Aid for the First World
I was moved when I saw photographs of the three hundred tents set up in front of the Ministry of the Economy on the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid by the activist members of the 0.7% Movement: students and hippies, the young and the old, professionals and housewives, artists, workers and the unemployed, all camped there day and night to pressure the government to devote 0.7 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product to help the Third World. They’ve announced a hunger strike in support of their effort, and all their declarations, as well as the slogans on their banners, exude the purest selflessness, generosity, and idealism. I send them my thanks for their honorable gesture.
This thanks I offer not in the name of the poor countries of the world but in the name of the rich ones—that is to say, the great Western democracies, among which Spain happily now figures—which are urgently in need of such movements and campaigns. Demonstrations like the one organized by the 0.7% Movement are revitalizing and morally enriching, and show Spaniards (and Europeans) something that many now find difficult to believe: that civic action and political life aren’t just vehicles for the unscrupulous and the power hungry, dishonest professionals and plodding bureaucrats, but can also channel the solidarity, decency, imagination, and altruism of those who want to combat injustice and make the world a better place.
That said, I should also make clear that even if the 0.7% Movement achieved its goal and 0.7 percent of Spain’s income was pledged to aid poor countries, the fate of those countries would not change significantly. In fact, even if the United States, Japan, and all the prosperous countries of Europe decided to follow Denmark’s magnificent example and give not 0.7 percent but an astounding 3 percent of their GDP to developing countries, it would make little difference.
This is because there is no direct link between the two economic realities, despite what is believed by the admirable idealists—“the Comanches,” as my friend Rosa Montero charmingly calls them—who are ashamed by the First World’s prosperity and feel guilty when they compare it with the misery of African or Latin American or (now only some) Asian countries. It’s not true that rich countries are rich because other countries are poor or, conversely, that the misery of the Third World is the result of the affluence of the First. This was true, though only in a relative sense, in the past. In the present, it is simply false. And nothing does more harm to backward and wretched countries than this false belief that frees them from all blame for their condition and shifts the responsibility for the suffering and hunger of their poor onto the shoulders of developed countries, which are accused of bleeding them to death, sucking all the wealth out of them like vampires. If this were so, there would be no hope for them, and they would have no alternative but to cry and lament their fate or berate the unfortunate West while waiting passively with hand outstretched for their tormentors to take pity on them, stop tormenting them, and lift them out of their misery.
The truth is that today poverty is “produced” in the same way as wealth and that both are options within reach of any nation. It is also true that many underdeveloped countries, because of the infinite corruption of their ruling classes, the wild squandering of their resources, and the foolish economic policies of their governments, have become efficient machines for producing the atrocious conditions in which their people live. But take note: I refer here to the people, not their rulers, who often enjoy an Arabian Nights-style opulence. For example, the outrageous wastefulness and thievery of the populist governments of Venezuela (not just a rich country but an extremely rich one) have managed to ruin the nation, with the majority of its people getting a little poorer each day while its millionaires spirit their millions abroad.
In a Zaire decimated by famine and epidemics, the great Mobutu keeps governing unperturbed in the middle of disease and death, always sporting his jaunty leopard-skin cap: his personal wealth, deposited in Swiss banks and entirely the product of pillage, is calculated to be between three and four billion dollars. This sum is on a par with that filched from the Philippine nation by another famous Third World head of state, the deceased president Marcos. And how much must the Duvalier family fortune be worth, amassed by Papa Doc and increased by Baby Doc, who is now drinking the bitter champagne of exile on the Côte d’Azur? Low estimates put it at hundreds of millions of dollars and high estimates at five times that: either way, it represents a true commercial and financial feat, considering it had to be squeezed out of Haiti, the poorest country in the world. And how to calculate what percentage of the astronomical sums that Fidel Castro received from the Soviet Union (between five and ten billion dollars a year, over three decades) was squandered in military escapades and mad experiments in social engineering and collectivism, making Cuba a nation of beggars?
Moving on to a more positive topic, what nation has produced the most billionaires over the last twenty years? The United States? Japan? Germany? No: Mexico. This statistic could be construed as encouraging (if those billions were honestly earned) or sinister (if they came from commercial privilege and from political trafficking). I learned it barely two days ago from Kevin Rafferty, a leading British economic reporter who covers the East and for years has documented in his stories the flip side to the Third World’s impoverishment at the hands of its bloodsucking rulers; that is to say, the formidable economic development of countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, thanks to the opening up of their economies and their entry into the world market.
Real help for the Third World can’t come in the form of handouts, noble or well intentioned as they might be. The sad reality is that in the great majority of cases, this money doesn’t reach the people for whom it was intended (the starving, the sick ravaged by disease and without access to hospitals, the peasants lacking seeds or tractors) but goes straight into the bottomless pockets of the Mobutus and the Marcoses or serves to enrich petty military bosses or faction leaders. What these minor warlords don’t steal and return to the Western banks where they keep their private accounts, they spend purchasing arms with which to kill each other, trying to seize power or maintain themselves in power forever.
The best aid the democratic West can give the oppressed and ravaged nations of the Third World is help in liberating them from their oppressors and ravagers, since these are the chief obstacles to breaking the infernal cycle of poverty. The West must also do business with the Third World: those borders of Europe, Japan, and the United States that are still shut must be opened or at least partially opened to admit products from developing countries. The West’s protectionism and Western governments’ complacency toward—in many cases, complicity with—Third World despots must be combated. The governments of democratic developed nations should be urged to cut all ties with dictatorships and impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on them; at the same time, they should actively help those fighting to establish law-abiding, independent civil governments in their countries, and foster cooperation and business exchanges with democratic regimes.
The message to be sent from the European Union to the nations of Africa, Latin America, and Asia is this: escape from poverty is possible, and it depends above all on each country’s own efforts. To counteract the curse of underdevelopment and move from producing poverty to producing wealth, as so many Asian countries have done and some countries in Latin America are beginning to do, certain basic conditions must be established. Respect for the law and freedom must be ensured, and reforms must be enacted that transfer responsibility for production to civil society and take it away from the state (always the principal source of corruption), that reward competition and private enterprise, and that open the borders to outside market forces (the quickest way to rescue and modernize an economy no matter how primitive it is initially).
If such is the situation, why cheer a campaign like the 0.7% Movement’s, which seems to be based on a wrongheaded idea about the true needs of poor countries? I’ve already said why, and now I’ll say it again: what the “Comanches” are doing may not help the Third World much, but it does help Spain and Europe. Democratic culture—which is now also Spanish culture—needs nothing quite so much these days as a renewal of civic enthusiasm, clarity of purpose, and faith in the system and in peaceful methods of altering government policy, all values embodied in those who defy pneumonia and aching backs in their three hundred tents on the Castellana. What they are doing stands in refreshing ethical contrast to the ugly, suffocating images of the democratic system on display in recent years in countries like France and Italy: wealthy men in power fleeing with their ill-gotten gains, bankruptcy bankers treated like heroes by the gossip rags, the constant report of sordid little underhanded deals carried out in the government’s long shadow. One may disagree with the “Comanches,” but only with the utmost respect and admiration.