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The Aid Game

Nov 17, 2010 Editorial

T&T PM Kamla Persad-Bissesar’s off-the-cuff comment that aid to fellow CARICOM countries in the wake of Hurricane Tomas would be tied to business generated for her country provoked stinging criticism from some of her peers, but more so from irate citizens of the affected countries. The comments seemed quite uncaring and even crass against, say, the popular outpouring of aid to Haiti from across the globe, much less that from its fellow CARICOM neighbours  following the devastating earthquake that struck it earlier this year.
This reaction was not exactly fortuitous: such mass outpourings of aid have gripped and shaped the popular imagination of late. In the last couple of decades there has developed a whole new industry, reacting not only to spontaneous disasters, but that occasioned by the endemic poverty that had gripped much of the “Third World”. This industry, interestingly enough was driven in many instances by celebrities who held massive concerts and other publicity-seeking events that were broadcast worldwide to accompany the images of famine and pestilence meant to stir sympathy and open pocketbooks for increased aid. But behind the glitz and glamour of celebrity faces such as Angelina Jolie, there still remain the structured aid programs that were part and parcel of not just humanitarianism but international diplomacy, that is veiled from the average citizen.Basically, foreign aid to poorer countries started after WWII after it was evident that the old colonial relationships that had dominated much of the world would have to be jettisoned. At the outset, aid was principally driven by a common sense of humanity that cut across national boundaries — what might be called cosmopolitan altruism.
Aid proponents in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Gunnar Myrdal and Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, were liberals who felt that the principle of progressive taxation — redistribution within nations — ought to be extended across international borders.
This led to proposals such as those to set an aid target of one percent of each donor nation’s GNP, playing off the Christian principle of tithing (giving ten percent of one’s income to the church) or the Muslim duty of zakat (which mandates donating 2.5 percent of one’s earnings to the needy).
But while duty could be seen as an obligation independent of its consequences, in practice, few of the “givers” saw it in this light. Those who wanted the rich nations to give development aid to poorer ones had to address the challenges of building domestic support for greater aid flows and ensuring that the aid would be put to good use.
Foreign aid programs thereafter rested on two principles: that it should be given as a moral duty and that it should yield beneficial results.
The problem was that the one percent target remained aspirational rather than practical. Outside of Scandinavia, there was never much popular support for giving away so much money to foreigners, however deserving they might be. So aid proponents started looking for other arguments to bolster their case, and they hit on enlightened self-interest. If one could convince Western legislatures and voters that aid would benefit them as well, the reasoning went; the purse strings might be loosened.
The Cold War between the US and the USSR solidified the rationale of self-interest for the donor nation and the two behemoths vied with each other to buy friends and influence them.
Inevitably, strategic interests corrupted the moral imperatives as fantastically high-living tyrants such as Mobutu of Zaire or Castro of Cuba were supported even as their populations languished in poverty. As the Cold War started to wind down, new rationales were sought to support aid. In 1977 the World Bank, officially in charge of abolishing poverty, convened the Brandt Commission to suggest a way forward.
While emphasizing the moral duty to give, the Commissions fell back nonetheless on the enlightened self-interest argument based on the Keynesian assertion that raising global demand for goods and services through aid to the poor countries would reduce unemployment in the rich countries. Not to mention reducing push factors for emigration. While undiplomatic, Kamla wasn’t too far off base.

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