Aid Is Not Enough
calderisi, Robert & Easterly, William & Sachs, Jeffrey D.
BOOKS IN REVIEW A grim Olbermann speculates whether O'Reilly is simply "a false patriot who would rather be loud than right," or if he is driven by something more insidious, like the...
...And the continent's "harsh environment" is undeniable...
...the Sisyphus of morons" is the freshest and wittiest bon mot I've read in years...
...In South America, the Pinochet junta brutally squelched dissent but also turned Chile into a marketbased engine of growth...
...Most critics attack him from the right, but Sachs is not anti-capitalism...
...He ticks off its staggering list of problems while holding out hope that "the end of poverty" remains "a realistic possibility by the year 2025...
...Some two million men participated in the contest, which saw the first widespread use of tanks, along a 30-mile front...
...Six Allied airmen with the rank of captain-the same rank as Richthofen--served as pallbearers...
...Calderisi is hardly a freemarket absolutist...
...He takes the "excuses" normally given for African failure-a biased world economy, slavery, colonialism, the Cold War, debt, geographyand carefully dissects them...
...Yet far too many African governments shook the chains of colonialism only to embrace deadend socialist economics (and, in some cases, Soviet-style police rule...
...In 2002, Easterly notes, the 25 most undemocratic regimes on earth-as rated by the World Bank-got $9 billion in foreign aid...
...These are just a few of the dilemmas that typically paralyze such Big Plans...
...They also tend to depreciate the mechanisms of "feedback" and "accountability...
...He survived the better part of a day lying in a shell hole reading his pocket edition of Prometheus Bound in the original Greek...
...Here's another: In sub-Saharan Africa, "Only two countries, Ghana and Uganda, have clawed their way back to the level of real income they had in 1970...
...They seek to identify demand, "adapt to local conditions," experiment with trial and error, and accept that "most solutions must be homegrown...
...Or the story of a British sergeant, 27-year-old Frederick Coulson, in peacetime a Reuters correspondent...
...The thunderbolts fly fast and furious from the idealist's quiver, but the one aspect of the controversy that Olbermann ignores is why Gen...
...The thrust of his argument, however, is fairly prosaic: Rich nations should spend far more money and actually meet their aid targets, while providing debt relief...
...Coulson had refused an officer's commission on the grounds that he preferred to "do the thing fairly...
...But they will not put young girls in school, provide clean water, and fight HIV/AIDS ruthlessly...
...Through his intellect and celebrity, Sachs has done a noble service in drawing attention to Africa...
...The simple st way to explain Africa's problems is that it has never known good government," writes Calderisi...
...If he is serious about tackling Third World poverty, Bush might wish to read a pair of recent books by former World Bank officials, both of which challenge the conventional wisdom on foreign aid...
...He was eventually evacuated from the battlefield, but later admitted to his biographer that once he was again alone "grim fear set in...
...He was buried The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First Wor)d War by Martin Gilbert (HENRY HOLT ~, Co,, 332 PAGES, ~;27.50) Reviewed by Marina Malenic in the cemetery at Bertangles near Amiens...
...He writes with brilliance, fervor, and a thinlyveiled rage at the persistence of extreme deprivation...
...Free markets will help Africa grow and a free press will help keep businesses and governments honest...
...This includes Africa...
...The Trouble With Africa, by Robert Calderisi, contends that the plight of sub-Saharan Africa can be blamed largely, though not exclusively, on African rulers...
...Now a consultant and writer, Calderisi worked in international development for three decades, chiefly in Africa...
...Presumably the UN and other bureaucracies...
...Who would administer them...
...Sixty or so years later, in the introduction to the secMarina Malenic is a writer in Washington, D.C...
...Instead, we should focus on bottom-up (rather than top-down) solutions...
...It won plaudits from some unlikely corners...
...BOOKS IN REVIEW A grim Olbermann speculates whether O'Reilly is simply "a false patriot who would rather be loud than right," or if he is driven by something more insidious, like the ethno-political prejudices which allegedly motivated Sen...
...Bill O'Reilly is the biggest problem with this book, an obsession that nearly ruins it in several places and threatens to put a damper on the TV show as well...
...countries...
...Tolkien, a 24-year-old signals officer on the Somme...
...Perhaps the most famous is Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, a globe-trotting one-man think tank whose advice has been sought by governments the world over...
...Other governments should be helped "only if they are kept under political and economic supervision...
...He was fatally wounded during an October 7 attack on the Transloy Ridge...
...I will take my place in the ranks...
...He served as World Bank spokesman on Africa from 1997 to 2000...
...According to Easterly, the West spent $2.3 trillion over the past five decades on foreign aid...
...His most notable achievements came between 1985 and 1991, when Sachs played a pivotal role in fixing the macroeconomic policies of Poland and Bolivia...
...These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them...
...Small wonder that, in his "Foreword" to The End of Poverty, U2's Bono calls Sachs "my professor...
...That same year, the 25 most corrupt regimes received $9.4 billion in foreign aid...
...In Cameroon, it was alleged that the chairman of a local AIDS committee used World Bank funds to pay for his daughter's wedding party...
...But on the subject of ending poverty, it is Easterly, not Sachs, who deserves the last word: "Aid cannot achieve the end of poverty...
...And then there was the young German corporal who wrote: "At the end of September 1916, my division moved into the Battle NOVEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73...
...A year and a half later, with a record of up to 80 downed British and French aircraft, the Red Baron was shot down over the Somme battlefield...
...Bravery is not really vanity, but a kind of concealed pride," Macmillan said, "because everybody is watching you...
...These 70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2006 BOOKS IN REVIEW governments deserve much more than they are receiving at the moment, with fewer strings attached...
...By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead...
...Wesley Clark, whom he puffs as "first in his class at West Point," was not knowledgeable enough, or courageous enough, to correct O'Reilly's Malmedy error in the first place...
...The Sisyphus of morons, if you will...
...And what about the scourge of corruption...
...I do not believe in laissez-faire," he stresses...
...His latest book, The End of Poverty, includes a heartfelt portrait of sub-Saharan Africa, where Sachs has traveled extensively...
...He writes with brilliance, fervor, and a thinly veiled rage at the persistence of extreme deprivation...
...I would have been more tolerant of the geography excuse: As Calderisi admits, an "unfortunate" coastline has robbed sub-Saharan Africa of the "well- protected, deep-water ports" that have boosted economic progress around the globe...
...These factors, says Calderisi, pale in comparison to the retarding effects of "culture, corruption, and political correctness...
...The Trouble With Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn't Working by Robert Calderisi (PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 249 PAGES, $24.95) The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much III and So Little Good by William Easterly (PENGUIN PRESS, 436 PAGES, $27.95) The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey D. Sachs (PENGUIN PRESS, 396 PAGES, $27.95) Reviewed by Duncan Currie It isn't just the lack of democratic regimes...
...NOVEMBER 2006, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71 BOOKS IN REVIEW T HAT LAST REMARK SHOULD be qualified...
...The United Nations Millennium Project, which Sachs chairs, has proposed literally hundreds of different aid interven72 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2006 BOOKS IN REVIEW tions...
...ond edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien would write of the "animal horror" of the trenches and how, "It seems now often forgotten that to be caught I by youth in 1914 was no less hideous an experience i than to be involved in 1939 and the following years...
...Or the story of Captain Harold Macmillan, the future prime minister, who was badly wounded in the battle for the outskirts of Lesbouefs on September 14...
...There is the story of Second Lieutenant J.R.R...
...We should adapt a "piecemeal" process to discover what works...
...O F COURSE, the Planners camp remains flush with academic all-stars...
...That Was War O VER 90 YEARS AGO, British, French, and German troops began a five-month battle in northeast France near the River Somme...
...We should channel aid into modest, cost-effective strategies with proven results, such as cash grants to keep children in school, urban water provision, vaccination, AIDS education, dietary supplements, and anti-malaria spraying...
...An honor guard fired a salute...
...By blaming so many of Africa's woes on a negligent West, while dismissing the centrality of African politics and culture, Sachs is unfair in his allocation of culpability...
...Here's one: '%t the height of apartheid, the oppressed black majority of South Africa probably lived better livesin material terms-than those who were nominally 'free' elsewhere on the continent...
...Searchers, meanwhile, realize that those mechanisms are vital...
...As New York University economist William Easterly points out in The White Man's Burden, "Foreign aid likely contributed to some notable successes on a global scale, such as dramatic improvement in health and education indicators in poor It is hard to criticize Sachs without first noting his track record in developing economies...
...Olbermann has given him too much air time and now, too much ink, but he redeems himself with one magnificent O'Reilly passage that atones for the monomania and proves that Olbermann the writer can be in the ascendant when he wishes to be: The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O'Reilly is simple but understandable: 99 times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill- O bar of bluster, we partake of the movable falafel feast-he serves us nothing but comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation...
...You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this," Irish musician-activist Bob Geldof told the Guardian, "but the Bush administration is the most r a d i c a l - i n a positive s e n s e - i n its Duncan Currie is a reporter at the Weekly Standard...
...It's true, as Sachs writes, that carving out 0.7 percent of GNP for foreign aid would require only a "slight" effort from rich Western countries...
...He slices development thinkers into two groups: "Planners" and "Searchers...
...I have heard from multiple sources of AIDS money disappearing before it reached any real or potential victims," he says...
...He offers a new approach to Africa: Initially focus aid on five countries-Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, and Mall--whose leaders have proven responsible stewards...
...But, at root, he remains more a Planner than a Searcher (to borrow Easterly's locution...
...But all too often, says Easterly, Western donors obsess over Big Plans and utopian schemes to vanquish poverty in one fell swoop...
...Who would collect feedback from Africans on the ground, and ensure accountability from both the donors and the aid recipients...
...So what's the Big Answer...
...The only Big Answer is that there is no Big Answer," says Easterly...
...Then I was safe, but alone, and absolutely terrified because there was no need to show off any more, no need to pretend...
...Planners believe in outside remedies and "global blueprints," but worry too much about "what to supply" and too little about "what is in demand...
...i There is the story of the German fighter pilot ! Manfred von Richthofen, also 24 years old when he ! made his first kill over a nearby French battlefield I on September 17, qualifying him for the award of a silver drinking goblet with the inscription "To the ! Victor in Air Battle...
...I most certainly will...
...We expect this money to reach poor people, yet so many of the governments receiving it are just plain crooked...
...But how would this money be spent...
...In an interview about his earlier, definitive work, The First World War, the historian Sir Martin Gilbert remarked: "All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results...
...Joseph McCarthy when the events at Malmedy were first investigated after World War II...
...Calderisi finds just one "clear success" in foreign aid: "the fight against river blindness in West Africa," which took a quarter century and required a close alliance between donor nations and pharmaceutical companies...
...No other continent has experienced such prolonged dictatorships...
...His book is at times highly persuasive...
...Above all, we should act like Searchers and avoid the social-engineering impulse that bedevils most Planners...
...Other countries-such as South Korea and Taiwan--"postponed political pluralism until their economies were strong.., but even they promoted basic health and education as an integral part of encouraging economic growth...
...In his latest book, The Somme, Gilbert again, through use of remarkable firsthand literary accounts, brings readers' thoughts to dwell on the human-personal, if you will-side of war...
...Does he really believe that insufficient foreign aid has hurt Africa more than, say, dictators such as Idi Amin, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Robert Mugabe...
...Only homegrown development based on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that...
...Aid Is Not Enough I F THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL SECTION of George Bush's 2003 State of the Union address dealt with Iraq, surely the most surprising bit was his pledge to spend $15 billion fighting AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean...
...Despite the zerogrowth payoff to aid in Africa," writes Easterly, "there has been a fall in infant mortality and a rise in secondary [school] enrollment in that most aidintensive continent...
...approach to Africa since Kennedy...
...The specific aid projects that have worked-such as paying Bangladeshi parents to keep their girls in school (the World Bank), or feeding malnourished children in the Iringa region of Tanzania (the WHO and UNICEF)-have tended to be locally and narrowly targeted...
...It is hard to criticize Sachs without first noting his track record in developing economies...
...The President met with Bono and agreed...
...His book bristles with "unpleasant truths...
...Another Irish rock star with a passion for global good works, U2 frontman Bono, urged Bush to combat debt relief and crank up American largesse even more...
...The Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake...
...There's also evidence that foreign aid improved access to clean water and sanitation for Africans...
...He favors globalization, defends Third World "sweatshops" as job creators, and believes market liberalization and privatization are two essential pillars of an emerging economy...
...Sachs calls UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "the world's finest statesman...
Vol. 39 • November 2006 • No. 9
