(C) Copyright 1996,
Center for Defense Information
All Rights Reserved.
Videotapes of this program
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This program features comments from:
BRIAN ATWOOD
BRYAN JOHNSON
JULIA TAFT
GEORGE BURRILL, Ph.D.
Changing the Focus of Foreign Aid
NARRATOR: Foreign aid.
How much does the United States spend on it each year?
Who does it help?
Why are we doing it?
What happens if we stop?
ADMIRAL SHANAHAN: There are many on Capitol Hill and in the country at large who believe that foreign aid is unacceptable taxpayer burden without benefit to America. This belief was indeed true, but only in part, during the Cold War, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union tried to outbid each other for the hearts and minds of the so-called non- aligned nations of the world. But now, much has changed. Foreign aid is a national security and foreign policy facilitator in our relations with others, unlike foreign aid bribery of the past. Our program today will examine this transition.
NARRATOR: United States security policy consists of three basic lines of defense: prevention, deterrence, and finally, if these two fail, the defeat of an enemy.
During the Cold War, America focused on deterrence, which meant working to prevent World War III.
Today, the problems we face in the world require more attention to prevention, and less reliance on the use of our military.
BRIAN ATWOOD: We should not be using the military as a first resort, we should be using them as a last resort.
NARRATOR: Brian Atwood is the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
ATWOOD: Increasingly, because internationally that's the only resources
we have, we're finding the military in places where
they don't want to be. They didn't want to be in Rwanda helping
refugees after. They did a very good job of it, but we could have
prevented that from happening if we had more resources.
NARRATOR: Foreign aid is a vital tool of American foreign policy. When used wisely, foreign assistance not only helps the less fortunate, but it helps America by creating export markets, preventing foreign civil wars, and decreasing the need for US troops to go into combat.
Foreign aid has always been a part of our first line of defense. The past success of our foreign aid program provides proof that we should give aid a bigger role in the future.
America's modern foreign aid program began with the end of World War II. Amidst the wreckage of war-torn Europe, the Marshall Plan was born.
GEORGE C. MARSHALL: This whole situation is critical in the extreme. But there's no doubt whatever in my mind that if we decide to do this thing, we can do it successfully. And there's also no doubt in my mind that the whole world hangs in the balance as to what it is to be.
NARRATOR: The Marshall Plan remains one of the most generous acts in history. In 1949 alone, the United States provided nearly $53 Billion dollars (in 1996 dollars) to the countries of Western Europe.
Under the Marshall Plan, the U.S. made it possible for Western Europe to rebuild its cities and economies, and to provide food for the people.
GENERAL JOHN SHALIKASHVILI: Assistance from the United States government and private organizations for me is not just an abstract notion or a set of statistics. You see, my family and I, as refugees in war-torn Europe, were helped more than you will ever know by the generous donations of the people of the United States.
NARRATOR: In addition to providing economic support, the Marshall Plan and other foreign aid programs provided a basis for the creation of alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, to deter future threats.
After World War II, the Soviet-American rivalry grew increasingly tense. In many ways, this rivalry was taken to all parts of the globe.
BRYAN JOHNSON: A good case is the Horn of Africa where you had the United States and the Soviet Union fighting amongst each other to who was going to control the Horn. Whether it be through Ethiopia or Somalia.
NARRATOR: Bryan Johnson is a policy analyst for international economic affairs at the Heritage Foundation.
JOHNSON: And we provided a lot of money to those two countries in opposite tandem with the Soviet Union. When they were supporting one, we supported the other, and vice versa.
ATWOOD: We have had instances in the past, during the Cold War,
where we have not focussed on the development aspect of the
mission, but rather on the political aspect, and we've put money
into countries where we couldn't have, have expected to, to
succeed: The Zaires of the world.
NARRATOR: Zaire is a large country in central Africa, located northeast of Angola. The West supported Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Soko for thirty years because of Zaire's strategic geographical location. The U.S. used Zaire as a staging area in the 1970s when the U.S. supported opposition forces in their war against the leftist ruled, and Soviet supported government in Angola.
Now with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. no longer needs Zaire as a strategic ally, and has ended all support for the dictatorship there, except for emergency food aid.
ATWOOD: We don't work with Zaire any longer and most donors don't because you can't work with partners that are, that don't care about the development of their own country.
NARRATOR: Foreign aid had propped up Zaire's economy, protecting it from bad economic policies. It wasn't until the West withdrew that support that the devastation of the economy and industry was finally revealed.
ATWOOD: The per capita income has gone down from something like $1800 down to less than $200 today. It's been frittered away by bad policies within the government of Zaire.
NARRATOR: Zaire's economy has shrunk 40% since 1988. The government is bankrupt. Water is not chemically treated to make it safe to drink, and the outbreak of the Ebola virus has added a new, and deadly element to the plight of the people there.
Years of corruption and human rights abuses have made President Mobutu a billionaire, and left his people impoverished.
Zaire is a perfect example of how during the Cold War, less emphasis was placed on development and human needs, than on what many called our national security interests. This meant that many countries were given foreign aid without concern for how the assistance was used.
ATWOOD: The Cold War placed a great burden on the development mission because we were forced for political considerations to work with governments that were not good development partners.
JULIA TAFT: The main foreign focus of foreign policy was the containment of communism, and to build up our military deterrent capability, our response capability, and to ensure that we had governments in critical geographic areas that were supportive of Western values and not the communist values.
NARRATOR: Julia Taft is the President of INTERACTION, a coalition of 150 U.S. based, non-profit organizations working worldwide on issues of economic development.
TAFT: We ended up investing quite a lot of money in some very far away countries that would have seemed otherwise insignificant: Somalia, Zaire, a number of countries that did not really have an economic or social relationship to the Unites States but they had a geo-political one.
NARRATOR: In hindsight, it can be said that the United States propped up dictators and supported undemocratic regimes as part of the Cold War when we had different objectives. Today, our foreign aid program is seeking a new direction, one which acknowledges the interdependence of economic development and political stability.
TAFT: Now that the Cold War is over, we don't have superpowers that are trying to have geopolitical battles. Angola is no longer a geopolitical concern, Somalia isn't, many other countries are not.
GEORGE BURRILL: I think the main problem with the foreign aid program right now has to do with a lack of clear goals that are accepted by everyone who's involved in the debate.
NARRATOR: George Burrill is the Chairman of the Business Alliance for International Economic Development.
BURRILL: And this is in part also because of the end of the Cold War and the confusion now about what direction foreign aid should go in.
TAFT: We're struggling with that issue right now: What do we do with our foreign assistance now that we don't have another superpower as our major opponent?
NARRATOR: This is the pressing question today. The end of the Cold War has prompted a heated debate over how much foreign aid we should give and where it should go.
A recent poll found that most Americans believe that the US spends between 18 and 20% of the federal budget on foreign aid. In fact, we spends less than 1%.
In comparison, the US spends 16% of the federal budget on national defense, 22% on social security, and 15% for interest on the national debt.
How does the US foreign aid budget compare to other nations?
ATWOOD: Among the industrial nations, we are absolutely last as a percentage of our gross national product. Countries like Denmark provide $900 per taxpaying family to foreign aid. The United States is now under $30 per taxpaying family. In other words, about the size of a nice healthy lunch at McDonalds.
TAFT: The recent study from all of the donors shows that the US has now slipped to 4th place in terms of our overall generosity for assisting the poorest people of the world. We're behind Japan, France and Germany in actual amounts of money.
NARRATOR: The foreign aid budget is close to $9 Billion. About $5 Billion of this is spent on economic support and security assistance programs.
Some of these assistance programs include: peacekeeping operations, training foreign militaries, refugee assistance, international narcotics control, anti-terrorism assistance, and providing countries with military equipment.
Currently, Egypt and Israel receive, by far, the largest portion of U.S. aid. Most of this aid is in the form of economic and security assistance.
JOHNSON: The money that we give to Egypt and Israel is part of the Camp David Accords in the 1970s, and what it was was money where the United States guaranteed a certain amount of annual money to Israel and Egypt to maintain peace in the region. I think that you can make the case that that may have been effective in preventing a new war in the Middle East.
NARRATOR: The remainder of the foreign aid budget, a little more than $3 billion dollars, is used for development programs in several different countries. Some of these programs include: health care, immunizations, clean water, education, and agriculture.
Smaller budgets have made it more difficult to decide where to invest foreign aid. It is not possible to be everywhere and help everyone. We must choose those programs which provide a mutual benefit to the security of both the recipient and the United States.
BURRILL: We need to look at where our interests lie in stopping environmental degradation, helping to control population, how to resolve international health problems, and very importantly our economic security and our economic future.
TAFT: The foreign assistance that we're most interested in is what brings stability in societies that make them good potential partners? And it's the rule of law and responsible governments, and it's a civil society with organizations and people having some access to things like credit, clean water, health care, the benefits of society.
BURRILL: Foreign aid should definitely go to those countries that are open to making changes in their policies as to what they're going to do in terms of development, and we should be giving economic aid to those countries that are likely to utilize that aid in a positive way to create development in their own countries.
NARRATOR: Economic development in developing countries is often seen
as a stabilizing factor. When development provides people with
the elements of a healthy life: food, clean water, a roof over
their heads, they are less likely to fight one another for access
to resources.
Many experts agree that it would be far less expensive for the United States to carry out development programs that could prevent violence than to pay the costs of military operations, peacekeeping efforts and emergency humanitarian relief after crises erupt.
BURRILL: Foreign aid, when applied or given ahead of time, and successfully done, can help prevent a deterioration and a situation where military aid may have to be employed or military assistance may have to brought in to stabilize a situation.
TAFT: The investments though that foreign aid make in the social sector, before there's a crisis, are probably best demonstrated by the kind of aid we gave places like Taiwan and Korea, South Korea, in terms of educating the citizenry, providing assistance in health care and education set a tone for future investments by those countries which have proven to be the hallmark of their successful economy.
JOHNSON: The best weapon against civil unrest, against deteriorating economies, against deteriorating health standards, in less developed countries is economic growth. And there is no connection between foreign aid and economic growth.
NARRATOR: Bryan Johnson believes that foreign aid should be eliminated because it does not promote economic growth or American interests.
JOHNSON: What we're saying is that if there is going to be a program, that's what it should achieve. It's not achieving that so lets get rid of those programs that are not achieving those goals, mainly development assistance.
NARRATOR: Mr. Johnson also believes that foreign aid cannot prevent conflict.
JOHNSON: Somalia, for example, and Rwanda, are long term recipients of American foreign aid and it still didn't prevent a crisis. Then we rushed in there with more foreign aid after the crisis, and conditions there are really not all that much better.
SHALIKASHVILI: Today the specter of Somalia hangs over our involvement in peace operations elsewhere.
NARRATOR: Somalia is perhaps the best known example of a humanitarian aid disaster. The failure of this mission and the deaths of U.S. soldiers led many people to ask what happened.
The original mission was to provide humanitarian relief for the thousands of starving Somalis. This mission was expanded to include nation building and a country wide manhunt for Somali warlord General Mohamed Aideed. During this time, eighteen U.S. soldiers died, General Aideed was never captured, and $1 billion dollars later, the U.S. troops withdrew. Somalia remains in a state of chaos today.
At that time, some thought that our involvement in Somalia indicated a new direction for the U.S. military after the Cold War. The failure of this mission spread concern that humanitarian crises in the future would draw U.S. troops into troubled spots around the globe, places such as Liberia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Zaire.
This does not appear to be the case. The military learned its lessons in Somalia, and adjusted its policy towards humanitarian relief missions.
SHALIKASHVILI: By carefully defining the mission and clearly setting a deadline, we serve notice that our only goal is to give governments and people the breathing room they must have to tackle their own problems. It is wrong to believe we can build other nations. But where our own interests are engaged, we can help nations build themselves and give them the time to make a start.
TAFT: The humanitarian aid side of the military is wonderful.
They have helped the non-governmental organizations in
humanitarian, disaster relief crises for decades.
NARRATOR: The military can provide vital logistic support in humanitarian missions, but our troops are trained for war, not for refugee assistance. Limits must be established for their participation.
SHALIKASHVILI: Rather than a dysfunctional competition between NGOs and the armed forces, our joint task must be to create a bond between the partners based on each others unique strengths.
NARRATOR: If foreign aid can prevent violence and civil wars, then countries will have fewer reasons to buy weapons. Experts generally agree that in the developing world, one of the greatest obstacles to economic development and to the allocation of resources to domestic programs is excessive military budgets.
At present, the U.S. spends a little more than $3 billion dollars per year on the Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, program. This is roughly the same amount spent on development assistance programs.
The FMF program provides weapons to foreign countries in two ways: through grants, which are free of charge, and through low interest loans.
Weapons were often given to Cold War allies fighting local civil wars. Unfortunately, although the Cold War has ended, a lot of these weapons are still in the hands of combatants in the same civil wars. And the U.S. continues to increase the amount of funding for the FMF program.
TAFT: The United States is the largest supplier of military weaponry in the world. In some instances I believe that equipment goes to countries that are not very reliable, and we have to ask the question: who's getting that military assistance? Do they have any external enemies that they need it for defensive purposes? Or are they going to use it against their own people?
BURRILL: If it's applied judiciously and carefully, military assistance can assist in stabilizing situations and helping a government to create a stable environment for growth and for citizens. Very often in the past it has assisted in creating regional arms races and in those situations it is very detrimental.
TAFT: I think part of our problem in foreign aid has been there's been too much co-mingling of the perception that our assistance should be military and that our contribution to the world's security is our military, and that's only one piece of it.
NARRATOR: The focus of foreign aid has shifted in recent years. We have moved away from the Cold War mentality to focus more on humanitarian needs and economic assistance. There is a better understanding now in the international community that countries do not need more weapons, they need economic growth.
TAFT: In those places where there are not equitable benefits to the society, places like Burundi; places like Bosnia; places like Rwanda. Then they become tinder boxes.
NARRATOR: To prevent situations from turning violent, and requiring
possible US intervention, foreign aid has been used in projects
aimed at enhancing the quality of life of those in the developing
world.
TAFT: One of the best successes of foreign assistance that we ever had was in the Green Revolution.
NARRATOR: In the 1960s, foreign assistance helped India develop high-yielding varieties of cereals and grains. This increased their grain production by 15-20%. What is even more impressive is the fact that only 2% of the aid given to India was devoted to this project, proving that small investments, if used wisely, can produce large returns.
TAFT: Look at small pox eradication. America was very much in the forefront there. And Population. Population's the biggest problem that we see emerging on the horizon and America has at this point been supporting about 50 million families in family planning services around the world that want it and need it.
ATWOOD: We've seen infant mortality reduced by half in the world. We've seen the average age of the world's citizens go from 42 to 62. We've seen clean water now available to 75 percent more people. We've seen economic growth soar. All of this is the result of educating people, making sure that they're healthy, making sure that they get their macro-economic and micro- economic policies correct.
NARRATOR: By eliminating small pox, American's don't have to pay for vaccinations. Through the creation of strong trading partners, the U.S. increases its export market, and improving political stability decreases the need for foreign intervention.
These examples show that foreign aid is not frivolous, that it does improve regional stability.
However, it is important to remember that:
BURRILL: Aid is a building block, foreign aid that is, is a building block in creating economic development. In and of itself it is not sufficient.
JOHNSON: Unless countries develop free market policies that will allow businesses to grow, will allow for the creation of wealth; no matter how much money you throw at those countries it's not going to help them in the long run, and it's not going to help them achieve development status.
NARRATOR: Foreign aid is not a cure-all. The U.S. cannot simply send in money and turn a developing country into a stable, democratic, economic powerhouse overnight.
Foreign aid can produce positive results, but this requires resources and a long-term commitment to the development process.
BURRILL: It's a long-term process to create the types of policies in a country that will bring about economic development and that will bring about change.
NARRATOR: Some analysts believe that this funding can and should be provided by the hundreds of volunteer organizations across the globe, not by our federal government.
JOHNSON: American citizens spend $14 Billion a year of their private money through private charities to help immunize babies, to help bring health care to regions of the world that do not have hospitals. That's how money should be spent, not through the U.S. government.
TAFT: There's no question that private assistance through the private voluntary agencies does reach people all over the world in need at the grassroots. But you're not going to solve some of the problems in these societies by only dealing at the grassroots, on the charity and the human side of it.
JOHNSON: I don't think that any country deserves to receive aid. We have to remember that this money comes from the pockets of the American public, the taxpayer. They're the people who deserve to have that money, they should be able to keep. No foreign country deserves to have that money, especially when it doesn't work.
NARRATOR: But what happens if we stop giving foreign aid?
BURRILL: We're risking not having the same export potential for our products in the future. We're also risking greater environmental problems, international health problems, population problems the kinds of things that the aid program addresses. Those are likely to increase rather than decrease without the attention of foreign aid programs.
ATWOOD: We have no choice but to try to find mechanisms to deal with the impending chaos in any given country or globally. If we don't do it it's going to disrupt the global economy. It's going to mean that we won't see the growth that we want for our economy. It's going to mean that diseases that we thought had been beaten or new diseases that we never really understood, like AIDS and Ebola virus, or the like are going to be affecting our people.
NARRATOR: Only a few years have passed since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps it is too early to predict whether or not foreign aid will be successful in its new mission of promoting economic development and political stability. But one thing is certain:
ATWOOD: We can no longer close our doors to the developing world. So we have to have a program.
ADMIRAL SHANAHAN: American Security is dependent on a more stable and prosperous world. We cannot survive as an island in a sea of turmoil. Well-targeted foreign aid canplay a positive role both for United States and other countries. Americans cannot remake the world in our own image, but we can help make it possible for other people to solve their own problems. We are a generous people. Our resources are limited but we can certainly do more than we are currently doing to address the roots of despair and conflict around the world by reducing current reliance on military force and emphasizing instead preventive diplomacy.
For America's Defense Monitor, I am Jack Shanahan.
CONDITION OF USE: Credit AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR
(Center for Defense Information).
Copyright 1996. Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.
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