The Observer reports about an interesting research carried out by economists:
The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists…
Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. ‘Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,’ said Duncan Green of Oxfam. ‘In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.’…
When there is a controversial vote in prospect, the premium for countries with a security council seat is even higher. US aid surges by as much as 170 per cent, bringing in a £23m windfall, while the UN spends an extra £4m.
‘Some countries serve on the security council during relatively calm years, whereas others, by chance, are fortunate enough to serve during a year in which a key resolution is debated and their vote becomes more valuable,’ the authors say. They highlight controversial resolutions over issues including the Korean War, Suez, the Falklands and Kosovo – though the period they study does not include the notorious ‘second resolution’ over the invasion of Iraq, which never came to a vote.
Ed Morrissey reponds angrily:
Well, what a shock! America acts in its own interest, and we use our foreign aid to advance our foreign policy. It must be the first time that’s ever happened in world history! Or, perhaps, I only imagined the calls from organizations like the Guardian/Observer to withhold aid and trade from places like apartheid South Africa, among others.
Given all of that, the same people who hold this debauched and corrupt organization as the pinnacle of human government cannot complain when we decided to direct our foreign aid to those Lilliputians who make up part of that effort to tie use down that might be in a position to keep the ties at a minimum. In the first place, the Observer fails to recognize that our foreign aid is our money, and it belongs to the American taxpayer. It should get spent in ways which benefit Americans as well as people abroad, and the outrage of the analysts at that simple truth speaks volumes about their political agenda.
The US uses aid as leverage when important votes are pending. That may seem like healthy, pragmantic politics to some, but for an organization whose chief purposes are peace and justice, the behavior of American administrations is cynical and destructive. Worse, we don’t limit our abuse of power to our role within the Security Council…
But at least we know now that, when we’re talking about reforming the UN, we first have to do something about reforming the US.
I’m somewhere in the middle: it is completely logical for the U.S. to use money to get other countries to do what it wants them to do. This doesn’t just work like that in matters before the U.N. Security Council, but also when the U.S. tries to push other countries to accept domestic reforms.
Same goes, of course, for negotiations with countries that, umh, put up a fight: buying countries off is nothing new. It is and will always be an intregal part of the foreign policy of every single country on this blue planet. The U.S. is ‘guilty’ of this, same goes for Russia, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Great Britain, India, China, Argentina and so on and on.
However, there is, or at least should be a limit. Sometimes it’s in a country’s (short term) self-interest to support certain ‘rogue regimes’, be it either far-left or far-right ones. There is, or at least should be, a limit to what one considers to be acceptable.
Strange as it may sound to some, especially when one’s country is the world’s only superpower.
P.S.
Something important to consider: I believe that it is never in a country’s long term interest, to support so-called rogue regimes.
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