Idealism And Realpolitiks--The MDG At Year 10

Some 140 governmental leaders accompanied by legions of staff, camp followers, and assorted hangers on will be frolicking and conferring in the Big Apple this week. The reason for the crowded festivities in the days before the opening of this year's UN General Assembly is consideration of the first decade of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and introduction of "midcourse corrections" for the upcoming and final five years of the program.

Most of the goals will not be met. That is the major takeaway from the mass of real and virtual ink spilled in the past few days in the run-up to the confab. The picture is dismal enough even when the coarse grain data are used. It gets worse, much worse, when a fine grain appreciation of individual countries is employed.

The overarching sense of failure comes through even in appreciations drafted by people who were involved in the original MDG documents and the specific goals which followed a few years later. The tone of defeat is evident when the opening, very hosanna paragraphs are followed by lengthy recitals alleging why more has not been accomplished and, in all probability, never will be.

Most of the Flying Fingers Of Blame have pointed at the US and, to a lesser extent, other "rich" nations. Even though Uncle Sam is acknowledged as the largest donor, critics are quick to note that even the not-yet-achieved level of international giving promised by President Obama would amount to only twenty cents of every one hundred dollars of overall economic activity, which is well short of the MDG target of seventy cents per one hundred bucks.

Other Western countries do donate at a rate higher than twenty cents per hundred bucks. Of course the total dollar amount is given is far less.

On the "rich" side of the hill complaints have multiplied regarding the various and sundry ways in which donated dollars are either diverted from their intended destinations or simply wasted by recipients: national, international and non-governmental. The usual shorthand way in which the displeasure is displayed is in the always twinned words, "transparency" and "accountability."

Also mentioned albeit in a more sotto voce way are the contributors to failure which cannot be assigned to lack of resources. The primary suspect in this department is the inability or unwillingness of one recipient government after another to engage in necessary social and political reforms which would lead to the internal stability and cohesiveness without which no genuine, sustained economic development is possible. Absent stability and its handmaiden, predictability, it doesn't matter how much money is expended, no development, no improvement in the status of women, no reduction in mortality, no assurance that starvation will not stalk those on the lower levels of economic success is conceivable.

Indeed, this phenomenon, the unwillingness of governments to continence necessary changes, is facilitated by the cash cow of the MDG. Arguably, without substantial changes on the part of numerous, authoritarian inclined governments, the money from MDG generosity is not simply wasted, it assures the continuation of an evil status quo.

Another reason which has been adduced to the less than thrilling performance of the MDG is the failure of many states, particularly in Africa, to embrace effective programs of population limitation. As one of the cited articles insists, the Catholic Church, described as "influential" in Sub-Saharan Africa, is in large measure responsible for this undesirable state of affairs. Left unmentioned is the even more important role played by Islamic clerics in the same region who mouth the line holding the West's emphasis on birth control is a "genocidal" measure aimed at Muslims.

This omission is most unfortunate. Muslim birthrates not only in Sub-Saharan Africa but elsewhere are the highest in the world. And, the truth, down where poverty is the absolute norm, is that there are too many people in the world today. In particular, there are too many people in areas which have the least agricultural carrying capacity.

When the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land, at best, the country must spend an inordinate percentage of its resources on imported food. This, in turn, means the country does not have the resources necessary to create an economic structure which will assure employment. Even states with ample resources, such as Iran and Venezuela, demonstrate that with too many people, particularly young people, there will be too few jobs.

This dynamic implies that one of the most important questions which will not be addressed at the UN this week is the imperative of population limitation. Because of the power of religious beliefs as well as the invulnerability of these beliefs to challenge or even questioning, it is certain that the issue of too many people will be swept under the highly polished conference tables. In lieu of facing the elephant in the room, there will be demands for more money to be given by the "rich" in order to feed the poor. Emotionally charged images of the starving will be brandished about as will dire predictions of horrid things to come if the hungry are not fed by the overweight of the West--primarily the Americans.

The continuation of foreign assistance to overpopulated countries will not be considered. There will be no discussion of the utter irresponsibility of maintaining and enhancing the problem by pumping ever greater sums into the empty bellies of people so unfortunate as to have been born in countries without sufficient agricultural carrying capacity to meet their needs.

The unquestioned given is simply that every life everywhere is too important, too precious to be allowed to waste away in hunger or disease. There is an unstated but compelling apprehension that anyone and everyone must be held harmless from the consequences of having been born as a result of irresponsible government policies based on premises which have no realistic basis.

The representatives of these many irresponsible governments and their supporters among religions and non-governmental organizations will demand never ending transfers of wealth from the citizens of much more responsible and provident nations. These demands will escalate until there is no more wealth to be transferred--unless a major restructuring of the attitudes underlying foreign assistance including the MDG is made.

The reality of life requires that all parties, donors and recipients alike, recognize that the accomplishment of the MDG rests not on money per se but on the number of people who are at the table eager to eat the pie of international assistance. This means, ironically, that the success of some MDG components such as the reduction of malnutrition or infectious disease works against the success of the overall program.

There is another, more compelling, and far more realpolitik rooted reason to get down to the first principle of population limitation. At some point in the not too distant future, the citizens of the Western donor countries, democracies one and all, will cry, "Enough!"

The combination of the Great Recession, demographic changes, longer life expectancy, and a long experience with a certain, admittedly high, standard of living will result in the various electorates suffering terminal donor fatigue. There is no way on this Earth that the citizens of the US and other advanced countries, facing very real problems in their daily lives, will go along with the endless wealth transfers implicit in the MDG and the inevitable follow-ons.

Both as individuals and as members of a society, a polity, Americans and their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere will question how much they should reduce their standard of living in order that the seemingly endless needs of people in other areas of the world should benefit. It must be recalled that foreign aid has never had a broad base of support within We the People and the narrow base will shrink all the more if the demands escalate without any apparent end.

Americans are generous. That inclination has been demonstrated time after time for generations. The American people will support the MDG and akin aid programs but not without end. And, not without the recipients demonstrating a high level of responsibility in how the money is spent. However, demands based upon threats, extortion as it were, for aid without limit will cause a push back which no elected government can ignore without great peril.

It is hard to say how close We the People are to the "Enough!" point today but it is more than passingly strange that President Obama has been notably reticent on the MDG and requesting great infusions of foreign aid cash. The probability of a Republican resurgence does nothing to ease the minds of those who might be hoping in New York to browbeat or guilt trip the US into committing yet more money to the MDG.

The only way out, the only way in which the MDG or similar programs can lay claim to the money of We the People is if the US government can convince us that the expenditures are critical to core national and strategic interests and not merely a nice, moral thing to do regardless of economic constraints. This pitch will be effective only if it can be supported by an honest demonstration that recipient governments are not only accountable and transparent but also responsible in their use of the aid.

That, in its turn, requires the recipients to finally face up to the reality that too many people will mean failure. Failure which cannot be redeemed no matter how much money is expended.

ADMIN NOTE: The Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments. But a spam attack has necessitated defensive precautions for the inconvenience and frustration of which the Geek apologizes.

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.

The United Nations--It's Time For A Change

From time to time the United Nations has been a useful fig leaf covering American policy genitalia. That was the case back in 1950 when North Korea invaded the South and fortuitously the veto-wielding Soviet Union was absent in a snit over the who-will-represent-China problem. Forty years later the UN served the same modesty-protecting role when the US resolved that war and war alone would both restore Kuwait to the ranks of independent states and take Saddam Hussein down a few pegs.

Sporadically the UN has been a fine propaganda forum for the US. Certainly this was the case during the Kennedy Administration when the US scored many, many points against the Soviet Union. We replayed that game during the Reagan years with a greatly diminished audience. Times had changes so there were not that many hearts and minds in need of winning. And, the "virtuous" Americans had been shown often wearing, if not black at least very grey hats.

Other than those occasional benefits the UN General Assembly and Security Council have been venues for Yankee bashing contests. As the decades rolled along, as more and more "nation-states" were admitted to the organization the Great Game of Kicking Uncle Sam became more popular and much more of a full-contact sport.

The Geek was not given to embracing the Kick-The-Ungrateful-Bunch-Out notions of such statesmen as the late Senator Jesse Helms. A slender case could be made for contending that the UN did somewhat less harm than good. The fact that the US paid a disproportionate share of both the organization's operating expenses (currently 22%) and peacekeeping budget (currently 25%) as a form of noblesse oblige.

In short the Geek saw the UN, or at least the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat rather as one might see the dotty uncle at the family reunion--annoying, even highly irritating, but ultimately far more foolish than harmful.

Not any more. Not for some years. To make a confession: The Geek has rather admired the cavalier fashion in which George W. Bush and his jolly crew of neocon ninnies have ignored the UN, rejected a slew of zany UN proposals (most of which were greatly beloved by the High Minded here and abroad) and generally speaking flipped the bird at the Hudson River Folly.

The UN has earned the Geek's disapprobation not because so many of its members engage in the Kick Uncle Sam game. Nor has the Geek's attitude shifted from one of wary bemusement to one of frank hostility because of the financial burden imposed on the United States. None of the usual, superficial reasons for viewing the UN negatively apply.

The reason is actually quite simple. The UN is no longer worthy of the thoughtful respect and consideration which it once may have merited.

The UN has become a vast, bloated assemblage of over 190 countries, many of them without an authentic reason for existence, but rather accidents of geography, demography and colonial pretensions of past centuries. Many of the member states today do not share any basic structure of values with the United States, or the countries called the "West." Many are authoritarian. Some are infected with the zeal of dogma, either secular or religious. There are more than a few which are both.

Quite a few of the UN's enormous membership are anti-democratic. They are opposed to the basic freedoms and rights which characterise a decent regard for humanity. More than a handful of these UN members are despotic, corrupt, repressive, and ambitious to a fault. They are, in short, an unedifying pastiche of the worst features of the social/political/economic landscape.

Overall the collection of bad actors represented in the Hudson River Folly is such that it would be legitimate to ask of countries ranging worldwide from Norway to New Zealand, "What's a nice nation like you doing in a dive like this?"

There is another reason for thinking ill of the UN. It does not work. It is ultimately doomed to being chronically ineffectual. As a mechanism for bloviaton it is unsurpassed. As an instrument for promoting the collective interests of the human race it is a failure.

(The Geek feels the High Minded ginning themselves up for a fast burn through the tropopause.)
There is a justification for this harsh assessment. The UN was founded upon a set of ideals--not ideas, but ideals--which were marginally tenable sixty plus years ago when the organisation established itself in San Francisco. (A venue justly famed as the home of the vigilantes, the beatniks and the Summer of Love among its long line of zany and colorful human creations.)

The ideals underlying the creation of the UN have slipped over the edge to total irrelevance with the proliferation of pretenders to statehood now littering its membership roster.

The ideals foundered on a reef of reality. Here it is. Get a grip on it. Any state, which is to say any government, hopeful of prolonging its existence works on narrow, self-defined self-interest. Self-interest should--must--be understood to include not only the material considerations of territorial integrity and economic sufficiency but also the values on which the government rests whether these arose organically from the soil of historical experience or exploded from some ideology.

Authoritarian, ideologically driven governments are (or, to err on the side of accuracy, historically have been) inherently insecure. Insecure governments are the least likely to accept, let alone operate by the ideals of mutuality and cooperation which resided at the center of the creation of the UN from the framework of the wartime United Nations.

To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, such states are driven to approach any form of multilateral entity with a totally what's-in-it-for-me mentality. No genuine form of collaboration for a common good is possible with actors possessed of such a worldview. Indeed, it is impossible even to gain consensual agreement on what a "common good" might be.

The concept of the commonweal can only exist among individuals (be they humans or states) sharing a common set of values and a common understanding of fundamental precepts and basic principles. There is little, if any, set of commonalities present today in the UN General Assembly or even the comparatively speaking miniature Security Council.

Nor, the experience of recent years demonstrates convincingly, is it possible to fabricate an artifact of commonality from the raw materials of such supposedly "global" problems as pollution, anthropogenic climate change, agricultural shortfalls, and economic collapse. Most assuredly we humans are not, as bumper sticker understandings of international politics hold, "passengers on spaceship Earth."

Pace the High Minded among us, but the best course of action for the United States, the course of action which will do both us and the world the most good is to closely, critically and realistically examine what best suits our self-understood, self-defined national and strategic interests both today and into the future. Realism as to what the US needs to see in the world in order to not only survive but to flourish will lead to the best outcome for Americans, and, arguably the world as a whole.

As an illustration, consider this wording from Senate Bill 2433, the Global Poverty Act which has already been passed by the House with the guidance of vice-president-elect Joe Biden and having as its chief Senate sponsor president-elect Obama.

poverty reduction will take place along with the other internationally recognized Millennium Development Goals, including eradicating extreme hunger and reducing hunger and malnutrition, achieving universal education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating the spread of preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, increasing access to potable water and basic sanitation, ensuring environmental sustainability, and achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100,000,000 slum dwellers.

These are a series of laudable ambitions. Worthy and lofty goals.

Here is the critical question. It is a question which must be answered fully and honestly before e United States commits itself to joining with others through the UN in seeking the achievement of these ends.

Are these goals, each of which is worthy, in and of themselves an American national or strategic interest? Yes, gaining these ends, or any of them, would be nice. But is the achievement of all or any addressing an authentic American national interest? Strategic interest?

Achieving the UN articulated Millennium Development Goals--or any of them--would be nice. Would make us feel good.

Ask yourself this: Does a nation continue to exist, to thrive on a politics of feeling good or acting realistically? Ask yourself: Do feeling good and the realistic pursuit of national interest overlap much, or at all?

On the answers much depends. Our collective present and future depend on them.