He clearly touched a nerve. When the United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations “stingy” in response to the devastation of the tsunamis in Asia, Bush administration officials got very defensive.
Colin Powell hit the morning shows to emphasize that our $35 million aid package is more than any other country’s. Bush directly responded to Egeland’s comment yesterday by saying, “The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed.”
But the argument over American miserliness is a debate worth having. Egeland never targeted the U.S. specifically for criticism, and it turns out, his comments may have been taken out of context, but so be it. If we’re pushed into a discussion over levels of foreign aid, we might as well lay the facts on the table.
The New York Times noted today that one national poll showed that Americans believe our government spends 24% of its budget on aid to poor countries. I don’t know when this poll was taken — the Times didn’t say — but if it’s accurate, the public is wildly off-base — we actually spend well under a quarter of 1% of our budget on foreign aid.
What’s more, we’re hardly a world leader on this stage. When it comes to per capita spending and total dollars, we are, in fact, “stingy.”
Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States “has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world.” But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.
Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.
Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we’ve now pledged “is only the beginning” of the United States’ recovery effort. Let’s hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.
Especially after launching the war in Iraq, the United States has an international public relations problem. Miserly foreign aid, even after a horrific natural disaster, only compounds an existing problem.
Update: Canada, which has a fraction of the U.S.’s wealth, is already donating more money to the relief effort than we are. (Thanks to LJ for the tip)