posted
Today, the UN brokered a deal that would resume the flow of aid money to the Palestinian Authority for the next 3 months. Essentially, this is enough to forestall catastrophic collapse of the PA-controlled areas.
My questions are basically these:
What is in the world's best interest with respect to aid to governments that don't see the world "our way?" If we give aid/assistance to governments that are committed to violence, are we endorsing the evil that they do? Or...are we "influencing" those governments by extending aid in exchange for greater access?
HUGE CAVEAT HERE:
I'm hopeful that we can discuss this question of aid and influence/culpability without getting into another bunch of name-calling and vituperation. The last time this came up, Papa Janitor had to lock the thread and we never got anywhere near the discussion I was HOPING we could have about the policy issues from a US or Western-democracy perspective.
I think it's fine to use the PA and Israel as examples, but they aren't the only places on Earth where this question comes up.
So...PLEASE...can we try to keep this thread on a peaceful level of discussion?
I will warn potential poster's in advance that I may feel the need to delete it, or report it to Papa Janitor for his action. I will apologize in advance to our hosts and this board if this thread goes sour.
What can I say...I'm an optimist. I think we can have this discussion here. And I'm genuinely interested in what the folks here might have to say on the topic.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I know the situations are not analogous, but our original "Big Problem" in Viet Nam, was supporting the wrong side at the start. At least at this point we are recognizing shortcomings with the recipient of the aid.
However, it is not in our best interest to have a collapse of civil authority anywhere. That's why we are up to our ears in southwest asia now. We can't talk (or pressure, or bully, or influence in any way) with a vacuuem.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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It's like in Somalia.. we sent humanitarian aid, the warlords scooped it up. There's no such thing as humanitarian aid. It's really just an indirect payment to the person with the most guns. In this case, that's Hamas.
This whole situation makes me sad.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
if we have observers there, if they were complying with international norms and werent encouraging violence in Israel I'ld say ay, but currently I say nay, they should learn when to obey the rules.
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posted
I don't believe in rules so much as I believe in tools. In other words, I don't know that there is one best policy that can universally address the situation.
For example, obviously aid isn't intended for the despotic governments. It's intended for the people in those countries. And it is of great value to reach the people in those countries with gifts and aid. It will help them see our nation as the altruistic people I truly believe we are.
The problem comes when such despotic governments stop such aid from ever reaching the people. There was a reason they found boxes of school supplies in Saddam's kid's palace when we invaded Iraq, and it wasn't because he needed a bunch of straight-edges. They simply didn't want the stuff to reach the kids and create a positive impression of the US.
I feel we do have a moral obligation to put money places where it will allieviate suffering and pain. However, we also have a moral obligation to steer money away from those who would use it to further suffering and hunger.
This is why I favor that aid generally be non-monetary. If there are goods they need to get to their citizens, I lean towards providing the goods. If there are services they are having a problem with, such as irrigation or infrastructure, we send it people who can help with that work and teach people how to do it as well.
If the help is refused, it further casts the despot in a negative light and weakens him, and if it's accepted, we can offer the help in a proper context and in the way that gives us the greatest control over how it is perceived.
I recognize that goods can be redirected or resold. Like I said, tools, not rules. But it's better than handing over cash.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Somalia is not a good compair. Hamas is at least a popularly elected (with international observers) government. And, they actually have established a measure of civil authority. Civil collapse is still not a desired option.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I'm wondering if a stable bad government is better than no government. For example, the PA is at least a notch above the chaos that warring factions of militant bands would cause. If you look at the last few days in various areas where there are factions fighting within the PA-controlled areas, I think it's pretty obvious that things could get worse.
I'm not sure there's a BEST policy either, but I'm betting there's at least something like a tipping point we can guess at and try to stay clear of.
My sense is that if the universities are closed, and the troops aren't paid, and the police aren't paid, and then the high- and middle-schools start closing because the teachers aren't paid, there's a point at which there are just too many angry energetic people around without a vision for the future, and way too much time on their hands.
I don't care if the catalyst for violence is radical religious leaders or radical anti-establishment types, or radical racists...whatever. The point is that there's probably a critical point at which too many people have too little to do, and too little say in where their next meal is coming from.
Avoiding that point is probably worth a few bucks.
Ever wonder what the % of GNP that the US gives in aid to foreign countries? Anyone have that figure handy?
I'm betting we're talking decimal dust in terms of a percentage of our wealth. The point being we're really not sacrificing a lot by trying to send aid.
There's still the moral barrier -- that at least some of the aid money/goods go into the hands of people who aren't very nice.
posted
As a percent of GNP, the US gives less than any other western nation in aid, but that number is still higher, in pure monetary terms, than any other western nation as well. I can't give exact numbers, but that's what it boils down to, from memory. I do however know that the dollar amount of US spending on foreign aid almost doubles if you include what the citizens spend on aid as well. That includes American NGOs/Private donations/businesses and the like.
The single highest recipient of US aid is Israel.
I don't really agree with sending blank checks to other governments. I have no problem with giving the money to NGOs to have them do the work however. It's specific, and the money cannot go towards something we didn't intend it for.
It is especially a problem when the money is in the form of loans. Poor countries take this money willingly, but it almost ensures that the only way they will ever get their heads above water again is for western nations to give debt forgiveness. Few nations can survive the crippling debt whilst making any sort of progress on their infrastructure. All the while they build up more debt, and more interest on that debt (or even if it is interest free, it's still more debt).
I don't think money should be given in random amounts, just as I don't think countries should just ask for random amounts either. I think aid should be asked for and given for specific projects. Say a subsaharan country asks America for a billion dollars to build a series of roads and for a water treatment plant. Now that's stuff I agree with. America can use the money to pay (I'm guessing local workers) to do the jobs, and in the end the local economy is stimulated, and the country has infrastructure improvements that will do real long lasting good.
It also lets us see something tangible for our money. It gives people a goal to work for. Aid groups working to raise money for poor nations aren't just raising it for the heck of it now, now they are raising it specifically to fund the rennovation of a village to include modern plumbing, or to build an aid station and stock it with medicine.
If you want to get into the specifics of morality...As for the Palestine Hamas situation....
It is in our best interest I think to have any sort of stable government over there. The money can be funneled directly to NGOs, as it has been before (though not always) and we have ways of making sure it goes right to the people who need it, not through a Hamas corruption strainer to skim some off the top. It is HIGHLY hypocritical of the US to support democracy everywhere...except when we don't like the outcome. Punish the government fine, but not the people. The Israelis aren't totally innocent either, yet we still give them billions more than other nations, some of which is in the form of direct military funding.
quote:posted by docmagik: This is why I favor that aid generally be non-monetary. If there are goods they need to get to their citizens, I lean towards providing the goods. If there are services they are having a problem with, such as irrigation or infrastructure, we send it people who can help with that work and teach people how to do it as well.
I agree. If they need food, send food. If it's medical supplies, send those too. The same goes for blankets or whatever. It's a lot harder to buy guns with MREs than it is with cash.
Or to use a strained analogy, think of it like gift giving. Is it better to send a card with a check or gift card? Or is it more thoughtful to consider what the person needs/wants and find something suitable?
Foreign aid really should be judged on a case by case basis.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
It comes down to a humanitarian hope in situations like this. Aid is provided in hopes that it will get to those in need and that it might forestall or head-off a political collapse. It does have some problems, though.
If the money, or supplies, are scooped up to enrich the powers that be in those countries, it is wasted and potentially more harmful than anything else we could have done. We've seen it in Somalia, in Saddam's Iraq, Marcos' Phillipines, and many other places.
Without the aid, places like the PA may do more than totter on the brink of chaos. While it might be right to show how ineffective Hamas is at providing for the day-to-day needs of the Palestinians, there would be so many innocents there, and possibly abroad, who would suffer. If Hamas collapsed, you could also see Somalia all over again, with fringe groups standing in the place of the tribal warlords. What little stability there is in the Middle East would begin to crumble.
I believe we should give and continue to hope that the aid will be used properly. To not give is to court disaster. And there is the old saw about winning hearts and minds. Perhaps this generation of recipients won't appreciate it, but maybe their children will remember that the medical supplies, food and text books came from the United States. Perhaps it is naive, but from a karmic standpoint, it's never good to turn your back on anyone in need, be they friend or foe.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Re: % of GNP given in aid, my point wasn't to compare us to other nations, but to simply show that we really can afford it. We aren't giving so much that we should wring our hands over the expense.
If sending the aid does nothing -- If it's a complete waste, no big deal in terms of our pocketbook.
If it's aiding dangerous governments who then attack us or our allies using our own money/resources, then, yeah, I think it's a big problem!
In between those two extremes is the consideration of the morality of providing enough aid to satisfy the gluttonous "bad" government officials sufficiently to ensure that we still get some aid to the actual people we're hoping to help...and to influence.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Obviously, there have been times when a dictator was basically milking the aid, purely to amass wealth.
At what point should our state department simply say to that kind of dictator, "Hmmm, how much would it cost us to get you to cop a walk? How much to leave town?"
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Because kingmaking has always worked so well in the past...
Firstly, dictators haven proven hit or miss on their ability to be bought off, but they never leave their post for money. They LIKE being dictators, and money doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of difference.
Second, even if you paid him to leave, someone just as bad, likely his lieutenant, would just step into his place.
Screw the leader, you need to get to the people. Like Bob said, you need to be able to influence them. Aid isn't 100% altruistic, I don't think anyone here is naive enough to think it is. It's not a bribe either. It's largely notion of goodwill being put out in the world, somewhat just to be nice or appease sympathetic citizens, but also to try and make the people of the world think you're a good person/nation.
Buying off a dictator ISN'T going to give them that impression. Creating a system of small business loans and making local infrastructure improvements so babies won't die from lack of food WILL give them that impression. I think America needs to change it's direction in two ways.
1. Stop giving so much military aid. It has rarely worked to our satisfaction or benefit in the past, and those weapons frequently end up in the hands of enemies at some point in the future.
2. Think smaller. Stop thinking of giving five billion to Sudan/Libya/Palestine (name your hostile nation, whatever) for whatever nebulous reason, instead look inside then and see where you can make small improvements that could drastically improve life.
Pick out individual villages and fix their plumbing, build a water treatment plant, build a local hospital, employ local workers to do all these things, create a small bank to give out small loans to locals. Small loans of this type, and I mean in the amounts of like $200 or $300 have proven surpisingly effective in the past. People use this money to purcahse land, or fertilizer and what not to improve their lives and their income, leaving them on a better footing, and the rate of them repaying the loans, even ahead of schedule, is very, very good. I'll see if I can find an article on that.
The Western problem isn't that we aren't trying to help, we are. Our problem is that we don't actually want to have to do anything. We want to write a check then get a letter of thanks and see smiling faces waving EU and American flags, but we don't want to actually pick up a shovel or drive the tractors ourselves. Sad thing is, we could probably spend less and accomplish more if we actually got more involved.
This applies even more to nations with dangerous governments than of those with friendly ones. The people are going to know where the money and help came from, and they will not forget that it was America, or France, or Britain, or whoever that built that local school, not their government. It'll have a real effect. It'll have a TANGIBLE/VISUAL effect.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:posted by docmagik: This is why I favor that aid generally be non-monetary. If there are goods they need to get to their citizens, I lean towards providing the goods. If there are services they are having a problem with, such as irrigation or infrastructure, we send it people who can help with that work and teach people how to do it as well.
I agree. If they need food, send food. If it's medical supplies, send those too. The same goes for blankets or whatever. It's a lot harder to buy guns with MREs than it is with cash.
Although I agree in principle, practically that never works out very well.
Charitable organizations found out during the Tsunami crisis that dealing with actual donated goods; including shipping, sorting, distributing, inspecting and allocating them, almost always costs MORE than just giving the local people money to buy those things from manufacturers. When you haphazardly collect charitable goods, it costs more than their value to get them to their final recipients.
This doesn't include major manufacturers and suppliers who already have inroads into the local economy, who can simply provide the same services they would anyway, on a charity basis.
The thing is though, to be cost-effective in actually giving STUFF to people is REALLY difficult, it almost always ends up costing you alot more. This is one of the criticisms of, for example, the Peace Corps, which spends more on preparing its members for culture shock, than on all the humanitarian aid they do when they are deployed. Unfortunately, sometimes all that will be effective is cold hard cash. Money talks.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
It's a really hard call, and sometimes it is only in retrospect that we can determine if our policies were helpful or harmful. For all their terroristic activity, Hamas is strongly involved in humanitarian aid for their people. That's how they got elected -- they take care of their population. Would I want to support Hamas? No way. Could foreign support facilitate a positive change in Palistinian government? I don't know. I also suspect that folk who swear up and down that they DO know for sure what the result of our policies will be are full of it. Either that, or they understand things a whole lot better than I am capable of.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:posted by Orincoro: Charitable organizations found out during the Tsunami crisis that dealing with actual donated goods; including shipping, sorting, distributing, inspecting and allocating them, almost always costs MORE than just giving the local people money to buy those things from manufacturers. When you haphazardly collect charitable goods, it costs more than their value to get them to their final recipients.
That's true, if the goods are collected here then shipped. So why can't we take the money there (or someplace nearby), buy from local manufacturers ourselves, and then distribute?
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Unfortunately, while we have the means to directly distribute goods to those who need them, we don't have the ability to do so (through the U.N., Army Corps of Engineers, or a similar body) short of a massive and recognized disaster; most sovereign nations, not unreasonably, resent what amounts to a military presence in their borders, even if the purpose of that presence is humanitarian.
In the case of a group like the PA, aid *can* serve far more than just assisting the people; it also provides a direct example of the United States working with rather than against an Islamic nation in an area where many groups are inclined to view the U.S. as nothing more than an Israel-supporting oppressor. In places where most of the view provided to citizenry of the U.S. comes from such groups, counter-examples are invaluable.
Making such efforts more than token, or counter-productive efforts that serve to arm the violent and opporessive, is a quandry, no question.
I somewhat wonder if indirect contributions to groups seen as neutral (Doctors Without Borders, for example) might be more effective; they can enter the country without being seen as intrustive and directly apply the aid given. While the contributions would not necessarily have as much of a positive public relations effect, the stabilizing effect would still be well worthwhile.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
My problem with aid is that it seems like there're strings attached with monetary aid. To me, that's not a gift; that's a bribe.
I would prefer that we either (a)give the money to those who need it with no caveats on what they can do with it, or (b)give them the actual things they need (as someone else mentioned) instead of money, or (c)mind our own business, a la pre-WWI non-interference policy.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: So why can't we take the money there (or someplace nearby), buy from local manufacturers ourselves, and then distribute?
I think that presents similar problems. Our people going in and trying to control supply routes they aren't used to and people who aren't used to them is difficult and counter-productive. Basically the U.S. trying to control every situation abroad just won't work, even if that means that some of the money will eventually fall into the hands of terrorists.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I would reccomend to anyone who hasn't to read: The Ugly American
It has a lot of good points on foreign relations in general as well as some specifics about good versus bad aspects of charity. (and it's a novel so it's a quick and easy read)
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
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