Foreign Aid and International Crises; D. Bandow

Other nations and international aid agencies have provided hundreds of billions of dollars more. American assistance comes in various forms-grants and loans for bilateral projects, primarily through the V.S. Agency for International Development (VSAID), as well as credit from V.S.-funded multilateral agencies, including the International Mone tary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, to under write borrower development projects and provide aid for "structural" economic re forms. Other programs underwrite military purchases and provide disaster relief. Al though some individual development projects have no doubt worked, and humanitarian aid can help alleviate the effects of crises, there is little evidence, despite the presump tion of the term "foreign assistance," that American cash transfers, whether bilateral or multilateral, actually do much to advance growth or stability throughout the developing world.

Even many advocates of foreign assistance acknowledge the disappointing results. For Mr. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist. He is the author of several books, most recently, Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. instance, VSAID admitted in 1993 that "much of the investment financed by V.S. AID and other donors between 1960and 1980 has disappeared without a trace." Nor is there any reason to believe that better management would enable foreign aid to assist poor nations in achieving self sustaining economic growth. Decades' worth of financial transfers have not stopped devel oping countries from stagnating economi cally; indeed, many nations have been losing ground. Fully 70 developing states are poorer today than they were in 1980;44 are worse off than they were in 1960. International com parisons are obviously fraught with difficulty, but aid levels don't correlate with economic growth, and many of the biggest recipients of foreign assistance, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Sudan, and Tanzania, have been among the globe's worst economic performers.

Of course, even correlation would not be enough. The real issue is causation, but there is no evidence that aid generates growth. Particularly impressive are studies by Peter Boone of the London School of Economics. After assessing the experience of nearly 100 nations, he concluded that "Long-term aid is not a means to create growth." As Boone explained, "it is not optimal for politicians to adjust distortionary policies when they re ceive aid flows." The failure of foreign assistance to meet its traditional goals has led to a search for new justifications. The current favorite is that financial transfers can be used to prevent social catastrophe, the veritable implosion 808 FOREIGN AID AND INTERNATIONAL CRISES 809 of entire nations. In June 1994 USAID was ordered to "start putting together a socio economic and political early warning system, to identify the vulnerabilities" of weak devel oping states, and to "start putting some resources behind them." Administrator Thomas Atwood calls this mission "crisis prevention" and "preventive investment" in "nation building."

Similarly, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has suggested using aid for forestall crises. Last year the agency asked: "What might have happened in Rwanda if the esti mated $2 billion spent on refugee relief during the first two weeks of the emergency had been devoted to keeping the peace, protecting human rights and promoting de velopment in the period that preceded the exodus?" Nothing probably. Rwanda did not go un aided before its implosion. To the contrary, between 1971 and 1994 that nation received $4.5 billion in foreign assistance. In fact, almost every country in crisis received abun dant outside transfers from a variety of sources beforehand. Over the same period, Sierra Leone received $1.8 billion, Liberia $1.8 billion, Angola $2.7 billion, Haiti $3.1 billion, Chad $3.3 billion, Burundi $4.1 bil lion, Uganda $5.8 billion, Zaire $7.8 billion, Somalia $8 billion, Mozambique $10.4 billion, Ethiopia $11.5 billion, and Sudan $13.4 bil lion. (See the table.) In none of these cases did foreign assistance forestall catastrophe. Indeed, few nations in Africa, irrespective of aid levels, have escaped social breakdown. Conflict and economic de cline have resulted in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Western Sahara, as well as the states listed above.

Obviously, there are numerous reasons that so many nations, including some in Southeast Asia and the Transcaucasus, suffer so. In none of them is inadequate international aid the cause. To the contrary, foreign aid helped create and aggravate problems in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Zaire, in particular, by subsidizing especially odious dictators who wrecked their nations. Among the most im portant causes of social division and catastroAid: 1971-1994 (Millions of Dollars) Total Annual Nation U.S. International Average Angola 117 2,743.1 114.3 Burundi 139 4,090.5 170.0 Chad 239 3,281.6 136.7 Ethiopia 999 11,499.6 479.2 Haiti 1,425 3,120.7 130.0 Liberia 639 1,795.0 74.9 Mozambique 616 10,419.3 434.1 Rwanda 416 4,505.0 187.0 Sierra Leone 172 1,769.0 73.7 Somalia 1,770 8,064.2 336.0 Sudan 1,692 13,415.9 559.0 Uganda 295 5,798.8 241.6 Zaire 529 7,800.0 325.0 (Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Geographical Distribution of Financial Flows to Developing Countries, volumes covering 1971 through 1994.) phe is what has been called "the overpoliti cized state." Yet government-to-government aid only strengthens the very same overpo liticized state.

All aid advocates can now argue that they would do better this time, since, with the end of the Cold War, there is less pressure to use assistance as de facto bribes to assorted dictators. However, the bulk of foreign trans fers to such failed nations was always eco nomic, not security. Between 1971 and 1994 the United States accounted for barely one fifth of total assistance received by Somalia. The rest was economic aid from a variety of sources-the multilaterals and Europeans, in particular. During the same period Rwanda received more from the World Bank alone than from the United States; Burundi col lected 3.6 times as much from the Bank as from Washington. In short, the problem with past aid is not that it was overly oriented toward political purposes. Rather, it is that such transfers turned out not to be aid at all. And the impact of new aid flows would be no different. For nearly half a century the policy of foreign aid has been tried and found wanting.