because so much of Japan’s industry was located in small craft shops. Now these have their advantages, and they’ve been brought to good effect in lean manufacturing techniques, but on its own, handcraft shops just can’t match you’re old-fashioned push manufacturing.
Since I’m on a tirade, the one really good thing the west could do RIGHT NOW, is stop all its domestic agriculture subsidies. That alone is putting a lot of third world farms out of business. It’s fueling our illegal alien problem in Latin America as well. This won’t cure anything on its own, but it will lessen the problem’s severity.
The Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan are not analogous to current foreign aid programs. Both the Marshall Plan and the aid used to rebuild Japan were limited in scope. The money used to rebuild Japan was actually not that much and the Marshall Plan lasted from 1948 to around 1954 or so. These programs had fixed time-scales were intended as short-term efforts to get these respective economies into self-sustaining growth mode.
Present-day foreign aid, including that to Israel and Egypt, are open-ended affairs that have lasted decades. This fact alone clearly shows that they have not created self-sustaining economies as a result. Thus, they have to be considered failures.
This is essentially true for most other foreign aid efforts as well. Direct foreign investment builds economic growth, not foreign aid.
I agree that domestic farm subsidies harm third-world agriculture.
I have to give a shout out to this great discussion. This blog is a righteous place.
“Foreign Aid” covers a lot of bases.
In the 1970s I too belonged to a church that sent out magazines that were filled with content on how they were helping the starving of Africa. At the same time the government of Mozambique was the largest recipient of state to state foreign aid.
Almost nothing was accomplished by the the government aid. It all disappeared into the “Marxist” pockets of government officials.
On the other hand the earnest if naiive efforts of this church did have some impact. They concentrated on small, containable and measurable projects. Things like $60,000 to deliver a source of clean drinking water to a village and sending in your own people to staff the project worked. Giving $300 Million to the Ministry of the Interior and hoping they built some roads didn’t.
Donna B’s family directly supported Ernesto in the Phillipines. My family had Simon in Lesotho. The pittance that we gave kept these kids in school and their families fed (because if the family is not eating the kid probably does not have the luxury of making it to school).
Today we have microlending and forms of capitalizing the entrepreneurs of the developing world. These things can work. Not a guarnatee but it is a low impact way of leveraging your aid dollars.
Governments writing big checks to other governments is never going to be more than feel good waste that will end up in the pockets of corrupt (eg Mozambique, or bribes to support our foreign policy objective Egypt, Israel etc)
For an indication of what the Obama administration thinks of aid to Africa see Michael Gerson’s Op-Ed in today’s WaPo. Weasels indeed!
Saunders, with regard to your penultimate post: No doubt the Christian missionaries did do a great deal to bring medical care and education to Africa. (And of course they proselytized; that’s what they do.) But I’m wondering if what success they had in alleviating some bad conditions was because the colonial powers were administering a lot of the countries in which the missionaries labored. That being the case, there was a western-style infrastructure already in place in many areas to support the missionaries’ efforts. You could draw a very rough comparison to the Marshall Plan, I suppose: Aid works to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate the poor, to the extent it does that, if there’s a civilized infrastructure in place in the recipient country. And a sense of national unity.
Once the colonial powers withdrew from Africa, everything went to hell–no pun intended. A civilized infrastructure was one baby that got tossed out with the imperial bathwater.
Susan – I think you’re right, but in this day and age any kind of colonial aid simply won’t work for the simple (but wrong) reason that people living healthy lives under a colonial administration is a worse condition than people dying or living in squalor under a native administration.
So… what to do. I agree to an extent with the sentiments expressed here, but if the human condition requires compassion and empathy then it seems to me a non-secular approach to aid in Africa is indicated.
My own experience-based anecdote:
I am no fan of the mega-churches, however following Hurricane Katrina I watched first-hand as some of these churches went into action. For evacuees numbering in the 10s of thousands, these non-secular American mega-church members were able to feed, shelter, clean, clothe and enroll in world-class schools most of these 10s of thousands of people – in a matter of 24 to 48 hours.
Anyways, I think there is much to be said for non-secular faith based aid.
One example I can give of a faith-based aid that seems to do some good is the Salvation Army. Apparently they spend 90 cents of every dollar on actually feeding, etc. those in distress. And I understand they don’t proselytize, either, for which they deserve great credit. Maybe that should be the model. And of course the fact that you can DONATE (or not donate, as you choose) to the SA is a major point in its favor. Whereas I have no say at all in whether my tax dollars go toward building some thug a gold-plated bathroom and a super-deluxe (open floor plan! granite countertops! crown molding!) rape chamber. But if that’s what Mr. Thug demands in return for his promise that he won’t launch nukes at us, I guess I have to live with it. Again, it’s a policy in which I have no say, so it’s pointless for me to fret about the morality or even the practicality of it. It’s gonna happen however much I protest it.
But I think one of Bradlaugh’s main points was the spiritual cant that goes along with government-disbursed foreign aid, and how repulsive he found it. I agree, but I also think that the cant too has a pragmatic purpose–to make such a huge waste of enormous sums of money more palatable to the public. And to give them the opportunity to “feel good” about themselves. It’s like the liberals I know who give money to street bums. They know the money is going to go for booze, drugs, and cigarettes, the latter of which they hate more than George Bush, but it makes them “feel good” to fling coins at the rabble.
Susan, it makes me feel good that the liberals you know are giving their money to street bums! How many are professional bums? Those guys gotta make a living too.
Donna, I think most of them are professionals. I did see one guy outside the CVS in my local town with a sign that said “Out-of-Work Porn Star.”
I’d have given him money in exchange for a photo!
a fully-dressed photo holding the sign.
I didn’t check his–how shall I say–credentials.