U.S. gives a lot, but not as much proportionally as smaller countries

U.S. gives a lot, but not as much proportionally as smaller countries

by Christopher Moore / News Staff Writer
Daily News Tribune
1/27/2005

WALTHAM -- A Brandeis University Town Hall meeting last night explored the U.S. response to the Southeast Asian tsunami -- both in terms of aid and media attention -- and discussed the future role of U.S. giving.

The forum was sponsored by Americans for Informed Democracy, a non-partisan educational organization that seeks to promote dialogue and understanding through such meetings. It was organized by Brandeis students Ava Morgenstern, Sayeda Haq and Elnaz Zarrini, who are AID campus coordinators.

"Is Uncle Sam a Scrooge or Lady Bountiful?" asked speaker Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts University. The answer was a little of both.

Walker pointed out that while the U.S. gives far more in foreign aid than any other country -- $13.5 billion in 2002 -- it gives a relatively small percentage of its wealth. The international standard is for a country to give 0.7 percent of its gross domestic product; the U.S. gives about 0.13 percent.

However, the U.S. ranks fourth in the world when it comes to donations from private citizens, Walker said, demonstrating that "America as its people is far more generous than America as its government."

Though aid is often a very visible gesture, Walker noted that there are trade tariffs that can silently detract from a country's income. The United States has allocated $100 million to countries affected by the tsunami, but has done nothing to lift the tariffs that keep $1.4 billion annually out of the coffers of those nations.

Adil Najam, an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at Brandeis and a citizen of Pakistan, chose to focus not just on the U.S. response to the tsunami, but on the Asian reaction to the U.S. response.

Specifically, Najam analyzed the furor in the U.S. media over U.N. Disaster Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland's comments about how much Western countries were giving.

"It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," Egeland said on Dec. 28. "Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least (of) how rich we have become."

Though Egeland is from Norway, one of the wealthier nations of the world, Najam said U.S. politicians and media outlets immediately concluded that he was referring to the U.S. and not to his own country -- or to several countries at once. After that, the main story in the U.S. centered on trying to prove that we are the biggest givers, a fact that many in Asia found distasteful, he said.

"In some ways, after Day 2, we turned it (giving) into an Olympic sport," said Najam. "We turned the story into a story about us."

Najam said that a desire to ease the suffering of others was a universally human reaction, not just an American one. He urged that the United States should approach world affairs with that in mind, discarding any sense of isolationism or individualism.

"That goes against that human impulse to hold hands at a moment of crisis," Najam said.

Craig Murphy, a historian with the United Nations Development Programme, focused on that visibility of foreign aid in his own remarks. He said that some U.S. policymakers see aid strictly as a political tool -- for example, tsunami aid creating a positive image in predominantly Muslim countries -- and forget the once-important concept of peace through solidarity.

That concept is one of the fundamental principles of the United Nations, Murphy said, and was a guiding force among the Allies in World War II. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded the European forces during the war, once called foreign aid "a moral imperative and an investment for peace."

"That (principle) used to be very important in American foreign policy," said Murphy. "By the demonstration of solidarity with other people, the U.S. would create the conditions for peaceful relations with other countries."

Department of International Health Chairwoman Susan Foster questioned whether foreign aid was a good thing at all. She argued that aid is often doled out for self-serving needs, sometimes because a country is simply "the enemy of our enemy." It is also a thinly disguised way to promote consumption of goods produced in the giving country, she said.

What might be a better idea, said Foster, would be for wealthier nations to provide relief of debt and trade restrictions for countries ravaged by poverty, war or natural disasters.

"Developed countries have to acknowledge their role in this," said Foster. "We could do so much more benefit by eliminating or reducing trade barriers."

( Christopher Moore can be reached at cmoore@cnc.com or 781-398-8009. )