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December 31, 2004

2005: The year of non-military aid?

Faced with one of the worst tragedies in modern history, the U.S. government responded – with $15 million. OK, make that $35 million. This is our contribution to the effort to help eleven countries recover and limit the death toll after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

How much is $35 million? Not much, really. It’s enough to buy two souped-up (or three bare-bones) Blackhawk helicopters. (We gave Colombia 22 Blackhawks between 1999 and 2002.) It’s what it costs to run the aerial herbicide fumigation program in Colombia for about three months. It’s more or less what the Republican party plans to spend on inaugural celebrations.

No wonder the UN’s emergency relief coordinator (and former special representative for Colombia), Jan Egeland, allowed the word “stingy” to pass his lips when talking about wealthy nations’ contributions. As an editorial in Thursday’s New York Times correctly noted, “Mr. Egeland was right on target.”

Responding to this allegation on the PBS Newshour, USAID administrator Andrew Natsios on Wednesday blamed the perception of U.S. stinginess on “a European formula” for measuring generosity. This formula, “which we've never used in the United States in 55 years, … is to use a percentage of our Gross National Product” to measure overseas aid amounts.

No wonder we’ve never used this measure – it makes us look terribly stingy. With 0.13 percent of GDP devoted to overseas development assistance, the United States lags far behind other (though smaller) donor nations like Denmark (0.96 percent), Norway (0.89), France (0.38), the United Kingdom (0.31), and Canada (0.28), according to the UN Development Program (PDF file, look at table 16). In fact, by this measure, the United States is dead-last among donor countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Natsios then said something remarkable. The United States cannot try to catch up to other donors using this measure, he said, because “if we did, we would dominate the entire world and overwhelm everybody with the amount of money.”

Let’s stop there for a second. Is it actually undesirable for the United States to “dominate the world” with development assistance? How is it that we can be so comfortable dominating the world in so many other measures – from scientific achievement to pop culture, from nuclear warheads to aircraft carriers to armored divisions – but that we want to avoid dominating the world in aid to fight hunger, poverty, ignorance and disease?

As we enter a new year, more than three years into the “war on terror,” it’s time Americans started asking that question. The tsunami-aid spat, combined with the way that military action has far outpaced efforts to rebuild Iraq, should force some badly needed questioning of U.S. foreign aid priorities.

Our current priorities have led us to project an image to the rest of the world of a country that spares no expense for military endeavors – from invading Iraq to years of mostly military aid to Colombia – but has far, far less to offer for disaster relief, health, education, generating goodwill, or strengthening the institutions of democratic allies. (Since Jesse Helms’ evisceration of the old U.S. Information Service in the 1990s, we don’t even spend enough on P.R. to counteract that perception.) It should by now be obvious that even the most powerful military in history by itself cannot achieve the Bush administration’s stated goals of spreading democracy and making us safer. We must pursue a host of non-military objectives with the same urgency, at the same time.

What does all of this have to do with Colombia? Everything. There are few better examples of a country where the United States has repeatedly tried the overwhelmingly military, punitive route – our aid since 2000 has been 80 percent military / police assistance – with only very poor results to show for it. (For those who think Plan Colombia is achieving miracles, here is what I mean by “poor results”: no change in drug prices or availability here at home; zones that were the key focus of our aid – such as Putumayo and Arauca – still extremely violent, ungoverned and insecure; no progress on impunity for powerful rights abusers; poverty rates not budging. There’s more but this is not the point of this posting.)

At least there’s reason to hope that the mix between military and nonmilitary aid might change after Plan Colombia expires at the end of 2005. As CIP has noted earlier, there are three possibilities for what might emerge after the debate over 2006 aid that will begin in Congress this spring: (1) a continuation of the mostly military strategy; (2) increased economic aid and reduced military aid; or (3) an across-the-board cut as money goes elsewhere.

President Bush’s lightning-fast visit to Cartagena in November made it look like the first possibility – a “Plan Colombia 2” with anti-terror military aid as its main thrust, which is most likely Álvaro Uribe’s ideal aid package – was his administration’s preference. “Next year I will ask our Congress to renew its support so that this courageous nation can win its war against narco-terrorists,” Bush promised.

But some recent statements from Plan Colombia stalwarts give hope that, in fact, the 2005 debate may lead to more economic aid and less military aid. Convinced that Plan Colombia has in fact been a success, they are now talking about increased development aid in order to “consolidate” their perceived gains.

Needless to say, these aren’t exactly signs that the U.S. has seen the light, and will henceforth offer Colombia packages made up mostly of the humanitarian, development, and institution-building assistance the country so desperately needs. But it is a sign that, for the first time in memory, the momentum may be moving away from military aid and toward economic and social aid. Our work next year must focus on maximizing this economic/social component and channeling it toward the institutions and programs that will make the best use of it.

Let’s hope that 2005 becomes the year of the resurgence of economic and social priorities in U.S. foreign policy. Not just in Colombia, the tsunami zone or Iraq, but worldwide. This component has been neglected for too long, and the “war on terror” is running aground without it.

Best wishes for a happier, more peaceful 2005.

Note as of January 1:Just as this entry was being completed, the Bush administration made public the very welcome news that the U.S. contribution for tsunami victims would increase tenfold, to $350 million. Japan immediately responded by raising its pledge from $30 million to $500 million. As U.S. personnel deliver humanitarian relief to victims - many of them in countries where the U.S. image has plummeted lately - let's hope that such generosity with non-military assistance will become the rule, not an exception, in 2005.

Posted by isacson at December 31, 2004 06:01 PM

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