The topic of international aid within Africa has clearly had mixed
results. Our discussion largely focused on the motivations states have for
giving international aid and the organizational aspects of the aid, both of
which play a determining role in the success of the aid. To begin, we discussed
the Marshall plan and its role in post-war Europe. Asked to explain the
motivation of the US to provide immense economic aid to Western Europe after
the war, the short answer we arrived at was that it was motivated by a desire
to increase US influence over Europe, specifically through strengthening the
resilience of these European states against the perceived expansionism of the
Soviet Union manifested through the ideology of Marxist-Leninism. Here we can
observe some clear points of comparison between cases of economic aid in Africa
and in Europe, as well as some areas of departure. For example, the class
generally reached the conclusion that the primary function of the Marshall plan
was to bolster US influence and contain the spread of Communism, not to provide
humanitarian aid. I would argue that this is based on a sort of
false-dichotomy, as the spread of Communism can be contained by increasing the
living standard of the population. Thus claiming that increased economic
dependence on the US was the main goal is an oversimplification. Furthermore,
viewing increased dependence on the US as instrumental in extending hard US
power in Europe also misses some of the nuance in the ideological debate
between Communism and Capitalism. Without drawing any moral conclusions about
which economic system is superior (surely both have their advantages as well as
their faults) I can state that an approach which views the ideological conflict
as a type of superficial or soft-power manifestation of a deeper hard power
struggle which bears strong resemblance to other bipolar balances of power in
the past (for example during the Peloponnesian War) is reductionist and misses
some of the aspects that make the Marshall Plan and the Cold War in Europe in
general a unique historical phenomenon.
It
is already clear that political influence has a role to play in the decision to
provide economic aid in Africa. In the cases of the UK and France, there was
some discussion over the notion that these states wished to exert some
continued influence over their former colonies. This seems convincing but again
slightly reduces the nature of this aid. Colonialism was undeniably an
oppressive force in Africa, but it was greatly important in shaping the modern
states of Africa, their borders, infrastructure, and communities. I suggest
here that moral judgements about the past remain in a moral realm and that we
tread a bit more cautiously when trying to apply them to the economic and
political realities of modern African states. We can hypothesize about what
Africa would be like today without colonialism, but this does little to
thoroughly explain the motives of former-colonial powers in providing aid to
their former colonies. For one, it makes sense that, if a country has allotted
a certain amount of money in their budget to international aid, which without a
doubt is limited by the will of the voting populace and parliament than by the
number of cases deserving of aid, one can logically conclude that former
colonies might receive first preference in giving aid, possibly for no other
reason than as a sign of good faith. While this is probably not the case, it is
worth considering as a starting point for the comparison we made in class
between what we would call influence-based foreign aid, coming from countries
like the neoliberal “colonial” powers such as the US and Canada, former colonial powers like the UK and
France, as well as emerging powers like China and Russia, against what we
agreed was more “purely humanitarian” aid coming fro
countries such as Sweden and Norway, which had minimal if any colonial roles in
Africa and in whose parliaments even the far right supports financial aid (if
only to curb the tide of immigration) and where there is virtual unanimous
agreement that the notion of attaching financial aid to national economic
interests must not even be considered. To distinguish between these two so
sharply is again reductionist, in part for the reason just mentioned, as well
because it fails to address the integrated nature of the European and
Transatlantic economy. Surely Scandinavian countries, who can boast some of the
highest per capita incomes and living standards despite relatively modest GDPs,
have an interest in maintaining global stability. With few former colonies to
direct aid to, it is easy to see that the sharp distinction drawn between
influence-seeking nations and strictly humanitarian ones is also a false
dichotomy.
In
addition to this point, we can see a difference in the motivations of the US
and China in providing aid to Africa and in the US decision to finance
development in Western Europe, as well as even Japan after the war. By the turn
of the twentieth century, Japan could boast that it had industrialized and
Europeanized its economy and military, defeating imperial Russia in an armed
conflict and dispelling longstanding colonialist myths about the inherent
superiority of Europeans. Aside from Japan, industrialization was largely
relegated to Western Europe and North America. To say that the US targeted
these countries for financial aid only because they saw a political opportunity
to extend influence ignores the realities of world politics prior to the rise
of Fascism and nationalism following World War I. The spread of Communism was
considered an existential threat to the industrialized world powers before even
WWI, so to see the emergent capitalist superpower attempting to rebuild trust
and interconnectivity among the industrialized order that had existed before
the catastrophe of World War II as a merely opportunistic extension of
influence again misses the nuance of the situation. Viewed in this light, the
aid in Africa can be seen as an extension of the ideological conflict between
the industrialized democratic world order and the emergent non-democratic
powers like China and Russia.
A
second consideration outside of the theoretical motivations behind aid is the
methods of implementing it and how they affect its efficacy. The mine removal
campaign in Mozambique provides an excellent example of this because, while it
was UN sanctioned, it included a lot of contact on the local level, including
assessments by the local population before removal about how severe the problem
was, surveying the locals to identify the locations of mines, and to seek
approval from the population that an area was adequately mine free. In contrast
to less successful cases of foreign aid, whose methodology includes business
interest of the donating power, we may easily continue to distinguish a hard line
between self interested donors and true humanitarians. This distinction falls
apart when we consider the trust-building nature of aid, as alluded to in the
case of the marshall plan and aid to Japan. If we view aid as an economic
stimulus project with a broad array of global political goals rather than
clearly delineated humanitarian or self-interested objectives, we can draw a
clearer link between the intentions of the donating state and the methodology
used, since trust and collaboration among the local populace are not either
instrumental to ultimate financial gains or the end in itself for
humanitarians, but a combination of the two.
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