The Myth of Missing Aid

"The United States by far is the stingiest nation in the world for development assistance or foreign aid." ~President Jimmy Carter

It is a commonly repeated mantra that the United States does not do enough for the world's poor, ill, and underprivileged. Those who repeat this adage are quick to point out the many flaws of US foreign policy:

"The United States doesn't care about sick people in third world countries, or it would be giving larger amounts in aid."

"The United States is the richest country in the world, but it still refuses to pay more than a token amount to countries that need the money."

"The United States spends its money on war, not peace; how else do you explain the trillions shipped to Iraq and while the money could be better spent on needed aid projects in Africa, South East Asia, and Central America?"

This kind of rhetoric has grown in popularity in recent times, usually added to a long list of problems and mistakes that have been blamed on the Bush administration. While I find that the maxim of missing aid is endlessly repeated across the political spectrum, it has become particularly prevalent truism for those in the Democratic Party. For example, consider this gem:

"For the last twenty years, U.S. foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation." ~Senator Barack Obama

All in all, the media generally seems quite content to let views like this go unchallenged. In a period where it is politically convenient to blame the world's problems on our lame-duck President, I have given up on the media's ability to report the reality of America's foreign policy.

That is why it was such a refreshing experience when I stumbled upon this article in Time Magazine last week. Titled "Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road " the article detailed an interview of President Bush by Bob Geldof, political activist and musician. Here are some of the more enlightening excerpts:

"It is some story. And I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people, who were paying for it. It was, for example, Bush who initiated the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by Senators John Kerry and Bill Frist. In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs - and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge. The U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria - which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.....

...The Bush regime has been divisive - but not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent - but not in Africa. It has created bitterness - but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives. [1]

Stingy, isn't it? I mean, the country that supplies 50% of Africa's food aid in addition to providing the medicine for 2.5 million people (free of charge) is surely doing nothing more than 'keeping up with inflation', right?


As Gedolf's piece demonstrates, a close analysis of the facts shows that the United States is being anything but stingy. The United States has consistently gave the largest amount of aid worldwide. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provides over half of all food aid, working to stem malnutrition and hunger in 82 developing countries. [2] The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has provided care for nearly 6.7 million people affected by the disease (including 2.7 million orphans and) in addition to providing drugs to 1.4 million AIDS patients. Drugs provided to pregnant mothers have saved an estimated estimated 152,000 million infants from being born with the disease. [3] When you add this to the $95.5 billion Americans donate through the private sector (a sum larger than the total aid given by Japan, Britain, France, and Germany) you have a level of international relief unparalleled in human history. [4]

This leads to the question the question: why are there so many calls for dramatic increases in aid? Consider these words by Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton:

"As President, I will wage the fight against AIDS with the passionate commitment it demands. I will ask for $50 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS"

Don't take me wrong- I am not saying that we should spend no money to combat AIDS. However, there is something to be said for prioritizing what we do with our money. More often than not, blanket funding for this kind of aid is the most inefficient way of solving the recipient's problems.

For example, consider the words of Daniel Halpern, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Healthin his Op-Ed for New York Times:

"I was struck by this discrepancy between Western donors' priorities and the real needs of Africans last month, during my most recent trip to Africa. In Senegal, H.I.V. rates remain under 1 percent in adults, partly due to that country's early adoption of enlightened policies toward prostitution and other risky practices, in addition to universal male circumcision, which limits the heterosexual spread of H.I.V. Rates of tuberculosis, now another favored disease of international donors, are also relatively low in Senegal, and I learned that even malaria, the donors' third major concern, is not quite as rampant as was assumed, with new testing finding that many fevers aren't actually caused by the disease.

Meanwhile, the stench of sewage permeates the crowded outskirts of Dakar, Senegal's capital. There, as in many other parts of West Africa and the developing world, inadequate access to safe water results in devastating diarrheal diseases. Shortages of food and basic health services like vaccinations, prenatal care and family planning contribute to large family size and high child and maternal mortality. Major donors like the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as Pepfar, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have not directly addressed such basic health issues.The Global Fund's director, Michel Kazatchkine, has acknowledged, "We are not a global fund that funds local health."

Botswana, which has the world's most lucrative diamond industry and is the second-wealthiest country per capita in sub-Saharan Africa, is nowhere near as burdened as Senegal with basic public health problems. But as one of a dozen Pepfar "focus" countries in Africa, this year it will receive about $300 million to fight AIDS - in addition to the hundreds of millions already granted by drug companies, private foundations and other donors. While in that sparsely populated country last month, I learned that much of its AIDS money remains unspent, as even its state-of-the-art H.I.V. clinics cannot absorb such a large influx of cash....

If one were to ask the people of virtually any African village (outside some 10 countries devastated by AIDS) what their greatest concerns are, the answer would undoubtedly be the less sensational but more ubiquitous ravages of hunger, dirty water and environmental devastation. The real-world needs of Africans struggling to survive should not continue to be subsumed by the favorite causes du jour of well-meaning yet often uninformed Western donors." [5] (Emphasis added.)

 

Sadly, it is not just AIDS donations that are wrong headed. According to CARE International, food aid is similarly hampered:

"Food aid is not the universal or long-term solution.

For more than 50 years, the American people have generously responded to the needs of hungry people around the world primarily through a program called Public Law 480 -- Food for Peace. This program provides food aid as the principal source of assistance for responding to both urgent food crises and chronic hunger. This assistance has indisputably saved millions of lives in its current form.

However, the increasing numbers of undernourished tell us that world hunger cannot be solved in a sustainable way by the provision of food assistance alone. CARE has long been associated with food distribution programs and is justifiably proud of assisting poor, vulnerable, and crisis-affected people worldwide through food aid programming. But current policies and programs have shortcomings.

First, in most years, 70 to 75 percent of U.S. food aid is used to address transitory hunger resulting from emergencies and humanitarian crises. While emergency food aid is vital in times of crisis, it neither addresses the root causes of chronic hunger nor reduces the likelihood of future emergencies.

Second, addressing chronic hunger, as opposed to emergencies, needs sustained, long-term assistance, which is hard to provide under current programs and policies.Current programs have multiple policy goals and short time frames, which often prevent the use of some of the most appropriate, cost-effective approaches and often do not reach the neediest. For example, agricultural programs targeted toward increasing productivity and rural incomes do not often reach the most vulnerable households, which tend to be smallholders or day laborers. Further, most interventions are fragmented and undertaken in isolation by several different agencies, each having separate funding streams, time frames, and reporting requirements. Such fragmentation diffuses the overall effectiveness of these programs. [6] (Emphasis added.)

What then, is the solution to the massive problems of global poverty, hunger, and epidemics? As we can see, simply increasing the dollars spent on aid does little more than provide a temporary solution for a long term problem. Surprisingly, President Bush has a solution for this two. According to Geldof:

"[Bush] thinks like a businessman in terms of the bottom line. Results. Profit and loss. There is an empiricism to a lot of his furthest-reaching policies on Africa. Correctly, he's big on trade. "A 1% increase in trade from Africa," he says, "will mean more money than all the aid put together annually." He's proud that he twice reauthorized the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a modestly revolutionary Clinton Administration initiative that enabled previously heavily taxed exports to enter the U.S. tax-free. Even though oil still accounts for the vast amount of African exports to the U.S., the beneficial impact of AGOA on such places as the tiny country of Lesotho, and its growing textile industry, has been startling. "

Who would have thought it? Trade helps people? I know, it seems weird, doesn't it? Isn't free trade the enemy of all hard working Americans?

In reality, trade provides developing countries with a steady source of income. Even more important, trade provides the world's poor with secure jobs. On the other hand, aid provides a limited number of goods that are used up quickly- if used at all. One option is a long term solution that has the potential to transform developing societies. The other option is a quick fix that has the potential to make life temporarily easier for a small amount of people. Which one do you think to be better?

For their part, the developing countries know what they need. While they do like the promise of larger amounts of aid- who doesn't like free money? -the increase in protectionist rhetoric is worrying many across the developing world. Consider these words of a senior Latin American diplomat:

"Look, we're all watching Obama with bated breath and hoping [his election] will be a transforming moment for the world. But now that we're listening to him on trade-the issue that affects us so deeply-we realize that maybe he doesn't wish us well. In fact, we might find ourselves nostalgic for Bush, who is brave and courageous on trade and immigration." [7]

Indeed, support of trade has become a matter of national consensus. According to the most recent Pew Global Attitudes Project, world opinion is overwhelmingly in support of free trade. As said in the section on opinion of globalization and trade:

"People around the world approve of key elements of economic globalization and believe that free trade and free markets are good for their countries...

In all 47 nations included in the survey l large majorities say international trade is a good thing for their countries. In nine countries, at least 90% of respondents support international trade. Positive views of international trade are particularly widespread in Africa, the world's poorest region. More than eight-in-ten people in the 10 African nations surveyed believe that trade ties are having a positive impact." [8] (Emphasis added.)

According to the 45,000 person survey, 75% of Middle Easterners, 79% of Latin Americans, 83% of Eastern Europeans, 84% of Asians, and an astonishing 88% of Africans think that international trade is good for their country. [8] This global support for free trade makes the Democrat's protectionism puzzling. After all, aren't they the ones who think we need to start paying attention to world opinion?

Of course, this is a problem much larger than petty Presidential politics. According to the same study referenced above, support for free trade has decreased by almost 20% in the last 5 years. For a country that is supposedly concerned about the welfare of the rest of the world, this is a dangerous attitude. Even more puzzling is the growth of support for aid packages during the same time period. If we truly want to help the 'third world' than we can do nothing better than trade with it.

Perhaps this was put best by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni during a 2003 meeting with President Bush:

"I don't want aid; I want trade!"

 

[Note by the Author: I first wrote this peice for my official blog, The Scholar's Stage.  Please feel free to check out the prettier, more nuanced version of this article over there.  (One of the biggest differences is that The Scholar's Stage uses color in its posts, something one cannot do here.)   If you do like this peice,  I encourage you to go and read the older posts on my official blog.]






[1]Bob Gedolf. "Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road." Time Magazine. Febuary 28, 2008.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1717934-1,00.html

[2] Angela Rucker. "Key Players in Food Aid." E-Journal USA Vol 12. September 2007.

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0907/ijee/rucker.htm

[3] Sheryl Stolberg. "In Global Battle on AIDS, Bush Creates Legacy." New York Times. Januaruy 5th, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/washington/05aids.html


[4]Jarslow Anders. "United States Is Largest Donor of Foreign Aid, Report Says" http://www.america.gov/. May 24, 2007

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/May/20070524165115zjsredna0.2997553.html

[5]Daniel Halpern. "Putting a Plague in Perspective" New York Times. January 1, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/opinion/01halperin.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin\

[6] Bob Bell, David Kauck, Marianne Leach, and Priya Sampath."Hunger: Facing the Facts." E-Journal USA Vol 12. September 2007.

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0907/ijee/bell.htm


[7] Farred Zakaria. "What the World is Hearing." NewsWeek. March, 2008.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/117841

[8] The Pew Global Attitudes Research Project. "World Publics Welcome Trade- But Not Immigration" PewResearch Center. October 4th, 2007.
http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/258.pdf