Cheers And Tears For South Sudan

Yesterday South Sudan became the 196th independent sovereign state on Earth.  The raising of the new national flag was the result of intensive diplomatic efforts on the part of the US and UK to end a twenty year long defensive insurgency which pitted the primarily African, Christian south against the overwhelmingly Arab, Muslim north.  The post war road to independence has been long--six years--and filled with still unresolved difficulties such as the division of oil revenues and the status of disputed territory.

The most interesting aspect of the MSM coverage of the independence celebration in Juba, the capital, has been the recitation of a seemingly unending litany of problems confronting the place.  Mention is made of the poverty, the lack of education, the feuds which separate the leaders of the new government, the lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs, lack of medical care, lack of almost everything other than oil and fertile land.  Learned tongues cluck over the inexperience of the governmental personnel at all levels.  There is head shaking over the hostility still resident in Khartoum along with dire hints that the matter is not yet permanently settled.

Of course much mention is made of the international assistance which will be coming.  The British foreign minister has promised much.  The US is not far behind.  China, with an eye firmly on the source of the oil of Sudan, has indicated it will be inclined to be generous.  Then, of course, the NGO industry has already cranked up its not inconsiderable resources--most importantly its public relations and lobbying capabilities.  One gets the impression that donors almost beyond count are lining up hoping to toss some money in the general direction of Juba.

Looking at the mixture of hand-wringing and calls for as well as assurance of aid in abundance, one cannot help but think of the US at the time of its foundation.  It matters not which date is selected--that of the Declaration of Independence, the surrender of the British at Yorktown, the signing of the final treaty, or the adoption of the Constitution--the picture was much the same.  The birth of the US, the period from the first shootout at Lexington to the adoption of the Constitution, was a prolonged and painful process lasting the best part of two decades.  At no time would the smart money placed a bet on the success of the Americans.

The US was massively underdeveloped.  It had no industry.  Its only exports were agricultural products and naval stores.  And, the export market for these had been constricted by British action after independence had been gained.  The Americans were riven with internal divisions, not least of which was the split between states where slavery was commonplace and those where it was nonexistent.  The US was broke.  The circulating media were so worthless and specie (gold and silver) so lacking that barter was normal.

The American government was composed in the main of former insurgent fighters with little if any actual governmental experience.  The many strong personalities often clashed in contests of ego and ideology.  Corruption was rampant as is illustrated by the traffic by speculators in the land warrants used by states and Congress in lieu of pay for the men of the Continental Army.

The British had only partially and grudgingly acknowledged defeat when they signed the treaty ending the war.  In the aftermath London did not live up to its obligations under the treaty particularly as regarded the evacuation of military posts on the upper Great Lakes.  Together with their trade policy, this failure to abide by the requirements of the treaty indicated the British expected American independence to be transitory.  As if that hostility was insufficient, the French occupied the Mississippi Valley and showed no sign of leaving.  The Spanish from their colonial outpost in Florida schemed with Americans of doubtful loyalty to the new country to pry loose the territories of the old southwest and attach it to Madrid.

The American population was small in comparison to the land.  Medical care was absent outside the handful of major cities (more like large villages than true cities) and often inept even where it existed.  While Americans were notably literate by the standards of the day, the overall rate of literacy was not much better than the twenty-five percent reported for South Sudan.  And, despite the agrarian nature of most of the US, hunger was far from absent given the lack of a circulating medium of constant value as well as problems with transportation stemming from the very limited and rudimentary infrastructure of the period.

There were no international donors lining up to toss money at the US.  No NGO took up the American plight as the poster cause of the moment.  No UN, no WHO, no WFP stood by eager to provide whatever humanitarian assistance might be needed.  At best, the world was massively indifferent to whether or not the US survived and prospered.  More than a few European states rather hoped that this radical experiment in democracy would sputter and die--the sooner the better.

The US and We the People were very much on our own.  For the Americans of the independence period it was, to use a phrase of the day, a matter of "root, hog, or die."  We would have to solve our internal frictions.  We would have to pay our debts.  We would have to create a government.  Create a currency.  Create an economy and the jobs which would come with it.  We, and only we, would have the duty and privilege of creating a country with a future--or not.

Arguably, the root of our success is not to be found in some sort of unique ability on the part of the leaders of the period.  Nor, it can be shown, was the success attributable to an act of divine providence.  The American success in all its fits, starts, blind alleys, and failures was simply the consequence of having no choice other than national extinction.

As the prospect of being hung in two weeks reputedly has the effect of concentrating the mind most wonderfully so also does the ever-present prospect of national death concentrate the efforts and will of many, many people.  The Americans chose to root rather than die.

The first two generations of independent existence were neither easy nor, in retrospect, pretty.  The challenges were many and great.  The failures of were plentiful.  Many individuals in positions of power acted in the most petty and self-serving ways imaginable.  It was a magnificent muddle with no light at the end of the tunnel until after the second war of independence ended in 1815.  After that, while much remained to do if the American experiment were to prosper, its survival was almost certain.

Perhaps it is most unfortunate that South Sudan will be denied the chance to make it on its own merits.  It may be regrettable that the South Sudanese will not be faced with the stark choice of "root or die."  Arguably, the laudable humanitarian impulses which motivate at least some of the offers of aid and assistance will be the cause of a moral dry rot which will sap the political will and energies of the South Sudanese to make a genuine go of it as a sovereign state with a unique national identity.

As the current situation in South Sudan is considered, it is worth remembering that every rich, powerful, and successful state in the world today was once no better off than is South Sudan.  Every last member of the G-8 or even the G-20 was as internally riven, as poor, as lacking in infrastructure, education, jobs as is South Sudan.  It is worth considering how each made it from that sort of dire beginning to their status today.  One commonality is the absence of external assistance.  Another is that success came only with time, difficulty, and the painful development of internal consensus on what to do and how to do it as well as putting that consensus into practice with genuine structures created organically and not in response to some outside "experts" opinion and advice.

Parents in their understandable desire to save children from pain and mistakes often forget how much they learned by failing, by making bad choices, by having to decide in microcosm to "root" rather than "die."  The same is true in spades when developed, successful states contemplate a new arrival in the international community.

Helicopter moms and dads often discover too late that their constant hovering has done more harm than good to the capacity of their children to fly free and alone in a hostile or at least indifferent world.  Perhaps it is time that helicopter states and NGOs including international organizations learn the same.  Whether hogs or states, not all root successfully.  Some die.

Fighting Wars And Building Nations

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are cranked up to cut the American foreign aid budge with a particular emphasis on payments to the UN.  To say the Obama administration and the UN high command are opposed to the idea is to state the obvious.

Today, even as the greatly feared shutdown looms, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the Hill making his case for the US not to cut funding to the organization.  He reportedly met with a solid Republican wall of opposition.  Even Ban's statement that he had ordered his "managers" to take a whopping three percent cut in operating budgets gained no traction with the stony faced elephants.  No surprise there, given the willingness of some Republicans to take a much bigger whack out of domestic programs.

By and large it is difficult to justify the enormous amount of money paid over to the UN by the American taxpayer, present and future.  Most of the bucks are provided without any strings or even the pretense of effective oversight and accounting.  Many of the dead presidents are spent to the advantage of countries and programs antithetical to US interests.  More are simply siphoned away in the great morass of inefficiency, graft, corruption, and general misfeasance which has characterized so many UN programs for decades.

The money expended on so-called "peacekeeping" activities is wasted at the least.  Few if any of these actions have protected those most in need.  Few have actually kept peace.  Even fewer have imposed peace where such was the greatest necessity next to oxygen in keeping people alive.  With the general exception of Western forces deployed under blue helmets, many of the UN contingents are best noted for their ability to loot, plunder, rape, and contribute to the atmosphere of fear which permeates all combat zones.

Overall, American contributions to the UN should, like foreign aid programs generally, contribute to the achievement of US national interests and policy goals.  To do otherwise is simply stupid.  The Republicans are correct in historical terms by insisting a direct and material link between foreign aid, including UN payments, and our national and strategic interests.

Of course, it can be difficult to the point of impossibility to determine if any given foreign aid program is actually facilitating US interests.  For example, have the billions of bucks extorted from Uncle Sam by one Pakistani government after another really done much to advance critical American interests in the region?  Or, have the billions of tribute served by nightfall to destabilize the sub-continent, further the growth of the Pakistani nuclear program, and served to multiply the internal frictions of the Pakistani public?

The difficulties attendant upon assessing the benefits of direct, bi-lateral aid are multiplied when considering programs administered by the UN which are partially funded by the US.  The several semi-autonomous or completely independent subsidiary bodies of the UN along with the many programs run under the auspices of the Secretariat serve to further complicate the task of evaluating the diplomatic bang purchased by the taxpayer buck.

This is not to state that the Republican notion of treating the UN as a cafeteria where we would pay for what we approved of or what best served our short-term interests while ignoring the rest constitutes the best or most effective solution to the current problem.  Nor does it imply that an exercise in tying UN reforms to the amount of American funding would improve the situation significantly.

There is, however, a very important reason for the US to keep money flowing to the UN.  The reason allows for the creation of more effective and appropriate means of measuring success--and consistency with larger US national interests and policy goals.  It might even allow for saving money over in the Pentagon budget.

The evaluation of what the UN can do better than the US acting alone or in partnership with a limited number of associated states must start with a ground truth.  This is simply that there is a vast gulf between fighting wars and building nations.

When the US under both George W. Bush and the current administration failed to make the necessary distinction in the Afghan context, the result has been, if not failure, then an incomplete success at best.  As a well presented piece in RCP underscores, the American military services exist to fight wars--not build nations or states.  On the other hand the UN along with relevant regional entities is perfectly situated to engage in the long duration mission of trying to build a functioning nation and, ultimately, nation-state from the rubble of a failed state or a tribal agglutination which never quite reached nation status.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army and Marine Corps have spent entirely too much time, energy, and money on providing governance to the locals.  Rather than concentrating with total intensity on the mission of defeating the enemy, a task which requires some limited excursions into the sphere of governmental services, the ground combat forces have been tasked with addressing the full ambit of governance needs and aspirations until the indigenous regime has been able to take over.

The diversion of effort along with the inevitable frustrations when the foreigners could not provide all that the locals might wish for have crippled the war fighting effort severely.  From the moment the very first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan (or Iraq) the tasks of governing, of providing essential services other than physical security, should have devolved on some agency other than the US military.  Whether this agency should have been part of the US State Department acting solo or the US acting in tandem with a coalition is open to debate.  What is not open to debate is the requirement for an entity outside the Pentagon to undertake the manifold tasks of nation-building.

The Republicans would be very well advised to stop and think about just how the UN could participate or even take the lead in the nation-building tasks of today and into the future.  That the endless chore of building or rebuilding states will be with us for a long time to come is as evident as the headlines from Libya or the Ivory Coast or Yemen.

There is an ironic symmetry in the idea of the UN being the lead agency in global nation-building missions.  It is rather like placing an impossible task in front of an entity which can do very little, if anything, well or quickly.  But, the record of attempts at building nations by outside actors hints at the probability of a bungling, slow moving, and contradiction riddled agency such as the UN being more successful at the task than would be a fast acting, take-charge-and-move-out model of efficiency.

Military forces are intended to move fast, strike hard, to kill people and break things with minimum losses to themselves.  The UN and other international agencies along with NGOs are infinitely better suited to the long term and often futile jobs such as trying to build a functioning nation-state from unpromising materials.  It would be in the best interests of the US--and the Republicans--to understand this and provide the necessary support to the UN and others.

In a similar calculus, the use of money in bi-lateral aid with the intent of keeping a nation-state viable is a lot cheaper in both treasure and lives than waiting for implosion and its consequences.  It is also far preferable to spend foreign aid dollars in the effort to keep a moderate Muslim state intact and developing than it is to wait for the advocates of violent political Islam to make their play for power.  To update an ancient cliche: A few millions of bucks worth of prevention is far better than billions of bucks of cure.

This orientation--prevention of instability or hostility by promoting development in a moderate political context--implies that at least some of the more chest-thumping Republicans would be very well advised to rethink the emphasis on foreign military aid as opposed to money spent on civilian projects.  It is hard to see where any military aid expended since the end of the Cold War has furthered American interests and accomplished meaningful policy goals.

The same may be said of some of the very big ticket items in the category of development assistance.  All too often the US aid dollars have gone to glitzy projects much beloved of the recipient regime's elite but of no utility to the average citizen.  At the same time major benefits may have accrued to American businesses but few have gone to the local hoi polloi.

This dreary but all too accurate picture implies that the best use of American foreign aid money is to be found either in regional development efforts or in small scale but carefully targeted projects which can be sustained by the locals and will directly and obviously benefit the same locals.  This sort of project is never big ticket and lacks glitz and glamor.  It does have the upside of actually advancing the overarching American interest in stability and evolution in the recipient society and its polity.

Stable and predictable evolution in an economy, a society, and its polity means the probability of either state failure or the takeover of the state by an extreme ideology is minimal to nonexistent.  That, in turn, means wars which will remain unfought, interventions that will be forever unnecessary, and exercises in nation-rebuilding which will never occur.  Whether undertaken bi-laterally or through a regional organization or even by the UN, this approach would mean that over the long-term, the US saves money and accomplishes interest based policy goals.

And, that, bucko, is far better than the Nancy Reagan alternative--"Just say no," currently espoused by the House Republicans.  It is also far better than the Obama administration's approach of, "Shut up and give over the money."

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.

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Pak Government Says, "Taxed Enough Already!"

While Dick Armey, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the TEA Party types weren't looking, their movement was joined by a new recruit. The newest imbiber of the heady beverage composed in major part of lower taxes is the government of Pakistan.

Pakistan already has one of the lowest tax revenue rates in the world, nine percent of the country's economy, (this should be compared with the 28 percent obtaining currently in the US,) but even that is thought to be too much by the government as well as the Pakistani elite. Almost nobody pays any taxes at all, only two percent of the 175 million Pakistanis are losers in this particular game of life. Again the figure of ninety-eight percent not paying a single rupee should be compared with the estimated forty percent of Americans who fork over nada to Uncle Sam.

It isn't that Islamabad doesn't need revenue. As a result of the massive flooding of recent weeks, the government is faced by umpteen billion dollars worth of recovery, repair, and reconstruction costs over and above the customary expenditures for a bloated, inefficient, and corrupt legion of civil servants, the building of nuclear weapons, and the appetite of an army always alert and ready for the Indian hordes to pour into Kashmir.

The Carnegie Endowment has issued a blunt report on Pakistan's Nation of Tax Avoiders which pulls few, if any, punches. The financial elite of the country in conjunction with politicians both in and out of uniform have resisted any attempts over the past six decades to install an equitable, progressive system of taxation which would meet the legitimate needs of government. Led by the large landowners of Pakistan's highly lucrative agricultural sector and ably supported by the urban upper and upper middle classes, government after government has backed down from even modest changes in the tax code. It might be noted that agribusiness pays no taxes on anything, ever.

The US and other donor states have been huffing and puffing something fierce over the demands by Islamabad that the taxpayers of "more fortunate" countries spew forth the gushers of money said to be needed in the wake of the flood while wealthy Pakistanis sit back free from any obligation to their own country. Even the Obama administration has detected a lack of fairness in this arrangement.

Washington and other capitals have been placing a surprisingly high degree of pressure on the What-Us-Tax? Zardari regime. While some of the pressure has been applied with a view to encouraging Islamabad to reform the tax system, much has been directed to a much more modest goal--collecting all the revenues to which the central government is currently, legally entitled. Simply getting the money which is owed by the taxable members of the elite today would generate an additional ten billion dollars per year according to the former director of the central bank.

Ten gigabucks annually would not cover the costs of rebuilding but chump change it ain't. You don't have to be Allan Greenspan to understand that.

But, the government of President Zardari hasn't gotten the message. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, it has received the message from abroad, but it has heard a domestic message more loudly. The domestic elites of Pakistan (which includes the military both active and retired) have countered with a resounding and unified, "No!"

Of course it would be impolitic in the extreme for the Zardari government to tell the truth. To say, "Our Mr Bigs won't pony up and any attempt on our part to make them do so simply means they will destabilize the country, at the least, putting their money in Swiss accounts and getting the next flight out of town."

No, the Islamabad Movers and Shakers will be more delicate, more indirect, more implicitly threatening. The man who wrote the cited Carnegie report, Akbar Zaidi, puts it this way. "If you don't help us, the economy will crumble. The Taliban will take over. And, there goes your war on terror."

Zaidi has it right on. Islamabad will go to its default position: Pay up or something horrid but unspecified will occur. It has worked before, time after expensive time. And, it will work again.

It will work not because Pakistan is, as has been claimed so often by American presidents from Nixon to Obama, a key "ally." Pakistan has not been an American ally for more than a half century and isn't going to become one no matter how many greenbacks are shipped over there.

Pakistan has importance to our national and strategic interests for two reasons only. The first is geographic. The overarching second reason is simply that Pakistan is a member of the nuclear club. Were it not for the second factor, the first would be of no compelling moment. There are sufficient pieces of real estate around the world which can serve as (to use the dramatic but less than accurate formulation of President Obama) "the central front."

The nuclear factor is the critical element in the equation. It is what gives Pakistan the muscle necessary to displace the domestic responsibility for flood reconstruction--as well as economic development generally--onto the unwilling (and increasingly unable) shoulders of American and other taxpayers.

The question as to the limits of Pakistan's nuclear based extortion has been raised by a most unlikely champion--the International Monetary Fund. Recently the IMF held back a billion dollar installment of the multi-billion dollar economic stabilization loan taken out by Islamabad two years ago. The reason was Pakistan's failing to undertake a number of agreed upon reforms including a revamping of the tax system.

Previous attempts by the IMF to draw a line in the sand have failed because one or more of the major players invoked Pakistan's "strategic importance." The same dynamic is likely to apply once more. There is no doubt that Islamabad is counting on it.

The donor nations are playing a game of chicken with Pakistan. In the past it has always been the US which has swerved to avoid apparent disaster. The highest probability is that we will do it again--after some "tough" talk from Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Special Envoy Holbrooke. There will be some harsh words, the pronouncement of an agreement, praise for Pakistan's earnest efforts, some tears for the "innocent victims," and the money will flow again, flow in torrents rivaling those of the river at full crest, and with results not much more beneficial.

There may be a lesson here for the American TEA Party types. All they have to do in order to get the US government to do what they wish is to gain a rudimentary nuclear capacity. Then they will have Uncle Sam by the short ones.

That, of course, is a lesson already well understood in Tehran.

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Here Come Those Guys--Again

In this case the "guys" are the government of Pakistan. And, shock of shock, they are coming with hands outstretched and mouths muttering dire warnings of unspecified but horrid things which will most certainly come to pass unless the outstretched hands are speedily filled with billions of dollars.

The cause for the current demand for money is the floods which have wracked the Indus valley with very ill effects for twenty or so million Pakistanis. A second motivation for the escalating cries for largess is the low turnout to date of governments and individuals willing and able to donate to the Pakistani Flood Relief Fund. Other than the US (which has reasons other than the altruistic and eleemosynary,) the UK (which has motives other than the humanitarian) and a few other countries such as Australia and Denmark, there have been few national donors.

The membership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has been conspicuous by its absence from the UN's list of donor countries. Regional allies such as Iran and China have not shown any particular eagerness to step up and start writing checks.

The Pakistani government is facing a very real, perhaps existential, crisis. The probability of Pakistan joining the ranks of collapsing states went up orders of magnitude as the flood waters washed down the Indus. A certain level of both panic and prevarication on the part of the government is expectable.

But, as has so often been the case in the past, the government figures go too far, way too far in their rhetorical overkill. The centerpiece of the Words From Islamabad has been the explicit threat of "extremism." The narrative reads simply, "Give us money, lots and lots of money, with no questions asked or accountability required, or there will be extremism beyond imagining in the days to come."

Even if there is a measure of truth to this equation, the blunt wording transmogrifies a request for humanitarian and economic aid into one more extortionate threat. While extortion works, particularly on the US, it is a limited tool. And, the Pakistani government is running up against the limits.

It is the realization that the old trick of your-money-or-your-life may be losing its magic which has driven some of the more risible bits of Pakistani official exaggeration. For example, the government trotted out one Salman Ahmad, a popular musician, who averred that Pakistan's one hundred million people under age 25 "feel abandoned by the world."

Get a grip, Salman, the vast majority of those hundred million, particularly the ones who live way up country on the banks of the Indus and the tributaries don't know squat about the "world" and wouldn't have the slightest notion as to whether or not they had been "abandoned by the world." Most of these anti-American, anti-Western, pro-Islamist, pro-Taliban, past or present inmates of madrassas lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia know no more of the world and its doings than permitted to by the imams and other clerics who control their lives.

It will not matter how much aid the US provides. It will not matter how many Pakistanis owe their lives to an American flown helicopter. It will not matter how many Pakistanis survive on MREs which meet the requirements of Islamic law. It will not matter how many Pakistanis recover from injury or disease due to the presence of American medics or medicine. When all is done, when all the money has been spent, when people total up their experiences, no lasting credit will be thrown in the direction of the US.

To put it bluntly, all our efforts, all our money, all our assistance will not buy any friends in Pakistan. Heck, it won't even rent us any. Ten days from now, or ten months, or even ten years hence, Pakistanis will still be overwhelmingly anti-American, anti-Western. Or, of course, there is always the strong possibility they will be even more willing to piss on Uncle Sam's face than they are today.

The role of Islam in the defining of the Pakistani nation and state assures that the US will always be right in there with Israel and India as the "main enemy." Particularly after the dictator Zia established his "Islamization " program with the aid of Saudi clerics and money, the orientation of Pakistanis generally, the views of young Pakistanis in particular, would be antithetical to the values, imperatives, and goals of the US and the rest of the West.

A little bit of money is not going to change that ground truth. The billions of aid haven't altered it in the slightest. The outpouring of aid, both governmental and private, following the Kashmir earthquake didn't erase a jot or tittle of the profound and pervasive anti-American sentiments of the Pakistanis. If Richard Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton, or President Obama really, really believe that more US aid now will alter the reality of the human terrain in Pakistan, they are badly out of touch with the real world.

Admittedly, the amount of cash promised by the US is a mere bagatelle compared to TARP or the "stimulus program," it is nonetheless a matter of tossing the money of the future down the rat hole of today's Pakistan. Best case a little bit of the oodles and gobs of borrowed (or simply created) money will go to some more or less useful purpose after the majority has stuck to the fingers of Pakistani governmental wallahs, the vested interests of the legions of NGOs, the get-a-little-for-yourself crowd at the UN, and hordes of middlemen, contractors, and assorted camp followers of disaster.

This may be a highly pessimistic view of a dystopian environment, but the weight of history is in favor of it. The Obama administration has already sent the money down the tubes; it will be followed by more, a lot more. Maybe something good will result.

Just don't bet the ranch on it.

Let's Try Bribery--Again

Stripped of all the high minded and lofty rhetoric, foreign aid is simply bribery much of the time. It is an attempt to create a simulacrum of coinciding national interest. That is, when there is an insufficiency of actual coinciding national interest so that two states can work jointly on a joint problem, foreign aid can be trotted out to manufacture the appearance of coincidence of interest.

For obvious reasons this kind of fiction is generally the prerogative of Great Powers, or, at least, countries laden with cash or other equally useful and attractive items. The potlatch of bribe-your-way-to-an-alliance hit a (temporary) pinnacle of drunk sailor spending during the Cold War. The old Soviet Union built steel mills in countries without iron ore while China built eight lane divided highways or dual track railroads from Nowhere to Nothingness. For its part, the US scattered shiny new weapons and fresh from the factory warlike stores to armed forces better suited to brigandage than to any real national security use.

At least most of the recipient states had the common courtesy to stay bought for at least a few years. And, these grateful new allies and supporters of whichever Great Power had spilled the greatest amount of its wealth rarely crossed the line from bribery--a limited activity--to flat out extortion--an endless exercise in ever increasing demands.

Bribery as a tool of foreign policy entered into a brief decline during the years immediately following the end of the Cold War. It was no longer necessary for the US to rent-a-friend by foreign aid largess in most of the world.

There were, however, exceptions. One was Egypt. The US under four administrations has felt (word used advisedly as the process has been less than rational, other than based on careful calculation) that Egypt must continue to be bribed lest something unspecified but terrible occur. Another exception was carved out for Pakistan.

In the case of Pakistan the thin and wavering line separating bribery from extortion was crossed years ago, during the days of Bill Clinton. For each and every year of the Clinton, W. Bush, and, now, Obama administrations, the extortion campaign waged by Islamabad has accelerated. Each of these presidents has felt the need to pay more and more tribute to the Pakistanis lest something horrid happen.

Lest, for example, the Pakistanis gain nuclear power status. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis stir up more trouble with India, or in Afghanistan. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis surrender to the importuning and threats of the Islamists. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis fail to fight with valor and dedication against the terrorists of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani network. Lest, for example, Islamabad cozies up with the Trolls of Beijing.

Billions of dollars have flowed from future generations of Americans to the leaders and military commanders of today's Pakistan. The result of all these bribes, of answering all the extortionate demands of the government and military of Pakistan?

The Pakistanis have the bomb. The Pakistanis have worked overtime to exacerbate tensions with India. The army and government of Pakistan have waged a quarter-hearted war against carefully selected portions of the Islamist/jihadi congeries in the FATA. Islamabad has cozied up with Beijing to the extent of entering into a deal to purchase two Chinese nuclear reactors despite the objections of the US.

Wow! With this record it seems only sensible that we ship another giant bunch of money to Pakistan. Perhaps the concept "more is more" will work. This time.

Secretary of State Clinton, who is well-known to harbor significant doubts regarding the reliability of Pakistan in the "common" war against Islamic terrorist groups (OOPS! Bad Geek! The Geek meant to write, "radical extremest groups") is in Pakistan with a wad of cash in her hand.

The cash, one and half gigabucks worth, is the first installment of the seven and a half billion promised by Congress for civilian development projects over the next five years. This masterpiece of fabricating the appearance but not the reality of coinciding national interest, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman act, was passed last year. The intent is to purchase Pakistani cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani Network as well as to buy a large measure of economic, social, and political stability in the country.

Ms Clinton, in announcing the payment of the civilian portion of the annual Pakistani Extortion Scheme, made loud reference as to the emphasis on civilian development as being a dramatic departure from the bad old days of George W. Bush. She is, of course, being quite economical with the truth.

George W. Bush's administration did hand over ten or so billion dollars in military aid to the military junta which ran Pakistan. This is what the Pakistanis demanded lest something horrid but unspecified occur. Similarly Ms Clinton's husband, Bill, did the same when he was in the Oval. So did George H.W. Bush. And, Ronald Reagan.

It is simple to understand why all these presidents paid off in military coin. When one is paying bribery or extortion, one pays in the coin demanded by the recipient. The Pakistanis have always preferred the warlike to the peaceful as they live in a paranoid fear and desire for one more war with India.

Adding civilian assistance, the building of dams, irrigation projects, infrastructure, electric generation plants, and the like is a form of bonus. The real deal continues to be the military assistance. When the US insisted on providing equipment more suitable to counterinsurgency than to a force-on-force war with India, it was necessary to sweeten the deal--again lest something horrid but unspecified occur.

The sweetener, the bonus is the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Soak Our Great-Grandchildren-To-Rent-The-Paks bill. As with all previous bribes or extortion payments, the money will be spent, some projects will be finished in a blare of Thanks Be To Our Government And Allah The Most Merciful And Compassionate propaganda. And, Islamabad will do what it wants to regardless of US interests or representations.

Islamabad has a ready portfolio of reasons why it cannot do what the US desires. It is oh-so-easy to point at the low repute in which the US is held by the great Pakistani public. It is oh-so-easy to say the US is responsible for the animus held against it due to our Predator attacks, or the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, or US support for Israel, or, even the tolerance showed to homosexuals in the US.

"See! You Americans do it to yourselves! And, that is why, we, the democratically elected government of Pakistan cannot and will not compromise our sovereignty by fighting terrorists or seeking genuine peace with India or even not buying Chinese plutonium producing power reactors."

Unless, of course, the US sends more money. Do that and amazing things can happen. For enough of a bribe, we will even grant visas to the more than four hundred diplomatic personnel who have been waiting for weeks, months. Money can move mountains. (Provided doing so does not run across Pakistani national interests as the Paks define them.)

Mr Obama, Ms Clinton, and Congress have set the stage for We the People to once more learn a basic lesson. Bribery is limited in its effects. Extortion has no limits to its demands.

They just don't teach that sort of thing at Harvard Law School, do they?

Haiti Needs To Go Muslim

Haitian president Rene Preval shared the Rose Garden podium with Barack Obama after they had enjoyed(?) a tete a tete in the Oval. The subject, quite unsurprisingly, was money. More specifically, it was the matter of direct government-to-government subventions by the US.

For a mort of years now the US along with most other donor nations have chosen to funnel the never-ending money stream through international organisations. The reason is simple, direct, and brutally honest: Haitian governments have been so corrupt and inefficient that the money simply disappears into the black holes of greed and incompetence.

In keeping with a tradition which dates to the founding of Haiti, the government has been the enemy of the Haitian people, their prosperity, their lives, their futures. Money from whatsoever source has tended to epoxy itself to the fingers of the elite.

If anything the trajectory of aid and concomitant corruption grew more steep following the touted US-led international intervention in the early days of the Clinton administration. Far from leading to peace, stability, and a reasonable facsimile of prosperity, that intervention and its sequelae have paved the road to more unrest, more poverty, more crime, more violence.

This is not to say that the Haitian president does not have a good case for direct US aid. He does. The earthquake did knock the economic foundations (such as they are) from under Haiti and its government. The government does have expenses other than those involving earthquake relief and recovery. It does need aid to replace lost revenues in addition to the money already pledged by the US and other countries for short- and long-term recovery.

There is opposition in Congress to a program of direct aid. The American president did not seem terribly enchanted with the idea either. When stripped of the usual Obama flourishes, the message was a very hesitant, "We'll see, let me get back to you on it."

Florida is a virtual stakeholder in Haitian affairs given its proximity to the island semi-state and the large number of Haitian ex-pats living there. But even its congressional delegation is split on the matter of direct aid. Representative Ros-Lehtinen (R-Miami) took the negative, invoking the current American financial distress. Congressman Ronald Brise (D-Miami) went positive.

Looking at Haiti both past and present the Geek is of the view that the Haitian government (a) needs the direct aid both from the US and other donor countries and (b) the government will steal and waste the vast majority of money provided. This dynamic is not unprecedented. Not at all. It is commonplace.

Consider other recipients of direct aid from the US in recent years or months. The list includes Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen.

Now ask yourself, "What do these countries have in common?"

That's right, bucko. They are all given to, shall we say, "diversion" of direct aid. And, all of them are Muslim.

The same applies to other beneficiaries of US direct aid such as Egypt.

What should this suggest to the needy Haitian president? Badda-bing! Convert to Islam! En masse. Grab up copies of the Koran and wave them in the rubble of the capital. Make some appropriate noises about Islam's compassion for the poor. Make a few cautious references to the charity of, among others, Osama bin Laden.

Considering that Haiti is all but in name only a "failed state," this will have several important results. Saudi Arabia will dispatch an airborne brigade of Wahhibist clerics and set up mosques or madrassas on every other corner. Jihadists tired of being shot at in the alternately cold and hot mountains of the AfPak region as well as those who are tired of the desert environments of Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan will migrate to the warmer, wetter hills or sunny beaches of Haiti.

And, best of all, the US will turn on the money tap without restriction. Anything to stop the establishment of a "terrorist haven" in a "failed state" only a few scores of miles from Florida.

The Islam option may seem drastic at first sight, but given the potential payoff, should not elude the imagination of a bankrupt government and the sticky pocketed people who are dependent upon it. It is an idea which has intrinsic appeal to aging former members of Papa and Baby Doc's dreaded bully boys, the Tonton Macoute.

So, Mr Preval, what do you think?

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.

Poverty, Foreign Aid--and Slavery

Last Friday marked the UN decreed international day for the eradication of poverty. How did you commemorate the great event?

The Geek marked the moment by reading. He read on both the history of US foreign aid and the internal economic and social impact of the international slave trade on Africa.

He was struck by the similarities.

The international traffic in human beings conducted by Europeans and Americans as well as by Arabs had the effect of severely distorting the long standing organic African economic and social/political institutions. The distortions came as the direct and predictable introduction of foreign products ranging from horses to alcohol, guns to cheap textiles.

The ready market created in Africa assured a profitable "dumping" ground for goods that were unwanted in domestic markets due to their obsolescence, shoddiness or general undesirability. At the same time the ending of the slave trade required Africans to develop alternative means of purchase.

As a result indigenous agricultural practices were bent to the task of producing commodities desired by the outsiders. This, in turn, demanded an increase in domestic slavery to provide the labor necessary to meet the new requirements of export oriented production.

Agricultural products were joined by the output of extractive industries such as gold, diamonds, wild rubber and forest products. Colonial regimes encouraged and protected the already extant coercive labor practices instituted by the native elites.

The economic, political and social effects of these distortions last until the present day.

Even the most cursory appreciation of the overall effects of foreign aid as granted by the US and other countries in the post-World War II period leads to the conclusion that this well-intentioned(?) aid had the same impact on the recipients as slavery did upon Africa.

Foreign aid in a large measure ties the recipient country to the economy of the donor. The vast majority of grants require the recipient to purchase the output of the donor country. Loans require repayment. Repayment requires foreign exchange. Foreign exchange requires the production of something that is marketable.

Lets see. I give (or loan) you money. You have to spend all or most of the money on things I make. Then, to repay loans you have to produce something that I want to buy. At prices I want to pay.

That sounds good to me. Even if it doesn't to you.

Globalization has exacerbated the problem for recipient nations. The World Bank, the IMF and other multi-lateral "lenders" have demanded ever greater control over the economic and political decision making of recipient nations. Sometimes that control crosses the border into a flat-out dictatorial regime conducted by and for outsiders.

The creating of demand within a society is a deadly weapon. Market demands which do not arise organically but rather are created artificially from outside a society have the historically demonstrated capacity to transmogrify that society, its economy and its polity.

The binding of a society to the "global" economy for whatsoever reason, even the High Minded one of "eradicating poverty," is inherently dangerous.

Yes, the binding may work. It may improve the well-being of people beyond the elite of a particular nation. It may allow for more people to buy more seeming essentials, the 21st century equivalents of the cheap textiles, shoddy ironmongery and weapons of the African experience in the 16th to 19th centuries.

Whether that sort of increased purchasing power is a good thing for people is an open and arguable question. But, it does constitute the least-worst outcome of both globalization and foreign aid.

The historical record as well as contemporary developments demonstrate that the roster of outcomes can get far worse. The bondage of a society to either the interests of a generous donor country or a multi-lateral institution such as the World Bank and IMF can result in the political, cultural and environmental impoverishment of the majority of the society's members no matter how much the elite may benefit. This, in turn, has the strong, (the Geek is tempted to write "inevitable") potential of leading to armed political dissent.

Then there is the question of just what constitutes "poverty?"

The Geek is congniscent of the purchasing power parity metric which is commonly employed to define poverty. He is also well aware of standard pap of equating a daily expenditure level of so many US dollars per day and the accompanying allegation that too few bucks per day spent by the average inhabitant of Lower Slobovia or Eastern Fartistan constitutes "poverty."

The Geek has personally witnessed severe deprivation by more valid standards than those thrown about by advocates of the Millenium Development Goals beloved by the UN and its legion of High Minded supporters. He has seen misery far more basic than any which can be expressed by purchasing power parity artifacts.

He has seen some of the worst of the wretchedness and life threatening deprivation in countries spread from Africa to Latin America which have been the "beneficiaries" of foreign aid largess and globalization oriented investment programs.

The Geek has seen the effects of misplaced faith in the elevating potential of foreign aid and foreign investment. He has seen them in the disruption of communities, value and ways of living that have successfully withstood generations, centuries of the normal stresses, common uncertainties and accustomed viscisitudes of life.

The more one acquaints himself with the effects of the slave trade and its aftermath on Africa the more one sees the similarities--the identies--with the impact of foreign aid and globalization.

What this suggests is simple.

It is wrong headed to the maximum for the US or any wealthy nation to be stampeded into signing on to ambitious High Minded efforts to eradicate poverty thoughout the world. The road to hell is not so much paved by good intentions as it is mandated by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Get a firm grip on history. What happened centuries ago in Africa; what has been happening in much of the world including Africa over the past half century shows what will happen--on steroids--in the future under the impetus of the Global Poverty Act currently pending before the US Senate and similar proposals of expanded financial redistribution.

Feeling Delusional? Think Foreign Aid!

For sixty some years now Administrations and Congresses of both parties have been very generous with the money of American taxpayers. Under a plethora of rubrics and for reasons of utility ranging from the dubious to the nonexistent, gigabucks have been doled out to recipients worthy and otherwise with results running from the counterproductive up to excellent.

It is against this background that Senator Obama has entered his only significant piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2433 aka The Global Poverty Act of 2007. He was joined in this effort by fifteen other senators, all but two being Democrats. Having already passed the House in a whoop and a holler, the GPA was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Joe Biden with a favorable recommendation.

The Committee did not hear witnesses or take written testimony. It spent a minimum amount of time considering the Bill and made only slight changes in i ts wording. Considering the potential impact of this towering monument to hazy words and ambiguous but goodhearted intention, the Committee exercised little care and expended less thought than seems justifiable.

The Bill is worthy of close and careful scrutiny. Its sentences need, no, demand the most scrupulous parsing. The Geek strongly recommends you do so, if you have not already made intimate acquaintance with a piece of legislation which may have dramatic impact in the years to come. It is definitely policy for the future potentially without regard for its affect on each passing today.

Take a look at S2433 on either of the following. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-2433 or http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2433/text.

The Global Poverty Act builds on the long tradition of American (mis)adventures in foreign aid. Don't get the Geek wrong. He is not one who is convinced that all foreign aid is necessarily and intrinsically bad. He is not prepared to argue from the basis of history that all foreign aid has failed to serve American national interests including national security.

He is, however, ready to argue that much, even most, foreign aid has been provided regardless of its potential to enhance American interests. He is prepared to argue that much, if not most, foreign aid has been awarded for reasons other than legitimate American interests.

To put the matter short and not particularly sweetly: Most American foreign aid has been chucked down assorted ratholes for reasons of domestic politics or international bribery.

Sixty plus years ago the program commonly known as the Marshall Plan set the standard for the correct balance of national self-interest and altruism in foreign aid. This standard has rarely been matched in all the decades and billions of dollars since.

The Marshall Plan worked because of the unique circumstances which obtained in the months and years immediately following the end of World War II in Europe. It worked because the US kept its distance as the European countries decided how to allocate and spend the money. It worked because European economic recovery was critical to European political and social stability. It worked because the Soviet Union (as must have been suspected by the Foggy Bottom authors of the European Recovery Act) said nyet to participation by itself or those countries sitting under the treads of Red Army tanks.

The upside of the Marshall Plan's success was the recovery and stability of Europe as well as its affect on the growing political movement in Europe for economic and political unification. The downside of the Plan's success was its impact upon American political decision makers.

We were victimised by our own success. We were erroneously convinced that economic assistance was a sovereign remedy for latent political instability and would thus serve to increase American security automatically.

Through the Fifties and Sixties economic aid became a strategic weapon of choice for gaining influence on the governing elites of recently independent states throughout Africa and Asia. At the same time it was joined with the growing torrent of military assistance programs to assist stabilizing regimes in longer established countries.

As various US Administrations increasingly confused the appearance of short term order with a reality of long term stability in authoritarian regimes throughout the world, our aid programs degenerated into a vast array of poorly thought through, very expensive "rent-a-friend" efforts.

Since foreign aid money had to be spent somewhere (usually in the United States) Congress wallahs became increasingly enamored of it as another source of pork for the companies back home. Whether tanks and helicopters under the military assistance programs or corn and soybeans under the rubric of Food For Peace, the foreign aid budget became a very attractive barrel of pork fat.

In the years following the Camp David Accords, foreign aid transmogrified into a bribery program. Israel was heavily bribed not to go to war (too often.) Egypt was bribed according to a set percentage of the Israeli bribe to pretend that it was a peaceloving secular state that simply loved to cooperate with the "Zionist Entity."

While any number of glosses can be put upon the foreign aid debacles to date--and have, the end result is that a great deal of money has bought very little American national interest and even less American national security.

The Geek is not in favor of poverty. He has worked and lived in pits of poverty in several continents. He has been grindingly poor himself. He has seen and experienced the negative affects of poverty upon the human flesh and spirit.

The Geek would like to see an end to poverty wherever it might occur. In the US. Around the world.

He maintains, however, that the post-modernist fogginess of The Global Poverty Act is not the way to do it. Further, he maintains that The Global Poverty Act will not enhance either American national interests or American national security.

If Senators Obama, Biden and the rest be genuinely convinced that eradication of poverty globally is a desirable, even necessary goal, then they can donate their personal fortunes to any one of a number of non-governmental organisations dedicated to that end. The same approach is open to any person whose sensibilities are wounded by the thought of billions of humans trying to survive on a measly one USD per day.

They are even at liberty to donate money to the assorted United Nations components who wage war on poverty and its ills. That is, if they can bring themselves to overlook the spectacular UN corruption during the Oil For Food program in Iraq. A scandal which may have extended all the way to the Secretary General of the UN.

The money of US government, which is to say the money of the American taxpayers, should be husbanded more carefully and expended only in a tightly focused manner. Demanding, as S2433 does, that the next administration develop a plan for eradicating poverty around the world is not a prudent, tightly focused application of American resources to American national interests.

The challenge for the next administration is not one of global wealth redistribution for such is, according to the record of numerous national histories, doomed to fail. No. The challenge for the next administration is quite different.

The next administration would be best advised, in the best interests of the US to immediately zero out the foreign aid budget. To zero it out ignoring the howls and wails of all those whose personal moral sensibilities or corporate financial concerns have been injured.

Zero out the bribes. Zero out the indirect subsidies for American agribusiness and defense contractors alike. Zero out the plush funding of the "administrative overhead" components of recipient non-governmental organisations.

Sure the noise level will be astonishing. The foreign aid gravy train has been rolling along unchecked and unchallenged for decades now. There are mobs with a vested interest in keeping the status quo going in perpetuity.

The reality is simple. Our national interest and our national security demand a rethinking of foreign aid. It is (or can and should be) a vital component of our instruments of national power. Foreign aid must be guided as it was with the Marshall Plan by a somber appreciation of our genuine national and security interests and a clear eyed understanding of how best to match our resources with the genuine requirements.

Will this process happen? The Geek is a historian. That means he is a cynic. No, the next administration will not have the intellectual and moral courage to zero the beast out and go back to the drafting board.

The odds are that we will continue to try to rent friends and pay bribes, and recycle taxpayer dollars to NGOs and corporate suites. The odds are we will be signing on to some sort of UN overseen Global War on Poverty.

Odds are the name of the Marshall Plan will be taken in vain again and again as we lurch along the same old road to failure.