Humanitarian Bribery
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has finally asserted herself as a foreign policy leader of Metternichian or rather Machiavellian proportions. On January 6, the day before Rajiv Shah is sworn in as director of USAID, Madame Clinton delivered her first major policy address, “Development in the 21st Century,” at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The secretary conceded that it is hard to sell development aid to “farmers and factory workers and teachers and nurses and students, hard-working mothers and fathers [be grateful for the concession, fathers] who wonder, why is their government spending taxpayer dollars to improve the lives of people in the developing world when there is so much hardship and unmet needs right here at home.”
Then how can we justify throwing even more money down the foreign aid rathole? The honest and true answer—admittedly dressed up in the pseudo-humanitarian verbiage that politicians have to use if they are to snooker the American people—is that foreign aid is an important part of what politicians like to call "national defense," though there are far more accurate words. Foreign Policy offers the key paragraphs.
“We cannot stop terrorism or defeat the ideologies of violent extremism when hundreds of millions of young people see a future with no jobs, no hope, and no way ever to catch up to the developed world...
“We cannot rely on regional partners to help us stop conflicts and counter global criminal networks when those countries are struggling to stabilize and secure their own societies.
“We cannot advance democracy and human rights when hunger and poverty threaten to undermine the good governance and rule of law needed to make rights real.”
Obviously, regional struggles or the state of poverty, democracy, human rights, and good governance in the Third World have little or nothing to do with the defense of these United States. They are the usual justification for the expansion of what the neoconservatives used to call—for anyone who can remember back to when anyone listened to them—the “American Imperium.” In order to expand American Imperium, we have to stick our nose into every African brush war and every Latin American conflict between dispossessed peasants and oppressive patroons—or is it communist insurgents and defenders of property rights and free enterprise? No matter, we have to pick sides. "We cannot stand idly by, while..." Fill in whatever vapid cliché you like. And one very valuable weapon in supporting one side over another—Muslims against Christians in the Balkans, for example—is to subsidize "our guys" against "their guys." That is why "their guys" regard The International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders as the enemy. One researcher told me how shocked he was to discover that the Red Cross gave much more aid to the Bosnian Muslims than to the Serbs and Croats together. Giving these people money is like selling liquor to the Indians or sending guns to Somalia.
What all this comes down to is quite simple. Like all predecessor empires, the American Empire finds it convenient to pay subsidies to the barbarian thugs that threaten the stability of its frontiers. It is much cheaper, as we learned in Iraq, to pay one set of America-hating Muslim thugs to fight another set of America-hating Muslim thugs than it is to fight both groups at the same time. The Obama administration thinks they can play the same trick in Afghanistan, but that is a far more complicated situation.
The British were fairly successful at bribing the Afghans. British bullying led to disaster in the First Afghan War, but at the end of the Second (1878-80), they set up a puppet ruler, Abdur Rahman, whom they paid to stay out of trouble. The new Amir proved to be an astute ruler, keeping the British out and fighting off the Russians by himself to avoid giving the Governor General of India any pretext for invading Afghanistan. If quiet was what the British wanted, they got it, but if it they thought they had gained the friendship of the Afghan nation, they were sadly mistaken, as the Third Afghan War was to prove.
Afghanistan is not a nation, much less a nation-state. It is an endless civil war, alternately lapsing into a cold or blowing up into a hot war. It is one Pashtum tribe against another, Pashtum against Uzbeks and Iranians, and Uzbeks against Iranians, old guard corrupt Mujaheddin against idealistic Taliban, and, overall, Shia against Sunni. I know too little about the place to speak with any more authority than the CIA experts who permitted a Jordanian triple agent to blow them up, but even that little is more than I wish to know.
So let us hear no more criticism of the fraud, waste, and mismanagement of US foreign aid. People like Doug Bandow and myself have been fools to complain that too much of the assistance ends up in the hands of military dictators and warlords who oppress their people. As Madame Clinton now reveals, that is the whole point. Buy off the dirty buggers with food parcels and old-tech weaponry that dazzle them into temporary subservience. Who cares how many people they kill or how much opium they produce. They’re working for us, damn it, they’re working for us.
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Excellent piece.
Rajiv Shah is the perfect man for the job. He has a very long career of shaking down guilt-ridden Westerners for money.
Dr. Fleming,
The old cowboy and former Texas Ranger,Gus, once said to a young reluctant whore in in the Movie, Lonesome Dove, "The older the violin, the sweeter the music."
I have noticed in your later years an economy of words and an honesty and wit that is almost extraordinary. Something so authentic I haven't enjoyed it since my last Evelyn Waugh novel. Keep it coming!!!
"I know too little about the place to speak with any more authority than the CIA experts who permitted a Jordanian triple agent to blow them up, but even that little is more than I wish to know."
"Like all predecessor empires, the American Empire finds it convenient to pay subsidies to the barbarian thugs that threaten the stability of its frontiers. It is much cheaper, as we learned in Iraq, to pay one set of America-hating Muslim thugs to fight another set of America-hating Muslim thugs than it is to fight both groups at the same time."
"One researcher told me how shocked he was to discover that the Red Cross gave much more aid to the Bosnian Muslims than to the Serbs and Croats together. Giving these people money is like selling liquor to the Indians or sending guns to Somalia."
Addendum: Rajiv Shah is quite young. I meant "long career" in the sense that almost his entire career has been devoted to shaking down Westerners for money.
Much of "foreign" aid actually ends up in the pockets of Americans (those with connections, that is). The aid money must be spent on American farm products, manufactures, contractors, etc.. Years ago some humanitarian types lobbied Congress to change the food aid program so that a small percentage of the grain could be purchased near where it was needed (so that it could reach the starving more quickly and not depress the local grain markets so severely). They got a flat rejection. All the grain had to be purchased from American agribusiness and that was that.
A very good description of one of the many messes we are in.
Since his father was the head of one of Nigeria's biggest banks, I would suspect the Underwear bomber enjoyed a bit of Western aid while he was growing up.
“We cannot rely on regional partners to help us stop conflicts and counter global criminal networks when those countries are struggling to stabilize and secure their own societies.
How about if the US government were to "stabilize and secure" its own borders against illegal immigration? Oh, I forget, we are going to end the problem of poverty south of the Limes Rio Grande by moving their underclass up here!
"I know too little about the place to speak with any more authority than the CIA experts who permitted a Jordanian triple agent to blow them up,....
Dr. Fleming,
I had the same consternation about how this could happen by a Jihadist who our government was "using" to locate, close with and destroy other Jihadists. It was recently explained to me by a mutual acquaintance, Ilana Mercer, when she simply stated the obvious:"Al Balawi had “strong jihadi credentials” for a reason. He was a strong Jihadi!!!" As I often say to my other lawyer friends,"Let us not attempt to think great thoughts, just read the statutes!"
Question: what will Madame Clinton and Metrosexual (ô St-Joseph très chaste, how I hate that word but how descriptive is it!) Obama do when the United States defaults on its spiraling foreign debt and can no longer buy off even the insolvent?
What a crock.
"good governance and rule of law (are) needed to make rights real"
She is right about that, at least. And since we have neither, Paul Craig Roberts is right that our "Liberty Has Been Lost".
It is worth noting that bribery of foreign barbarians is not necessarily a sign of weakness, as is sometimes believed. The Romans and Byzantines frequently paid subsidies to this or that enemy to keep them quiet, either because it was cheaper than fighting a war or, as when Justinian wanted to reconquer Italy, they preferred to concentrate their resources on a different or more significant enemy. It can, of course, be a sign of weakness, especially if the tribute-receiving barbarians do not keep their part of the bargain, as frequently happened in the case of the Seljuq Turks attacking Persian/Afghan territory or the Ottomans in the more virulent phase of their expansion. While Murad II was renowned for keeping faith-a very astute policy, because it inspired trust--his son Mehmed II the Conqueror broke his word with no regard for anything but his immediate interest. There is a saying attributed to the great Spartan Lysander, that young men were cheated with dice, old men with oaths. In context, though, it is possible that Lysander was not recommending this policy but only commenting on human reality. The Spartans were easy to slander since they wrote so little.
Naturally, every policy has different dimensions. Many white-collar bureaucrats and service-providers make money out of welfare, but the purpose of welfare, objectively speaking, is to weaken the middle class's ability to resist government, win votes from the idle poor, and keep the poor--especially blacks and Mexicans--in a state of permanent servility and dependence upon their masters. This is very much like the policy employed by ancient tyrants as observed by Herodotus and Xenophon. A politician does not have to think up such a tactic: It comes as naturally as smelling blood and attacking does to a shark.
You know, Dr. Fleming, I could not be considered classically educated by any stretch, but I remember looking up to and admiring your reflections drawn from the classics and beyond back when I was 19. I still do, though I've noticed that increasingly I find your lessons to be not so much instructive as articulative of what I have seen and experienced. They say all of Occidental literature is a series of footnotes to Aristotle and I am wondering if the same does not hold true of quotidien Occidental life and culture. I have no doubt the reason basic Greek and Christian decency is so misunderstood even among the well-intentioned is a reflection of just how far from its roots the mass has strayed.
quotidien Occidental life and culture
Make that "quotidian." Anglo-Latin snarl strikes again.
As Mr Van O. correctly points out in #4, foreign aid is, like the recent corporate bailouts, also a subsidy to some "American" interests, not only manufacturers and farmers, but also to the bankers who always get their cut. This is worth remembering and it may be, indeed, one of the strongest reasons that it is not possible to touch foreign aid.
Again, Dr. Wilson, what will these bankers do when the U.S. defaults?
Yes, international politics, and domestic politics for that matter, can sometimes be a dirty business. Bribery may indeed have a role to play in these matters at times. What irritates the heck out of me is that if we didn't have this stupid puritanical Messianic Nation complex we wouldn't be in so many places where we would have to keep bribing somebody. But, alas, the world is crying out for freedom, democracy, development and Big Macs (even if they think they aren't....THEY ARE, DAMMIT) and who else can give it to them but us. So, we will ride to the rescue, Dudley Doright-like, with cash in hand and international financiers to make sure the money is spent "correctly."
One thing that always strikes me is the fact that Roman and Byzantine policies of bribing and buying off the barbarians were brought on by necessity, often were sound policies that worked, and sometimes were brilliant, and overall, helped preserve the empire, whereas American policies of bribing and buying off barbarians are unnecessary, silly, and help to suck us down into the hole of perdition. Even in the rare cases where they turn out to be sound policies according to the circumstances, the circumstances themselves are unnecesary, and were created by our own stupidity.
George Ayittey, a Ghanian and prof at American University, has written how foreign aid interrupted traditional production and trade patterns throughout Africa, bringing poverty and corruption.
The work of the late Lord Peter Bauer also showed that foreign aid brought centralization and corruption, while enriching the foreign interests and the local oligarchs.
I think everybody really understands this, including Hillary. Their reasons are just lies to keep the scams going, with some of the profits eventually ending up in the Clinton Library.
The most massive foreign aid swindle was, of course, the Marshall Plan (1948-52). It cost U.S. taxpayers $13 billion -- the equivalent of about $700 billion today. It helped centralize and socialize Western European economies, while corrupting the conservative parties with Yankee lucre. It was criticized by Wilhem Roepke, who later designed West Germany's *wirtschaftswunder*, in which markets were freed and economic growth took off.
#12. Mr. Moses, I can't predict the future, but you can be sure the bankers will come out well. They always do.
#20, Amen Dr. Wilson. The three certainties of life: death, taxes, and bank profits.
Dr. Fleming,
I would be interested in your perspective on - perhaps in a future essay? - how the "politicization" of today's world compares with past eras. What I mean by "politicization" is the turning of everyone into an "interest" in every field and in every context whereby honest discourse on almost any topic is nearly impossible. This seems to establish a structure of life by which bribery is not merely a facet of foreign policy, but one of everyday life here in America. Because of this we seem to have "democracy" (really an oligarchy of powerful interests who decide the range of political opinion allowed for discussion) and "free enterprise" (really an oligarchy of banking-led oligopolies which decide the range of economic activity allowed for the masses) that bear little resemblence to the customary meanings of those words. This plays out on the grand stages but also on the little stages of everyday life. I watch as members of large businesses atenuate their opinions to reflect a "politically correct" view upheld by their immediate paymasters, even if it means destroying financial value to the firm. I watch also as members of families capitulate to a debasing of their culture's traditional values and their tribe's customs as the younger carry on in barbaric ways just so some inter-familial peace is not disrupted at the older generation. I will grant that the "agency problem" is not new and that some of what I describe is attributable to the acceleration of ignorance and indifference on an individual level that plagues our times, but the scale of bribery - whether in cash, power, favors, whatever - seems an enormous and pervasive part of our lives today. I am left wondering to what degree this was the case in, say, 1950s America, the antebellum South, Victorian England, or ancient Athens.
#22 Dr. Fleming, Eagle's comments and question is very much of our time. Many do not want to hear it but sin never changes, and then
again truth does not either. This essay is very timely and an
opportunity for any who want to listen in the days ahead of us.
Thank God Almighty for every one of them.
"I know too little about the place to speak with any more authority than the CIA experts who permitted a Jordanian triple agent to blow them up, but even that little is more than I wish to know."
One of the stories circulating is that the CIA men were working out in a gym. Soldiers get in shape by running and doing pushups. The bomb was placed there as a false flag operation. Maybe the FBI can continue their brilliant effort in Afghanistan with more success. But distrust of Levantines is crucial.
I'll bet it was a false flag. I'm thinking they set up some local peasants to get blasted. And the republicans said "Them gol dang terrorists got some more of our boys". Just in time for the thirty thousand troops buildup. Kind of like the perfect timing of the underwear bomber right when we have all those full body scanners ready to go to market.