The U.S., the U.N., and Foreign Aid

In an earlier post I had on UN reform, I noted that the US is losing public relations points for not agreeing to target 0.7% of GDP (as opposed to the current 0.16%) towards overseas development assistance. George Morris commented:

This argument is a total red-herring. While these “poorer” countries may, in theory, give more as a percentage of overall GDP, when non-U.S. governmental charitable aid is totaled up the U.S., per capita, winds up giving substantially more than virtually every country year-in and year-out. That we don’t want to sign on to the EU’s fuzzy-headed method to send vast set amounts of our GDP down the governmental and UN sluiceway is both understandable and hardly a mark of a flinty, cold-hearted cheapskate.

While the development assistance issue is not central to the UN reform topic, it is central to the Millennium Development Goals and to how the US is perceived more generally. (For a good collection of overseas development assistance stats gathered from the OECD and other sources, see this.)

First of all, this argument is not at all a red herring. I point out that the issue here is percentage of GDP and, of course, a country with a larger GDP can give a larger absolute amount even though that is a smaller percentage of their GDP.

But that is not the issue. There are two factors that prevent the “red herring” argument from persuading me.

First, given the incredible levels of poverty around the world is it actually a bad idea for the US to commit to giving the equivalent of 0.7% of its GDP to poverty alleviation by the year 2015? Note that this goal is not some new idea only forwarded by the EU; rather it is a central part of the Millennium Development Goals that the US has supported. There is now a question as to whether the US had ever objected to this number prior to the last week or two.

Regardless as to whether it did, the problem, in the eyes of countries not as well off as us (read: just about every other country), is that they are willing to devote more of their resources to address global poverty than we are. Of course, global poverty will be solved by neither 0.1% nor by 0.7% as a benchmark. What is needed is a concerted effort to attack the problem with the seriousness that it requires. Consequently, simply saying “our total is more than theirs” is not an adequate response if we could give a significantly larger amount without harm to ourselves. If all the countries of the EU, for example, can commit to giving 0.7%, why can’t we?

A second problem with the “red herring” argument is that it misses the issue of who the current aid goes to. Much of U.S. nonmilitary foreign assistance is actually related to national security concerns or military partnerships. Consider, for example, the top ten recipients of US nonmilitary aid in 2002-2003:

Egypt
Russia
Iraq
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Israel
Pakistan
Jordan
Colombia
Afghanistan
Ethiopia

As I said in my post, as a security matter I understand prioritizing these countries, but as a matter of poverty alleviation it doesn’t really address the key problems. If we want to keep countries like this as our main aid recipients, fine, but let’s at least have a real discussion about increasing the size of the pie so truly poor states can get a slightly larger slice than they do now. In other words, keep these funding priorities but increase our total commitment to 0.7%. Anyway, poverty alleviation makes sense for national security reasons. So yes, while we do give a larger absolute amount in foreign aid, it is not being targeted as it should if we are actually concerned about addressing poverty.

A couple of closing thoughts: I haven’t heard anyone else calling 0.7% “a vast amount” of GDP. Foreign aid is (and, even at the o.7% GDP benchmark, would still be) a small part of the US budget. Moreover, that money doesn’t have to go to the UN or disappear due to recipient mismanagement. Rather, the 0.7% is simply a target for development aid in general. We can give it to whom we want and under whatever conditions we think best, assuming they forward the goal of poverty alleviation.

That is not fuzzy-headed. That is smart.

So… why not commit to devoting 0.7% of GDP to overseas development aid by the year 2015?