Helping Countries That Can't Help Themselves

The G 20, comprising the twenty nations which account for some ninety-five percent of the global GDP, is meeting this weekend in Washington, D.C. at the invitation of George W. Bush. The topic is the current global financial contraction.

Nothing much will happen. There will be no big news. The conflab will not take up French President Sarkozy's hyperbolic notion of a "second Bretton Woods," a redrafting of the international financial system. As has already been shown in the European Union, countries will protect their own financial systems first, even at the expense of others. This means words will fill the air. Reporters will file copy. Promises will be made. Shakes and grins will be exchanged by all hands for the benefit of cameras and the "folks back in Buncomb County."

Translated, this means the G-20 meeting will be a load of bunk. Hyped bunk.

The League of the High Minded led by UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon and the capo of the UN's Millennium Development Campaign, Salil Shetty, want the G-20, and more to the point, the G-8, to do a lot more than palaver earnestly and grin for the cameras. These two worthies as well as their equally High Minded supporters want the G-20 nations, or at least the G-8 group, or at the worst the G-7 (that's the G-8 less Russia), to spend a lot of money.

Salil Shetty, showing a rare ability to totally lack a grip on reality, avers that there is no lack of money among the developed nations. He proves his point by noting that the governments of the G-7 and even some of the "emerging" economies such as that of China had no difficulty producing torrents of cash to bail out their crashing banks and other financial institutions.

He concludes that these governments lack the political will to cough up the bucks needed to achieve the Utopian goals set in 2000 for the Millennium Development Campaign. Shetty goes on to argue that if these miserly, self-centered rich countries don't spew out the streams of cash thought to be needed to achieve the grand anti-poverty scheme, all hell will break loose.

Shetty paints a dystopian view of a world absent the successful achievement of the Millennium Goals which out does the bad acid trip visions of the Apocalypse set out by somebody named John. There will be wars beyond count. Disease will run rampant not only in the impoverished areas but everywhere. Presumably wolves would be heard howling in the rubble of a civilization brought down by the selfish greed of countries such as the US which did not pony up the lousy mite of seven tenths of one percent of the GDP.

Ban Ki-moon was not given to the bleak, second rate sci-fi picture of the world in flames. His letter to the jefes of the G-8 was far more restrained. It was no less demanding of urgent, expensive action on the part of the developed nations. The UN SecGen exhorted the rich of the world to "stand in solidarity" with the poorest people of our planet.

(The Geek always chuckles when a "statesman" shows his age by dredging up from the Vault of Treasured Cliches some ancient commie-type motto. In this case it was "to stand in solidarity." The Geek remembers hearing or reading that verbal excretion hundreds, if not thousands, of times back in the Sixties--and not always from foreign sources.)

It's time do something that the Clinton Administration and oh, so many others failed to do back in the glory days of Y2K (and subsequently.) It's time to get a grip.

As a matter of ethics, or if you are religiously inclined, morality, the notion of the prosperous economies giving 0.7% percent of their GDPs to the UN to dole out through a host of programs run by both governmental and non-governmental entities so that extreme poverty might be cut in half by 2015 is completely unobjectionable.

Along with the other components of the Millennium Development Goals, it is even laudatory. Eliminating poverty, enhancing basic education, empowering women, reducing disease, lowering child and maternal mortality, making the world safe for the color green are all worthwhile causes. The Geek can cheer those who would undertake the tasks, rise to the challenge and similar trite, hackneyed cliches.

The attempt by the League of the High Minded, which includes President-elect Obama, to cozen and coerce the citizens of the wealthy countries of the world to accept an involuntary transfer of money from their national economies to the UN and through that entity to a host of governmental bodies and NGOs is neither laudable nor appropriate. The attempt to sell the Utopian ideals embodied in the Millennium Goals as a matter of self-interest and national security on the part of the developed countries is both intellectually and historically dishonest.

The record of foreign aid in terms of its authentic accomplishments, its benefits to either the quality of life for the citizens of recipient nations or the legitimate, definable national and strategic interests of the donor is spotty--at the very best. More often than not, the aid has assisted only intermediaries such as NGOs and bureaucracies, portions of the donor nations' economies, and the personal wealth of members of the recipient nations' elites.

Foreign aid, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how generous has, with very few exceptions, skewed the economies of the recipients, sapped the internal problem solving capacities of the recipients, fostered long-term dependence on foreign assistance, caused crises of rising expectations, and spread corruption. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies with singular vigor when wealth is transferred for lofty or for basely self-interested reasons.

Since to be successful all foreign policy must begin with a realistic appreciation of national and strategic interests and a clear-eyed understanding of the policy's interlocutor, it is necessary to ask two fundamental questions.

What national security or strategic interest does the US have at stake in any particular impoverished society and its (typically) inept, corrupt and barely legitimate country? To put it another way: Does it really matter to the present and future security and prosperity of the US and its citizens if a country, say the Democratic Republic of Congo, energetically disassembles in a welter of blood and body parts?

The second question is equally blunt. Will the aid have a real, positive and long term beneficial effect upon the recipient society? Given the contextual realities of geography, climate, demographics and history, will the aid that seems so beneficial turn out to be such over time?

To zero in on one component of the Millennium Goals: Long term would it be good or bad to lower child mortality in a society which already exceeds the carrying capacity of the territory it occupies? Or, to take another of the Millennium Goals: If a country actually has no viable economic reason to exist, just how does one go about developing it? With what? For what end?

Not wanting to seem to be a model of the flinty-eyed, cold-hearted realpolitiker, the Geek has a modest proposal to make. Ask every American family if it would like to donate 0.7 percent of its "GDP" (pre-tax income) to be transferred via the UN and its subsidiaries including NGO's and national governments alike. For those which reply in the affirmative, provide a means for automatic deduction from paycheck or bank account.

Of course honesty would require that that the families be informed that the UN, were it to be a private entity, would be subject to prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. The same proviso must be entered regarding a number of NGO's to say nothing of recipient governments.

Honesty and fairness (both qualities high on the list of virtues espoused by the League of the High Minded) would also require a disclaimer not unlike those found on ads for new stock issues. It might read something like this: "History shows that most, if not all wealth transfers of this nature have failed in their purpose and brought about adverse consequences."

Bet Ban Ki-moon and Salil Shetty won't go along with this way of doing business. Realism and High Mindedness don't play well with each other.