Posted on 04/04/2002 3:00:45 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
THE debate about what to do to help poor countries is hampered by the politically correct pretence that all of them, with a little help, will or might succeed. In fact, this is not so.
The two countries that include most of the world's really poor people - China and India - are both growing rapidly and even developing impressive high-tech industries. Both have done this without incurring unpayable foreign debts: indeed, both have large gold and dollar reserves, China actually topping the world list in this respect.
On the other side lie dozens of countries - mainly, though not only, in Africa - that are actually going backwards. If we are to make any sense of the debate about aid, we have to ask why some poor countries are succeeding and others are apparent no-hopers.
Some countries have failed because their ruling elites fell prey to more or less crazy ideologies that stressed an extreme turning inward and avoidance of outside contact. China under the Red Guards, Iran under Khomeini, present-day Burma and Afghanistan under the Taliban are examples of this.
But the age of communist fundamentalism is passing - North Korea is the last surviving case - and globalisation is making such extreme experiments in autarchy harder to sustain.
Far more complex to deal with are the failures of states due to simple mis-governance, to corruption, chronic incompetence, maladministration and the pursuit of bad policies. As the painful example of Zimbabwe shows only too clearly, such regimes may have a fair-weather period, but are often intrinsically tyrannical.
As their multiple failures cause rising discontent, such leaders, who have every corrupt reason to cling to power and often fear being put on trial if they lose it, will use every stratagem and cruelty to hang on. They often end as Mugabe is doing - effectively destroying his country and holding first the opposition and then his whole people hostage.
Already shaping up in Zimbabwe is a replay of the last days of the bloodstained Ethiopian regime of Mengistu, in which the world recoils from baling out a man-made famine and the regime collapses in a final cruel torment of mass starvation. (Hardly accidentally, Mengistu, though wanted for human rights atrocities on a grand scale in his own country, has found shelter with Mugabe.)
There is a particular problem about Africa. As Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, on the most obvious measures of welfare - per capita income and life expectancy - most African countries advanced very strikingly under colonialism and almost all have, on the same measures, retreated sharply since independence.
Success stories in Africa are now very few indeed. Several have gone through the last stages of state failure and are either enmeshed in endless war (Sudan, the Congo) or the state has simply collapsed and warlords taken over (Somalia, Sierra Leone). Many more are heading the same way. In every case, as all international agencies recognise, the key variable is poor governance.
The question is what to do about such states. One answer is just walk away. After all, in the past 40 years, they have collectively absorbed huge quantities of aid, much of which merely ended up in the offshore accounts of their leaders. Tony Blair's answer is that we can't afford to walk away: not only would this abandon hundreds of millions of human beings to endless poverty and misrule, but it would also be against our own interests, because failed states quickly become rogue states, breeding grounds and hideouts for terrorists, drug lords, money launderers and other very low forms of life.
But this does not mean that we should just give more aid and forgive more debt. Many of the highly indebted poor countries have still to take advantage of the debt-forgiveness scheme in place, because they don't fulfil such obvious conditions as not spending money on wars. Moreover, the World Bank's research shows that even when countries have adopted economic structural adjustment plans under IMF or World Bank supervision, these don't work unless the government in question really wants to make them work.
When a state such as Mugabe's Zimbabwe is dragged into such a plan, it doesn't work well and aid is wasted. And the problem is that, according to the World Bank's data, there are 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with a total population of around 500 million, where, for these reasons, aid is unlikely to work.
All of which - although it is the last thing Western leaders want to hear - makes the case for at least selective direct intervention ineluctable. A relatively small detachment of British troops has quite quickly been able to turn round the situation in Sierra Leone. One really has to ask whether it is sensible - or moral - for the international community, which is clearly going to be asked to pick up the pieces in Zimbabwe once Mugabe goes, to allow him not only to inflict enormous suffering now on the hapless population, but also to make ultimate recovery far harder by running the country into the ground. It would only need a single British paratroop battalion to cause Mugabe's house of cards to collapse, to the delight of the local population. It would be a no-casualty, one-day war.
But why let it come to this? On the one hand, no one wants to go back to colonialism; on the other, some Third World elites are not to be trusted. Why should not the West make it a condition of aid that elections be regularly held, under the supervision of a reputable international electoral commission? A verdict that the election was not free or fair would trigger sufficiently heavy sanctions, and even the threat of intervention, to ensure that local elites were forced to respect the rules.
Just as donor states have a right to a regular financial audit of where their aid actually went, so a regular political audit should become a routine part of the aid process. The first type of audit prevents donors from being taken to the cleaners; the latter would prevent untold suffering to the local people themselves.
Some say that any money should be tightly controlled and that it should be dispersed to those who can be trusted. Just as many say that no money should be given to anyone because almost everyone is corrupt.
I am always shocked to hear this from African refugees. And I always learn about failed western policies from them.
How would getting this tyrannt, who the world knows stole an election through terror, hurt anyone but the dictator?
The money must be tracked and accounted for. From the little guy all the way to the top, bribes, graft and kickbacks are epidemic in these situations.
I know this is going to sound racist, but the only way to civilize Africa would be to completely re-colonize the place, and even then we would have bush wars, insurrections, assassinations, ad nauseum.
Not to mention the fact that any attempt to re-colonize even the worst African hell-hole would be met with total condemnation by the rest of the world.
I have to wonder. Is there any black majority nation, anywhere in the world, that is advancing in terms of standard of living, education, health-care, etc?
It makes me tired to think about Africa. The truth is so obvious, but no one has the courage to admit what is as plain as day.
Oh, and by the way, if anyone wants to hold up Fiji as an example of a country making progress, I will reject it.
The only thing that keeps Fiji progressing (between coups, that is) is the imported Indian population which makes up the majority of the civil service, medical professionals, educators, etc.
And just how do you propose to do that?
Africans will stop killing each other when there are no more Africans to kill, or when they are physically prevented from doing so.
Of course, THAT brings us back to colonization, a substantial non-African population to create and maintain an infrastructure, a non-African military force to protect the non-African population and infrastructure, etc., etc., etc. -- ad nauseum...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.