The Foreign Service Journal, December 2010

community —most notably the World Bank, Scandinavian aid agencies and private groups — mounted complex, diverse, long-term population control programs in collaboration with numer- ous poor countries. Thanks partly to this great effort, today the world’s pop- ulation in 2050 is forecast to top off at about nine billion rather than nearly double that. Doesn’t that constitute a great success? Other examples of major problems successfully addressed by foreign aid in many countries that otherwise re- main poor include the reduction of HIV/AIDS rates, the eradication of smallpox, substantial increases in agri- cultural crop yields, improvement of transportation networks, the creation of clean water and sanitation facilities, widespread increases in literacy, ex- tension of women’s rights, and suc- cessful stimulation of civic partici- pation and democracy. In addition, the development com- munity continually (with varying de- grees of success) provides humanitar- ian and reconstruction assistance to the victims of natural disasters and civic conflicts all over the world. In addition to Haiti and Pakistan, other cases often in the news are Gaza, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Timor- Leste, Bosnia and Kosovo. Aid in Support of Political Objectives Most critics of foreign aid overlook a key point concerning the use of bi- lateral foreign economic assistance: Such assistance often directly supports major political and strategic objectives being sought primarily through diplo- matic and military means. Because of this positive reinforcement, it is per- fectly possible for a U.S. aid program not to achieve much poverty reduc- tion or economic development in a given country, but still be a success if it helps achieve overriding political objectives. And even if U.S. assistance does not achieve much because of a broader diplomatic and military fail- ure, do not fault the aid program and its managers. Blame the failed policy. Such was the case during the Viet- nam War, where most of our eco- nomic aid was wasted in the course of ultimate policy failure. The current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to have similarities with Viet- nam. The U.S. and some other NATO members are pouring in vast amounts of economic assistance to support our military effort, but it seems that most of it is not producing economic devel- opment. We will only see the politi- cal and strategic results in due course. It is primarily large countries with major bilateral economic assistance programs — such as the U.S., Britain, France and a few others — that fre- quently use such assistance to support political and strategic objectives. Smaller bilateral donors and multilat- eral agencies, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, try to avoid making programmatic deci- sions on the basis of political objec- tives. That is why they have limited or no operations in wartorn countries. During the Cold War, U.S. military bases in Pakistan, Turkey, the Philip- pines and elsewhere played very im- portant roles. A quid pro quo for use of these bases was the provision of bilat- eral economic assistance to the con- cerned countries at much higher fund- ing levels than we would otherwise have provided. I worked on many of these agreements. And we did our best to channel the monies into useful eco- nomic development activities. Most of these activities were suc- cessful, but others, regrettably, had no long-termpositive effect. Even so, our bases helped contain the Soviets and win the Cold War. So was our eco- nomic aid wasted? In the broader scheme of things, certainly not. Or consider Egypt — another stark example of the use of economic assis- tance to support a political objective. The Camp David accords of 1978 es- tablished peace between Egypt and Israel, with the U.S. agreeing to pro- vide substantial economic and military assistance to both countries. For many years thereafter, eco- nomic aid to Egypt totaled just under $1 billion per annum, and that to Israel a bit over $1 billion. USAID main- tained a large mission in Cairo to ne- gotiate and manage a substantial port- folio of aid programs and projects. In recent years the economic levels have declined, however. The adminis- tration’s congressional budget justifica- tion for Fiscal Year 2011 requests 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 S P E A K I N G O U T If U.S. assistance does not achieve much because of a broader diplomatic and military failure, do not fault the aid program and its managers. Blame the failed policy.