News from the Washington File
Sokolsky and McMillan: "Foreign Aid in Our Own Defense"
(Op-ed column from The New York Times on February 12, 2002) (820)
(This byliner by Richard Sokolsky and Joseph McMillan, first appeared
in the New York Times February 12 and is in the public domain. No
republication restrictions.)
Foreign Aid in Our Own Defense
Richard Sokolsky and Joseph McMillan
Washington -- The events of Sept. 11 made it painfully clear that the
political, social and economic problems of other countries have a
direct impact on American national security. Our country was attacked
by a terror organization that had turned a weakened Afghanistan into
its training ground and that searches for recruits in nations that
offer young men little political voice and limited economic
opportunity. To crush this threat, we need a program of tightly
focused foreign aid to address the economic, political and social
conditions that will otherwise continue breeding new terrorists.
For most of the past two decades, the United States has put foreign
aid on a starvation diet. President Bush's budget proposal for 2003
increases "international assistance" programs by just under $750
million. This, however, includes almost $500 million for foreign
military financing and $52 million for a Center for Antiterrorism and
Security Training. While these expenditures are useful for the limited
objectives at which they are aimed, we also need to increase spending
greatly on the kind of foreign aid that helps strengthen civil
society, provides food and development help, and finances programs for
education and health.
Although there is a great deal we do not understand about the causes
of terrorism, one major factor is clear: the historic failure of
development in a swath of countries running from North Africa to
Pakistan. Our foreign assistance should go up by at least $4 billion
to $5 billion annually to finance programs that promote modernization
and economic opportunity in the Islamic countries of the Middle East
and Central and South Asia.
The United States currently ranks dead last among industrial countries
in the amount, relative to the size of the economy, that it allocates
to foreign assistance -- barely one-seventh of 1 percent of gross
domestic product and less than a penny of every dollar in the
president's 2003 budget.
There were many reasons for cutting foreign assistance during the past
decade. Congress had little confidence in the State Department's
administrative ability. Some high- profile programs were mismanaged.
There was widespread skepticism that money was wisely used by
recipients, who were generally seen as ineffective if not corrupt.
Foreign aid was also the victim of domestic politics, unable to
compete with spending that offered more tangible benefits to local
Congressional districts.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle to adequate foreign assistance has
been the lack of consensus, since the end of the cold war, on the
purpose of such spending and its link to American security. As a
result, the budget was a patchwork of compromises among bureaucratic
baronies with few or no guiding priorities. And while foreign
assistance was being gutted, forces that engendered the Sept. 11
attacks were becoming more powerful.
The generation of American leaders in the years after World War II
realized that lasting peace and security for the United States
depended on constructing vibrant, free and prosperous societies from
the ruins of Europe. It was this realization that inspired the
Marshall Plan. Although the specific circumstances and challenges are
quite different, the security of the United States now depends on
achieving throughout the Arab and Islamic world what the Marshall Plan
achieved in Europe.
This vision should provide the foundation for a reinvigorated foreign
aid program. What is required is not a series of high-priced bribes to
regional governments in exchange for support for the war on terrorism.
On the contrary, much of this new Marshall Plan should be devoted to
initiatives that may make some regimes uncomfortable.
Our efforts should include supporting nascent institutions of civil
society; promoting pluralism of information and opinions; promoting
economic development to reduce the appeal of radical alternatives; and
creating modern educational systems that give young people in Muslim
societies the tools they need to flourish in a world where global
connections become ever more important. In countries whose regimes are
not open to change, we should be prepared to funnel resources to
private organizations that do accept it, and to stand up for them if
their governments interfere.
Such a transformation will not be easy. Some will say it is
impossible. But the same was said about the end of colonialism,
lasting peace in Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A robust
and focused foreign assistance program is one of the weapons we must
have to prevail.
(Richard Sokolsky and Joseph McMillan are research fellows at the
National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic
Studies.)
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