85. Foreign Aid in the Post Cold War Era

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388Emporium Current EssaysEmporium Current Essays389F iternational development assistance is heading for a crisis. For nearly 50 years, thedeveloped world has take aid for granted. It no longer docs. In real terms, it has started togive less.The expected "peace dividend" has not materialised and scepticism is rising, especiallyfor the poorest nations, most of which are in Africa.Aid and solidarity are considered old fashioned concepts. Progress and development, it isargued, must come from cooperation based on mutual interest and a business - likeapproach."Aid scepticism is at its highest in the United, States. A conservative majority inCongress promotes radical "winner' recipes and aid has be slashed. Slowly but surely,American is getting out of the development business," Jos Jonckers, PrincipalAdministrator in the European Commission's Directorate for Asia said recently.•9Lacking domestic support, the Clinton administration seeks to "rescue" the country's aid programme by seeking more cooperation with other donors - particularly the EuropeanUnion (EU), whose "solidarity horizons do not yet stop at its own borders even thoughthese horizons are shrinking."For the EU, happy and prosperous neighbours suddenly seem more important that distantfriends in need, Mr. Jonckerssays.Has the end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a Cold War, where internationalsolidarity is being dismantled together with the nuclear warheads'? Or could we beexperiencing the beginning of a fundamental reshaping of global solidarity and aid between nations?"Global aid has always involved a compromise with "affluent society", Mr. Jonckersadded. "People and nations are not normally disposed to give something away unless theyreceive something in return. We must, therefore, start from the premise

that those providing aid do so as a result of a complex and evolving compromise betweenaltruism and self-interest.In the colonial times, aid flows first emerged as a compromise between the expansionist North and Christian society with it own colonising clergy. Decolonisation increasedinsecurity in most former colonial powers. To safeguard their capital they had "invested"in third overseas territories, they shaped aid to "buy" goodwill from the new rulers. This"recomprcmiscd" aid from a colonial into a non-colonial from resulting in the secular,institutionalised arrangement called bilateral aid."Besides, during the Cold War, Western aid was used as a device to stop the developingworld from joining the Communist bloc, the aid system was more international and more politicised. The next stage came with an end of the Cold War.With it came the Western vision for stability peace and progress: a world of sovereignnations, organised on the basis of democratic and capitalist market principles andcommitted to respect for each other's territory and for basic human rights. Today,capitalism has become the norm in most nation ~ states. Long time sceptics andconvinced opponents such as Vietnam has embraced it. Democracy has not yet achievedthe same coverage, but it is sailing forward under favourable conditions.The effect has been a speedy erosion of the terms of the compromise on which aid thrivedfor so long. Inn a rapidly globalising, multi-polar world, the old approaches seemredundant. And the recompromising process is influenced by both self-interest analtruism in the rich North, say Mr. Jonckers, but African and Asian developmenteconomists and political scientists disagree with him on the later court."The sole guiding force behind Western thinking has always been its inherent selfishness, before, during and after the Cold.War, according to Chief Mashood Abiola of Nigeria, amajor campaigner for the manding reparations from the West for the "Depiction of resources of the colonised countries."Meanwhile, three recompromising trends can be identified. The first involves restoringaltruism, if at all it ever existed. In some ways, altruism has given a boost to humanitarianaid, speedy in the case of say, Bosnia, but ponderous in the case of Rwanda, Burundi,Somalia, the so-called non-strategic regions. Thus, whenever Africa gets humanitarianaid, it's largely at the cost of development assistance. 3'M)Emporium Current EssaysSecondly, it has led to a decentralisation of aid -- with more assistance being channelledthrough non-government organisations (NGOs) which at least on the surface, have anuncompromiscd altrujstic profile. Thirdly, it has led to a "deconstruction" of developmentaid along idealistic altruistic lines. "Women in developments," "child health",environment and ... poverty alleviation" are examples of deconstructed labels aroundwhich aid is being structured and justified.

The second recompromising strategy may be summed up in the expression, "BeBusinesslike," which approaches development co-operation more sceptically. Aid, it isargued makes sense if it leads to real progress and development; the prevailing view isthat this is not happening. There is an obsession with trying to measure progress with thehelp of business tools such as "output", "impact", "efficiency", "rates of return" and soon. It has also resulted in the "discovery" of aid failures through the burgeoning aidevaluation process.The "businesslike strategy has gained further ground because of the failure of manycountries to achieve any real progress in recent decades. The conclusion is that altruisticaid will seldom or never work, presumptuously assuming that there ever was any aidwithout self interest. This is said to be the major cause of "aidfatigue." . .Regionalism, the third major strategy, is linked to,» globalisation. Rooted in human -survival psychology, this prompts nations in close proximity to from "strategic" coajjt-kms. In the current era, development aid is one of the instruments used by affluentregions to strengthen their position in a globalising environment. Itentails promoting openregionalism elsewhere in the world and capitalising on it t i create linkages andinteractions which enhance their own inflik ne'e or hegemony.These, then, have been the rationales behind aid. It is now possible to develop North-South relations with a view to developing an egalitarian order? The answer is both "Yes"and "No". Those developing countries which in the view of the West have "earned" their right to a better future through markctisation and dcmocratisation in accordance with howthe North perceives it will doubtless be preferred over those who have failed "to beenabled."Marginalised because they cannot participate and perform in the system, the excluded arethe losers, a burden and a threat to the winners. The result is a growing disparity in thesociety of nations. More than one-fourth of mankind finds itself unable toEmporium Current Essays391 perform effectively and is marginalised. Unemployment, underemployment and povertyarc growing And the costs of disparity will be monumental if the process is not checkednow, now tomorrow.In the South, the pace of development must be left to the enabling forces of maturingdemocracies and free markets, however, weal and imperfect they may still appear, wealand imperfect, they may still appear. Indeed, every effort should- be made to help theseforces, become stranger. To achieve this cooperation will heed to move away from anemphasis on engineering outputs to one which involves'"massaging" the system and process. There must be also a radical change ill mentality.

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